Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/318

310 mad dreams of riches that should make them free from need to labour all their years to come. But they were so amazed, so discomfited, so cowed by the stern serenity of this northern stranger and the cruel gleam of his merciless weapons that they hustled one another uneasily to and fro, and gnashed their teeth against their misleader and deceiver; and unwillingly, yet with one voice, they swore never again to molest the tomb.

Their hungry eyes, roving over the chamber, saw its nakedness, its emptiness. The half-worked clay told no tale to them.

They felt a mortal terror of this fair-faced, cold-eyed man risen up there against them in the midst of this place of the dead. The father of little Zirlo muttered that he had meant nothing; only to share the gold honestly.

‘Go, all of you,’ said Sanctis, surprised at his own facile victory. ‘Since you repent, I too will forget. But if you transgress again, then you will find my memory is long and my bullets reach far.’

‘We will go,’ muttered the charcoal-burners, feeling still a shivering cold, as of those steel barrels pressed against their