er was hanging a man.

Sometimes it was more than one, and that made Beppo afraid. For he knew
that for every man that he hanged his father took a dram to give him
courage for the work; and if there were several poor fellows to be cast
off from life, the hangman was not pleasant company afterwards for those
very near and dear to him.

It happened one day that the hangman was to give the rope to five
fellows, the most popular and devil-may-care rakes and roysterers in
the whole town. Beppo was up very early that morning, and at the first
streak of light had dropped himself over the wall into the town ditch,
and was away for the open country and the free air of the hills; for he
knew that neither at home nor in the streets would life be worth living
for a week after, because of all the vengeances that would fall on him.

Therefore he had taken from the home larder a loaf of bread and a clump
of dried figs; and with these hoped to stand the siege of a week's
solitude rather than fall in with the hard dealings of his own kind. He
knew a cave, above where the goats found pasture, out of which a little
red, rusty water trickled; there he thought to make himself a castle and
dream dreams, and was sure he would be happy enough, if only he did not
grow afraid.

Beppo had discovered the cave one day from seeing a goat push out
through a thicket of creepers on the side of the hill; and, hidden under
their leaves, he had found it a wonderful, cool refuge from the heat of
summer noons. Now, as he entered, the place struck very cold; for it was
early spring, and the earth was not yet warmed through with the sun.
So he set himself to gather dead grass, and briers, and tufts of
goat's hair, and from farther down the hillside the wood of a ruined
goat-paddock, till he had a great store of fuel at hand. He worked all
day like a squirrel for its winter hoard; and as his pile mounted he
grew less and less afraid of the cave where he meant to live.

Seeing so large a heap of stuff ready for the feeding of his fire, he
began to rise to great heights in his own imagination. First he had been
a poor outlaw, a mere sheep-stealer hiding from men's clutches; then he
became a robber-chief; and at last he was no less than the king of the
mountains.

"This mountain is all caves," he said to himself, "and all the caves are
full of gold; and I am the king to whom it all belongs."

In the evening Beppo lighted his fire, in the far back of his ca