ntly
watching him with great curiosity. A large hat, with stained and torn
brim, covered his sun-burnt visage; a leather belt bound his dark sack
to his body, and gave support to a pistol and hunting-knife,
invariably carried by the brigands of the mountains. His black beard,
thick and untidy, concealed a portion of his face; but there could be
no doubt that his dark glance was fixed upon the stranger who came to
invade his domain.

For almost any other but our hero, the sudden apparition of that wild
and menacing figure would have been good cause of terror. But Salvator
was a painter, and a painter in love with his art; and he had in that
strange costume, that forbidding look, something so much in harmony
with the aspect of nature about him, that he at once made the man a
subject of study.

"I mustn't lose him," he said; "he's an inhabitant of the country. He
comes just in the nick of time to complete my landscape; and his
position is quite fine."

And, drawing tranquilly his pencil, he began to transfer the outlines
of the brigand to his album, when the stranger, coming a few paces
nearer to him, said, in a rough voice,--

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"Well, my good fellow, I come to take your portrait, if you'll hold
still a bit," responded the painter.

"Ah, you jest with me! Have a care," said the other, coming still
nearer.

"No," replied Salvator, seriously; "I am a painter; and I wander over
these mountains with no other purpose but to admire these beautiful
landscapes, and to sketch the most picturesque objects."

"To sketch!" cried the brigand, with evident anger, hardly knowing
what the word meant. "Do you not know that these mountains belong to
us? Why do you come here to spy us out?"

At these words he gave a shrill whistle, and three other men, clothed
like himself, came towards the spot from different directions.

"Seize this man!" he said to his companions; "he comes to observe us."

All resistance was useless. And so, after having tried in vain to
prove his innocence, the young man was surrounded and seized.

"March!" cried the man who had first met him. "You must talk with our
chief."

The leader of these brigands was a man about forty years of age, named
Pietratesta. His great physical strength, his courage, and, more than
all the rest, his energy, had made him a favorite among his
companions, and given him authority over them. Famous among the
mountains for his audac