Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/293

282 them there. His eyes never glanced to them; they looked still, straightly, sightlessly, to the low line where sea touched sky; there was no consciousness in them, but there was that whích stilled their riot of exultation with a vague sense of danger in this chained man standing so calmly in their hostile crowd.

They fell back, as their commander, told of the capture, came from the nook of shadow, where, with his subaltern, he had been at rest apart. He was little more than a guerillero—a course, rough, careless, Calabrian-born filibuster.

"A fine animal," he muttered, as he glanced over a paper of instructions, comparing the details there with the personal appearance of his prisoner. "So! you are the sacrilegious scoundrel who broke into the monastery of Taverno, and used foul violence against the august person of his sacred grace of ViUaflor?'

"I am." Erceldoune answered mechanically; his tongue clove to his mouth; his voice was hoarse and savage.

"Basta! you are in haste to be hanged!" swore the Calabrian, half disappointed at an avowal which left him no excuse for the ingenuity of threat and