Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/319

 brows; and they began to trample backwards, hustling against each other in their mortification and confusion, and looking with strained, dazzled eyes for ever at the levelled pistols.

He heard them make their slow way out, and heard them when they reached the air fall into furious recrimination, and loud inquiries, one of each other, while the voice of Zefferino's father rose shrieking in their midst.

He went up the stone stair himself, and sent a shot up into the starry heavens.

'Be off in silence,' he called to them, 'or you will have more of these messages.'

In the fitful shadows of the night, lit only by the stars, he saw the whole troop of them seem to melt away and be swallowed up in the great void of the darkness.

The night once more was peaceable, with no other sound in it than the wings of the water-hen splashing in the pools, and the feet of the rodents scurrying through the brushwood.

He laid his ear to the ground to hearken to the retreating tread of his discomfited antagonists; but he heard nothing save the rustle and the murmur of insects and cheir-