Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/30

 Grosseto knew him well. He had loved to ruffle it, in all his finery, on feast days, in its wineshops and on its public ways, in open bravado and scorn of the power of the law to touch him.

'Dear God!' she muttered, 'how are the mighty fallen! Only the other day and his name was a terror that made the very dead quake in their graves.'

And she pushed a little nearer to see better.

'It is verily he!' said the crowds now wistfully gazing up at this fallen majesty, bound there on his horse's saddle, with the muzzle of a trooper's carbine resting on either side of him, as the little band halted for a moment in the midst of the cathedral square while the captain bade farewell to the syndic of the town. 'It is verily he!' they sighed, and were full of regret. What would Maremma be without its Saturnino?

'Ay, it is he!' said the old woman, bending her piercing eyes upon the face of Mastarna. She was a plain-featured, clear-skinned woman, much beaten about by sea-winds and scorched by poisonous suns; but she had a frank, straight, and even noble regard. She dwelt on the low shores of