nore is letting them grow strong
that they may the better use their fangs. They cannot believe that
Signore is not the devil in paying such wages--in pretending to give
them a life of ease. The great Duke Scorpa is their friend--he has been
able to do nothing. The good and honorable His Eminence the Archbishop,
not even he may help--none in this world; not even the Holy Virgin on
her throne in heaven. If any one comes to interfere it must be the
devil--since none but the devil comes to such a land."

"That's all right, my friend," Derby answered. "Just you wait and see.
Animals never resent kindness, and that's all these poor creatures
are--just animals."

In the meantime he and the engineers and the carpenters from Vencata
Minore had worked day and night getting up the scaffolding for the first
well. The first boiler was set up in a shanty, and pens were hammered
together to hold the molten sulphur.

From the moment of Derby's arrival in the Vencata mines, the
_carabinieri_ kept him under the closest guard and accompanied him
wherever he went. But in spite of this there were a few mild outbreaks.
One day a stone was hurled at him. Another time some half-crazed wretch
tried to stab him; and once a pit was dug across the road, in which his
horse broke a leg, so that it had to be shot. This last nearly brought
Derby to the point of meting out punishment to the offenders. Yet when
he realized again the sufferings of these people, his anger gradually
subsided.

However, these disturbances had all taken place within the week after
his arrival in Sicily, and at the end of the second week he strongly
objected to being guarded. Each day he knew he gained in the confidence
of the people, and each day he knew also that they must be improving. He
felt sure that as their bodies were put in something like human
condition, their intellects must follow. The _carabinieri_ protested
that he would be making a needless target of himself should he attempt
to ride alone in the early dawn from the village of Vencata Minore to
the mines. The road led between rocks and underbrush where a man might
hide with perfect safety. But the apprehension of the _carabinieri_ did
not trouble Derby in the least. "Nonsense," he said. "Why, the miners
are all beginning to like me--I can see it in their faces."

What he said was true, and under the new treatment the people were
beginning to look and act like human beings. Even two weeks were enough
to s