of the branches as of men passing through
them. We promptly made for the house,
where the polar bear was aloft on a wall
barking furiously, and some serving men
were standing in the court around a group
of five rough fellows, each carrying a long
gun; and one, a fair-complexioned youth,
rather hump- backed, of about twenty,
armed, also, with a short sword. This
fellow, the spokesman, had walked in,
followed by his band, and desired to see the
master, as he wanted money. When told
that the master was out, he asked for the
Fattore, and still for money. The Fattore,
also, being invisible, he demanded wine
and bread. Gathering up the fragments
given him, he and his band all took their
departure up the Scala Santa.

This intrusion was followed by all sorts
of reports. There was a band of six men
on the hills over the villa, above the hermitage,
their chief, a young man called
Campanello, humpbacked, and about twenty-
three years old, a deserter. They had guns
and revolvers. They had gone to the
residence of an old priest, and fired on the
house, when he sent out word to them that
he could give them no money. A peasant,
passing at the break of day to his work in
the hills, had found a large fire burning,
and, sitting down to warm himself, received
a blow on his head from a stone hurled at
him from behind out of the trees. Other
stories came in, that the same band had
appeared nearer Siena, twenty-five in
number, disguised in black and red masks;
had waylaid and robbed people returning
from the city market; had bound them
to trees and so left them. Another story
told how a certain Bindi had found his
villa entirely surrounded one evening with
revolvers pointed at all the windows, and
how he had ransomed himself for five
hundred francs. Later, came the gendarmes
in good earnest, who were refreshed with
wine and meat, and then dispersed
themselves in the woods to hunt for
Campanello.

One evening, just at dinner time, a
peasant appeared, looking very scared, in
the court before the villa, holding in his
hand a piece of raw meat. So many
peasants came and went with such strange
burdens of comestibles for the chef, that
this excited no surprise, until the man with
the raw meat made his way to an open
gallery enclosed by a lofty iron grille, by
which the great hall is entered. Here he
stopped, and accosting one of the servants,
said he had a message to the master, which

he must deliver personally. We were all
in the hall waiting for the dinner bell, and
came out. There stood the trembling
peasant, holding his raw meat, which with a
low obeisance he presented to the master.
In a slit in the meat was a dirty little
letter to the effect, "that Campanello
demanded five hundred francs to be placed
that night, after the moon had set, under
the stone beneath the crucifix placed in
the grove of cypresses in the middle of
the forest; and that if the master did not
comply with Campanello's demand, he and
his might confess to the family priest, and
consider themselves dead." The peasant,
being asked why he had made himself the
bearer of such a threat, replied " that
Campanello and his band had surrounded
his cottage, and that he had shut himself
up for some time, but, being obliged to feed
the beasts, had at last gone out. That he
still found the brigands there, revolvers in
hand, and gun on shoulder, Campanello
armed also with a short sword; and that
Campanello had threatened to shoot him,
and to hamstring his oxen if he did not
carry the letter." But it was shrewdly
suspected that he had more dealings with
the band than he cared to own.

The matter duly considered, it was
resolved to give the men twenty francs,
which were duly placed under the stone
beneath the crucifix, in the grove of
cypresses, in the middle of the forest, at ten
o'clock that same night. Some of our
party proposed the three gendarmes and
an ambush; but as Campanello's men were
desperadoes, and as an honest man may
be picked off from behind a tree as well
as another, and as we were all hemmed
in on all sides by trees, it was deemed
prudent to do without the gendarmes and
the ambush.

Now, it is to be remembered that these
men—still, at this time, roving up and
down on our hills under cover of the
evergreen woods now before my eyes as I write
—are fed, and clothed, and do not
generally sleep out of a bed. Therefore it is
pretty clear that if the peasants living here
and there, on redeemed fields of corn and
olive, on the sunny sides of the slopes, spoke
out, the brigands would be soon caught.
But your Tuscan peasant is the veriest
coward living. He trembles before any
Campanello whom he meets; he lodges
him, and feeds him, and conceals him, and
would swear his face black and blue before
he would betray him. It is fair to the poor
fellow to bear in mind, that if he did other-