Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/208

 'Yes, there was when I saw them first.'

'And you have stolen it?'

'I never steal; I leave that to you to do at your lord's expense. The gold was stolen by a galley-slave, one you have heard of, Saturnino Mastarna. It can do him no harm to say so, for he has escaped.'

He believed nothing that she said. He was certain that the gold was either in the tombs or safe hidden underneath the soil.

'If you will tell me honestly where the treasure is I will not give you up to justice,' he said, thinking so to possess a secret which without her might escape him for ever.

'I cannot tell you what I do not know,' she answered him. 'Ask Saturnino Mastarna, if you can find him.'

'You are a cursed jade,' cried the old man, with the rabbia seizing him, and called her many worse names still. Musa turned her back on him, and stood awaiting his next act. She would not show him what she felt, but her heart was beating to suffocation with fear lest she should be hunted from her home.

'The tombs are my lord's. They are of value, they are full of treasure, they are my master's,' he kept repeating now.