we must allow the traitor to hope for his own future, and we simply
shrug. We cannot plant him neck-deep for everlasting in a burning marl,
and hear him howling. We have no weapons in these times--none! Our curses
come back to roost. This is one of the serious facts of the century, and
controls violent language. What! are you all gathered about me? Oracles
must be moving, too. There's no rest even for them, when they have got a
mountain to scale."

A cry, "He is there!" and "Do you see him?" burst from the throats of men
surrounding Agostino.

Looking up to the mountain's top, they had perceived the figure of one
who stood with folded arms, sufficiently near for the person of an
expected friend to be descried. They waved their hats, and Carlo shot
ahead. The others trod after him more deliberately, but in glad
excitement, speculating on the time which this sixth member of the party,
who were engaged to assemble at a certain hour of the morning upon yonder
height, had taken to reach the spot from Omegna, or Orta, or Pella, and
rejoicing that his health should be so stout in despite of his wasting
labours under city smoke.

"Yes, health!" said Agostino. "Is it health, do you think? It's the heart
of the man! and a heart with a mill-stone about it--a heart to breed a
country from! There stands the man who has faith in Italy, though she has
been lying like a corpse for centuries. God bless him! He has no other
comfort. Viva l'Italia!"

The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the eminence
overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the air
sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he, until
Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene stedfastly,
with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured long exile, and
finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange, beloved,
visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the far-spreading
hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the gleam of the
distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an airy host,
mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of a flight
toward the underlying purple land.

CHAPTER II

He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood defined
against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the student's
aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the straining of
the buttoned coat across h