Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/17

 sight: no less a sight than the passing through Grosseto of the brigand-chief of Santa-Fiora—Saturnino Mastarna.

The news of his capture had startled the town at midnight when the carabiniers had ridden in, thirty strong, with a man bound hard and fast in the midst of them; and the Grosseto citizens, for the most part in their beds, had lit their lanterns hurriedly, and thrown open their casements as the tramp of the horses and the clatter of the weapons had awakened them from sleep.

'They have captured some poor soul!' the good folks had said with a sigh of sympathy and regret, and had murmured to each other mournfully, è il nostro Saturnino!

As the troop of guards had passed under the walls of their dull little city, a torch here and there flickering on their naked sabres and the barrels of their short carbines, and a moonbeam here and there glistening on the whiteness of their cross-belts and the foam on the manes of their horses, there had been few in Grosseto who did not pity the captive in their midst, with his arms tied tightly by cords behind his back: few who did not for his sake wish the troopers a sudden death and a bad one.