Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/34

 he would cut her down with a stroke of his sword straight through skull and throat. But he did not harm her. He took the image meekly like a chidden child, and the gold pieces he dashed in the snow.

'A brave soul!' he said of her, and she blessed him once more, and kissed his hand that had sent many a one to an untimely death, and took her homeward way again, praying silently that the holy hosts of heaven might be about his steps and win him from his sin.

Since that time, when she had gone up into his very lair, she had not seen Saturnino. Twenty years had gone by. The little boy that he had saved had died of fever—the ghastly fever that walks these shores all summer through like the ghost of dead Etruria.

Twenty years had gone by, and Saturnino, from a young and generous man who, although fierce and terrible, could be merciful and just, had grown year by year a deeper terror, a dreader name; not to Maremma still, for still he spared the poor, but to the law and state. More murders lay upon his soul than he had time to count; his will, which was unchecked by those