fell in the general flight, nearly broke his arm,
nearly got drowned, and was nearly shot; but
finally escaped all these close chances to which
his would-be rescuers subjected him, thanking
God for his safety, but "feeling anything but
charitably disposed towards the riders who
ought years ago to have cleared their country
from these ruffians, instead of leaving them alone
till they carried off an Englishman."

He never had any very good chance of escape
save once; when, if he would have shot two
sleeping men, and one other awake and at a
distance, he might perhaps have got away.
Scope was the one at a distance, he having moved
away two or three yards from his gun in order
to get into the sun while he was freeing his
shirt of vermin. For, the brigands, who rarely
change their clothes, and never wash
themselves, are, as might be expected, overrun
with vermin to a most disgusting extent. Mr.
Moens was inside a cave. Sentonio and Pavone
had laid their carcases across the entrance, and
Scope, as was said, had moved off to a little
distance. Two guns, one single, the other
double-barrelled, lay within reach of his arm;
he might seize one and kill the two sleeping
men, and Scope too, if he threatened to move.
It was a temptation, and he pondered over it—
but his mind and heart revolted from a double,
perhaps triple murder; his life was in no
immediate danger; he fully believed that the ransom
would be finally all settled; and, to turn away
his thoughts, he opened the little book of Psalms
he had with him, when his eye fell upon the
passage, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O
Lord!" The words spoke home; he resolutely
put the temptation behind him, amused himself
with picking out the grains of wheat, and rye
from some ears he had plucked, and then a herd
of cattle passing near, woke the sleepers, and
destroyed his only available chance of escape.

This same Pavone was a double murderer;
for the first crime he had been imprisoned three
years; but, repeating the amiable weakness, he
had been afraid to face the authorities, and so
took to the woods. His wife and children were
in prison, that being the practice of the Italian
government concerning the families of brigands.
He would have given himself up to release
them, but that he was afraid of Manzo's
vengeance against members of his family, all of
whom would be murdered on the first
opportunity if he had deserted. Else it is not an
uncommon thing for the minor members of a
band to give themselves up when they have
amassed a certain sum of money, whereby they
can be well fed while in prison for their term.
This they call "retiring from business;" and a
very pleasant and profitable retiring it is.

Great care was taken that Mr. Moens should
never see any of the peasants who came up to
transact their small business with the brigands.
It was a matter of indifference whether they saw
him or not, but he was not to see them, so that he
might not be able to recognise and thus bear
witness against them, to the result of twenty years'
imprisonment for them if detected. He had to sit
out of the way, pull his capote over his face, lie
on his back, go through all sorts of voluntary
methods of blindness, when the bread, and
the meat, and the ciceri (a curious kind of pea,
only one in a pod, and the name of which every
one was obliged to pronounce on the night of
the Sicilian vespers, when those who did not
give it the full Sicilian accent, were set down as
French and killed), the milk, and the washing,
and the rosolio came up, and money was
chinked out, and the band kept from starving,
for that day at least. It was the one point
of honour, also of common-sense precaution,
with the brigands.

Gambling is the favourite brigand amusement;
and they gamble, as they do all things, to excess.
Manzo lost seventy napoleons at one toss; and
the private shares of ransom-moneys change
hands twenty times before finally dispersed and
disbursed in the plains. They wished Mr.
Moens to play with them, but he, shrewdly
suspecting that it would be a case of "heads I win,
tails you lose," tried the experiment with
confetti. They lost, and laughed in his face when
he asked them to pay up. On which he took the
hint, and declined the heavier stakes. The day
when the last of his ransom was paid, there was
great gambling going on, and in a short time the
money was nearly all in the hands of four men—
the captain, Generoso, Andrea, and Pasquale.

On the whole, now that the danger is past,
the money gone, and no real damage done
to any one, it is an experience scarcely to be
much regretted. The ears of Mr. Moens were
saved, his limbs were saved, his life was saved;
and for the "compliment" of a few thousands,
he has had an experience and an adventure,
of startling magnitude in these prosaic times
of ours. He has seen what no other Englishman
of the time has seen, and has done what no
one else has done, and has written a bright
and charming book as the result; with one
piece of advice as the moral, very patent to the
reader—namely, do not travel with much luggage,
whether consisting of photographic plates
or not, and do not travel in brigand-haunted
places at all, with luggage or without. The
heavy baggage was in part the cause of the
Englishman's disaster. Continentals do not
understand our love of work and turmoil, and
the only facts that seem to have at all shaken
the belief of the brigands that they had captured
a milord, were the blackened state of his hands
from his manipulation of photographic chemicals,
and his flannel trousers—like those which Italian
prisoners wear. But they got over these two
shocks, pursued the even tenor of their faiih,
stuck to their text, and did not abate in their
demands until the very last.

Just published,
THE FOURTEENTH VOLUME,
Price 5s. 6d., bound In cloth.