.

The duke nodded as though satisfied. "It may be well for you to
remember," he observed impressively, "that the reward will make you and
yours easy for life."

The man saluted respectfully, but with a dogged surliness that revealed
no loyalty. Yet there was in his look a hint of fanatical intensity.
Outside in the passageway he smiled grimly. For once the errand on which
the duke had sent him fell in with his own inclinations. He opened a
window and looked out through the gratings into the night. In his heart
he bore no love for the duke, but he was by race and inheritance a
dependent of the house of Scorpa. It had always been so--the dukes had
been masters since time immemorial. The present duke had made the lives
of Sicilians terrible enough, but he, Luigi Calluci, would have no
stranger Americano forcing his people to work that hell-mine of the
"Little Devil"!

CHAPTER XX

HIS EMINENCE THE ARCHBISHOP OF VENCATA

Barely two days after the evening at the Palazzo Sansevero, Derby was
driving up the Sicilian hills towards the palace--courtesy gave it the
name--of the venerable Archbishop of Vencata. Porter, in company with
Tiggs and Jenkins--Derby's American assistants--had been left at the inn
in the town, but Derby was anxious to present his letter as soon as
possible, in order that there might be no delay in commencing work at
the mines.

The carriage in which Derby sat had at first sight seemed liable to
tumble apart, like so many separate pieces of mosaic puzzle, and he had
taken his place on the old cloth cushion rather dubiously. But the
driver gayly, and with every appearance of confidence in himself and his
equipage, had cracked his whip and shouted all the names in the calendar
to the horses, whose muscles gradually became sufficiently taut to impel
them onward. A few dozen yards having been made without mishap, Derby
felt that the special protection of Providence must be over them, and he
leaned back contentedly, puffing at his pipe and enjoying to the full
the witchery of a Sicilian sunset. The rickety conveyance clattered
slowly up a winding road that seemed like a white band tied about the
mountainside, holding here little terraced vineyards, there a huddling
group of houses that else would surely have slipped into the ravine. For
a short distance it hung out over the sea, then cut inward, as though
the band of white had been laced in and out among the silvery sprays of
the olive leaves.