Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/315

 ing with wicked passions, yelling aloud for the girl and the gold.

When they stumbled, like fierce, stupid cattle, into the chamber of the Lucumo, Sanctis rose, and levelled his aim at them.

'Halt there,' he said to them. 'The first that advances is a dead man.'

They hung together in a throng; they did not approach. They stared in bewildered awe at the steel tubes of the pistols and at the calm, stern eyes of this unknown man.

'What do you want?' he asked them.

They for a moment did not speak; then the father of Zefferino, who was the ringleader and promoter of their foray, cursed heaven and earth, and cried aloud:

'We want the gold; there is gold here; it belongs to us of right; we are the men of the soil. She is a witch, a devil and the child of devils; she struck my own boy till almost he died under her hand. We want the gold she has found; we will let her go if she give us the gold'

Sanctis kept his eyes fastened on them, and he saw the whole dusky, restless mass of them writhe and cringe under his gaze and the death-dealing tubes of his weapons.