Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/20

 too many for its wary and ferocious son, and Saturnino, asleep and heavy with wine, had been surprised, and after bitter and murderous resistance been vanquished, and dragged from where he dwelt amongst the clouds of the mountain's top, where Monte Labbro reared its silver summit to the whiteness of the moon.

All men of the Maremma had been proud that their province boasted so dread a name as Saturnino's: a name sweeping clear, like a scythe, all the countryside of travellers, and resounding even down to the very walls of Rome.

That terrible shape and rumour up there in the mountain-labyrinths above the stormy Fiora water had lent mystery and majesty to the land; had hung a dread tale to every wayside bush along the lone sea-roads and haunted every thicket of mastic and laurel that grew above the old ways of Porsenna's kingdoms. They had been proud of Saturnino, the great Saturnino, at the lifting of whose voice all the wet grass upon a summer's night would grow suddenly alive with gleaming eyes, and flashing firelocks, as though he called men up from the very stones to do his bidding.