iles of the Capitoline hills Petro seemed to lose his way and rode off
into the underbrush to find it.

We stopped in the trail, and in less than five minutes after the
disappearance of our faithful guide we were captured by a gang of bandits,
whose garb and countenance convinced us that robbery or murder or both
would be our fate.

We were dragged off our horses, hustled into the forest gloom, through
briars, over streams and rocks, until finally pitched into the tiptop
mountain lair of Roderick, the Terrible.

The evening camp fire was lit, and Tamora, the queen of the robbers, with a
couple of robber cooks, was preparing supper for the whole band when they
returned from their daily avocations.

They seemed to be a jolly set, and with joke, laughter and song, these
chivalric sons of sunny Italy were relating their various exploits, and
laughing at the trepidation and futile resistance of their former victims.

Just before the band sat around on the ferny, pine clad rocks for supper,
Roderick addressed William, and asked him if he had anything to say why he
should not be robbed and murdered.

William said he was perfectly indifferent; for, being only a writer of
plays and an actor, working for the amusement of mankind, he led a kind of
dog's life anyhow, and didn't give a damn what they did with him.

The Robber Chief gave a yell and a roar that could be heard for three miles
among the columned pines and oaks of the Apennines, and yelled, "Bully for
you! Shake!"

Roderick then turned to me and said, "Who are you?"

I replied at once, "I am a fool and a poet."

He grasped my hand intensely and yelled, "I'm another." That sealed our
friendship.

Then these gay and festive robbers invited us to partake of the best in the
mountain wilds, with the request that after the evening feast was over we
should give samples of our trade.

With the blazing light of a mountain fire, hemmed in by inaccessible rocks
and gulches, from a tablerock overhanging a roaring, dashing stream, five
thousand feet below, William stood and was requested to give a sample of
his dramatic poetry for the edification of the beautiful cut-throat
audience! And this, as I well remember, was his encomium in Latin to the
"Gentlemen" and "Queen" of independent, gold-getting, robbing, murdering,
fantastic Italian "society."

_When first I beheld your noble band
Pounce from rock and lairs vernal,
My soul and hair were lifted
With