Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/43

 away on the Lucchese hills men and maidens munched the chestnuts with white teeth.

A great stillness and gloom fell on the populace, and the tongues of the people for once ceased to buzz and scream, and were only heard in a few rebellious mutterings against the State, which took a frank freebooter like a rat in a trap and dealt with him as it dealt with any paltry thief of the cities. Saturnino was gone: a dead man, or worse than a dead man, and never more would his native Maremma thrill with the Homeric tales of his acts; never more would this town of Grosseto see him stride through their public places with his pistols and knife in his broad red sash, and his bold black eyes full of challenge and scorn.

It was all over, like wine spilt on the ground; henceforth the Maremma would speak of him only with bated breath, and memories half glorious, half sad, like the memories of dead heroes. Saturnino Mastarna was gone; seized by the impalpable, far-reaching, spectral arm of the law, which to a rustic and simple people is so vaguely terrible, so unjust, so incomprehensible, coming out, as it seems to them to do, from the infinite