Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/309

298 have the sagacity to do as he asked, and no more. Ernst von Anselm and he had once passed through a mad night together on the burning decks of a ship in the midst of the broad Pacific, when mutiny and drunkenness in a Lascar crew had added their horrors to the pandemonium; and together, back to back, against a legion of devils, and in the red-hot glare of leaping flames, had sent their bullets through the ringleaders' brains, and saved the vessel alike from fire and from anarchy. From that hour they had been friends, true and close and tried, in that noble friendship of brethren, which is worth all the love of women.

The little pifferaro, flinging his ape over his shoulder, where it gripped a sure hold, darted off, over the dreary plain, as he had promised, as fast as a pigeon could fly: that broad gold coin locked in his hand, and the promise of ten more like it, lent him the speed of a desert pony. "I shall go back a millionnaire to my people!" thought the child in his glee. There was hardly so much money in the whole of the little hamlet that had given him birth, where it nestled in a sleepy hollow under the brown hills of Savoy.

Erceldoune looked after him a second,—the careless child was a frail little basket-boat to launch on