ose were the dread hands that held him,
poor Beppo uttered a single scream of terror. Then Ramiro swung him
round with an ease that displayed the man's prodigious strength. For
just a second he seemed to hesitate how to dispose of the human bundle
that he held. Then, as if suddenly taking his resolve, that devil hurled
the lad across the little intervening space, straight into the heart of
the blazing fire.

Beppo hurtled against the logs with a sickening crash, and a thousand
sparks leapt up and vanished in the cavern of the chimney. Ramiro
wheeled sharply about, and snatching the pike from the hands of one of
my guards, he pinned down the poor body of the boy to make sure of his
victim's entire destruction.

Away by the buffet old Mariani looked on with a face as grey as ashes,
his eyes protruding in horror at the thing they witnessed. One glimpse I
had of him, and I scarce know which was the sight that sickened me more,
the fathers anguish or the twitching limbs of the burning child. Two
legs and two arms protruded from the blaze and writhed and wriggled
horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked
the flesh from the bones. At length they fell still and sank down into
the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through
the chamber. From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound
during this ghastly scene, there broke at last an anguished cry.

"Mercy, my lord, mercy!"

The Governor of Cesena straightened himself from his task, pulled the
pike from the flames, and restored it to the man-at-arms. Then turning
to Mariani:

"Fetch me wine," he bade him curtly, as he seated himself once more
upon the chair from which he had risen to perform that deed of ghastly
ruthlessness.

A torch spluttered suddenly in its sconce, and the fierce hissing of the
fire--like some monster licking its chops over a bloody meal--were the
only sounds that disturbed the stillness that ensued.

Every man there, including Ramiro's table companions, was white to the
lips; for accustomed though they might be to horrors in that brigand's
nest, this was a horror that surpassed anything they had ever witnessed.
The silence irked Messer Ramiro. He looked round from under his shaggy
brows, and he spluttered out an oath.

"Will you bring me this wine, pig?" he growled at the almost senseless
Mariani, and in his air and voice there was a promise of such terrific
things that the old man put as