eave you alone here. I
don't know what might happen to you. Let us go on to see Orso, or else
let us go back to the village together. I shall see my brother again.
God knows when--never, perhaps!"

"What's that you are saying, Colomba? Well, well, let us go! But only
for a minute, and then we'll get home at once."

Colomba squeezed her hand, and without making any reply walked on so
quickly that Miss Lydia could hardly keep up with her. She soon halted,
luckily, and said to her companion:

"We won't go any farther without warning them. We might have a bullet
flying at our heads."

She began to whistle through her fingers. Soon they heard a dog bark,
and the bandits' advanced sentry shortly came in sight. This was our old
acquaintance Brusco, who recognised Colomba at once and undertook to be
her guide. After many windings through the narrow paths in the _maquis_
they were met by two men, armed to the teeth.

"Is that you, Brandolaccio?" inquired Colomba. "Where is my brother?"

"Just over there," replied the bandit. "But go quietly. He's asleep, and
for the first time since his accident. Zounds, it's clear that where the
devil gets through, a woman will get through too!"

The two girls moved forward cautiously, and beside a fire, the blaze of
which was carefully concealed by a little wall of stones built round
it, they beheld Orso, lying on a pile of heather, and covered with a
_pilone_. He was very pale, and they could hear his laboured breathing.
Colomba sat down near him, and gazed at him silently, with her hands
clasped, as though she were praying in her heart. Miss Lydia hid her
face in her handkerchief, and nestled close against her friend, but
every now and then she lifted her head to take a look at the wounded man
over Colomba's shoulder. Thus a quarter of an hour passed by without a
word being said by anybody. At a sign from the theologian, Brandolaccio
had plunged with him into the _maquis_, to the great relief of Miss
Lydia, who for the first time fancied the local colour of the bandits'
wild beards and warlike equipment was a trifle too strong.

At last Orso stirred. Instantly, Colomba bent over him, and kissed him
again and again, pouring out questions anent his wound, his suffering,
and his needs. After having answered that he was doing as well as
possible, Orso inquired, in his turn, whether Miss Nevil was still at
Pietranera, and whether she had written to him. Colomba, bending over
her brother,