between the precious pair and could readily comprehend even
their most obscure and guarded allusions. Old Solara informed the chief
that the young men had arrived, proposing that Vampa should abduct
Annunziata at the earliest possible moment, so arranging matters that
suspicion would fall upon the Viscount Massetti. This the chief agreed
to do. The shepherd was to keep him posted, and the abduction was to
take place when circumstances were best calculated to promote the
success of all the phases of the villainous plot. With this
understanding the conspirators separated.

"Fate sided with old Pasquale and Vampa. His wound kept the Viscount at
the cabin and the fair Annunziata nursed him. He had become smitten with
her beauty the day he met her in the Piazza del Popolo. Intimate
association with her intensified her influence over him, and when he had
been in the cabin nearly a week and convalescence had begun he made
violent love to her, even going so far as to ask her to fly with him.
Esperance divined his friend's intentions and, knowing that Massetti
could not marry the girl, interposed to save her. The result was a
quarrel and your son challenged the Viscount to fight him. The challenge
was instantly accepted and it was arranged that the duel should occur on
the following morning.

"Faithful to his promise to Vampa, old Solara, while pretending to be
absent from home, lurked in the vicinity and kept track of all that was
going on. He was hidden beneath the open window when Massetti or Tonio,
as he called himself, for both the Viscount and Esperance were passing
under assumed names, proposed flight to his daughter. Instantly he
hastened to the brigand chief, who had been prowling in the
neighborhood of the hut all day, and gleefully communicated to him what
he had heard. It was immediately decided that the time for the abduction
had come and preparations were made to carry off Annunziata that very
night. Vampa wrote a criminating letter to the girl purporting to come
from Massetti, and old Solara, stealing unobserved into the hut, placed
it beneath his daughter's work-box on her table where she afterwards
found it. It was not for a moment supposed that the girl would consent
to fly with the Viscount, for though gay and light-hearted she was pure
and innocent; the note was simply intended to fill Annunziata's mind,
after the abduction, with the idea that Massetti was her abductor."

"What shrewd, far-seeing villainy!"