to you, and then we will go and find some
more. But what is that you have got under your arm?"

"It is my sketch-book."

"A sketch-book? What is a sketch-book?"

"It is what I carry my pictures in."

"Pictures? O, do let me see them!"

"Yes, indeed; here they are."

"What pretty pictures! O, mother, come and see! Here are mountains,
and men, and goats. Did you make them all?"

Attracted by the call of the child, a lady came out of the principal
tent. She was yet young, tall, and covered with a medley of garments
from various costumes. Her face sparkled with energy, and might have
been called beautiful. She threw a sad glance at Salvator, and
approached him haughtily, as if to give an order. But seeing the two
children busily looking over the sketch-book, and observing the
familiar way with which both treated their new acquaintance, she
appeared to change her manner somewhat, and began to look at the
pictures herself, and to admire them. At the end of half an hour the
mother and the children seemed like old friends of Salvator Rosa.

The woman was the wife of the chief. A daughter of an honorable
family, she married a young man at Pisa, her native city, who proved
to be captain of this band of robbers. She could not well leave the
company into which she had been betrayed; and so, with a noble
self-denial, she became resigned to her hard lot. An unwilling witness
of the many crimes of her husband and his companions, she suffered
cruelly in her resignation. Yet her fidelity, her virtue,--things
rarely known, but sometimes respected among these mountain
brigands,--had given her a moral power over the men as well as over
her husband. More than once she had used this means to temper their
ferocity, and obtain pardon for their unfortunate prisoners.

Just then one of the brigands came and brought to the prisoner the
order from the chief that he should write to his friends to obtain
money for his ransom. The man was going, under a disguise, to the city
of Florence; and he offered to deliver any letters intrusted to his
care. He indicated the place where the ten thousand ducats must be
left, so that Salvator might inform his correspondent.

Our hero had many devoted friends; but nearly all were artists like
himself, and without fortune. Nevertheless, he decided to write to one
of them. He gave orders that all the pictures in his studio should be
sold. He hoped that the money which they would bring, together with
wha