a good girl! Give
us our dinner at once, we're hungry. You've no notion what an appetite
one gets in the _maquis_. Who sent us this--was it Signorina Colomba or
the mayor?"

"No, uncle, it was the miller's wife. She gave me this for you, and a
blanket for my mother."

"What does she want of me?"

"She says the Lucchesi she hired to clear the _maquis_ are asking her
five-and-thirty sous, and chestnuts as well--because of the fever in the
lower parts of Pietranera."

"The lazy scamps! . . . I'll see to them! . . . Will you share our
dinner, monsieur, without any ceremony? We've eaten worse meals
together, in the days of that poor compatriot of ours, whom they have
discharged from the army."

"No, I thank you heartily. They have discharged me, too!"

"Yes, so I heard. But I'll wager you weren't sorry for it. You have your
own account to settle too. . . . Come along, cure," said the bandit to
his comrade. "Let's dine! Signor Orso, let me introduce the cure. I'm
not quite sure he is a cure. But he knows as much as any priest, at all
events!"

"A poor student of theology, monsieur," quoth the second bandit, "who
has been prevented from following his vocation. Who knows, Brandolaccio,
I might have been Pope!"

"What was it that deprived the Church of your learning?" inquired Orso.

"A mere nothing--a bill that had to be settled, as my friend
Brandolaccio puts it. One of my sisters had been making a fool of
herself, while I was devouring book-lore at Pisa University. I had to
come home, to get her married. But her future husband was in too great
a hurry; he died of fever three days before I arrived. Then I called, as
you would have done in my place, on the dead man's brother. I was told
he was married. What was I to do?"

"It really was puzzling! What did you do?"

"It was one of those cases in which one has to resort to the gunflint."

"In other words?"

"I put a bullet in his head," said the bandit coolly.

Orso made a horrified gesture. Nevertheless, curiosity, and, it may be,
his desire to put off the moment when he must return home, induced him
to remain where he was, and continue his conversation with the two men,
each of whom had at least one murder on his conscience.

While his comrade was talking, Brandolaccio was laying bread and meat
in front of him. He helped himself--then he gave some food to this
dog, whom he introduced to Orso under the name of Brusco, as an animal
possessing a wonderful insti