Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/294

 'And is not the gold of the rich their own as well as the crust of the poor?' said Musa with scorn in her low tones. 'He was a thief; a thief; and a traitor. I sheltered him, and he robbed the dead. He was a thief and a traitor.'

Zirlo rolled over and hid his face in the green bichierini,. pretending to catch a lizard. He had gone back into the tombs the very day after the galley-slave had robbed them, conquering his abject fear of the place for sake of the gold toys and the gold lamps that he too would have taken if he could only have found them.

'And I should not have been a thief,' thought Zirlo, with national sophistry instinctive in him. 'I should not have been a thief; they belonged to nobody; they were as much mine as hers.'

Yet not for worlds would he have had her know that he had ever crept into the graves on any such errand.

'He was a thief and a traitor. And he was taken as he sold the gold? I am glad,' she said once more, and her face was exultant, sombre, almost cruel.

The fate of the robber of the tombs