p the cheering. Ruffiano, who had constituted
himself chairman, gesticulated like a windmill, and roared till he was
hoarse in the vain effort to secure silence. It took a full quarter of
an hour to wear out this prodigious welcome, and even then it broke out
anew in scattered bursts and spurts, as if the people could never have
enough of it.

All this while Miss Rossano stood at her father's side, holding one
of his hands in both her own. The tears were streaming down her face
without cessation, but I had never seen her look so radiant--not even on
the night when I first saw her, and the happy brightness of her beauty
made me her life-long servant.

The count, poor man, was shaken altogether out of self-control. He hid
his eyes with his frail hand, and his tears ran like rain through his
wasted fingers. I have tried many and many a time to realize in my own
mind what he must have felt, but I have always known the futility of the
effort.

Twenty years of solitary imprisonment, a martyrdom of physical
degradation quite unspeakable, and sickening even to think of for a
moment, darkness, torture, utter despair, and then freedom and human
tears, and this astounding roar of triumph, sympathy, and welcome! It
was no wonder the scene unmanned him. The wonder was that he had
not sunk into an unquestioning animalism--a mere brute state of
idiocy--years ago.

There was speech-making enough and to spare when the cheering at last
was over. The count himself spoke a few broken words of thanks, which
elicited another roar of sympathy and welcome scarcely inferior in
volume to the first and only less prolonged. To tell the truth, I felt
the whole business rather trying, and I got heartily sick of the name
of the courageous, illustrious, magnanimous, and altogether noble and
magnificent Signor Fyfa. I knew perfectly well, though I could not
understand a tenth part of what was said, that Brunow's shameless
exaggerations were accepted here as solid truth, and that I was being
lauded for a number of splendid qualities which, to say the least, I had
had no chance of displaying. The illustrious, courageous, magnanimous,
and altogether noble Brunow came in for his share of the praise, and
bowed solemnly, with his hand upon his heart, whenever the crowd cheered
him. He made a speech in Italian, and achieved an overwhelming success.

Finally, the whole business was over. We had got back to the vestry, and
all but a few of the chieftains