Horace's first impulse was to defend his mother. All unarmed as he was, he struck at the man who had seized her, but received himself a sharp blow on the arm which made it drop stunned to his side. He glanced round, and that glance was sufficient to assure him that resistance would be utterly hopeless. There were at least five or six robbers around, most of them already busily engaged in rifling the carriage; and strange sounded their laughter and their jests as they drew forth now this thing—now that—dragging cloaks, bandboxes, dressing-case, umbrella, fan, to be piled in a heap on the road.
The bandit who had seized Mrs. Cleveland had already torn from her neck the gold chain, and with it the watch which she wore; and plunging his coarse hand into her pocket had turned it inside out, to make sure that none of its contents should escape him. Trembling as in a fit of ague, the poor lady had been constrained to pull off her gloves, and draw hastily from her icy fingers the jeweled rings which adorned them. Horace was half-maddened at the sight, but he had no power to protect his mother, he could but pass his left arm around her to support her from sinking, and glare at the spoilers with the vain wrath of one whose strength does not equal his spirit. Jacomo was on his knees, invoking the Virgin and all the saints to defend him! The robbers took little notice of him, save that one spurned him with his foot in passing and another sternly bade him cease his whining or he would dash out his brains.
Amidst the confusion and terrors of the scene, Horace yet retained his self-possession sufficiently to notice that none of the bandits kept any of the plunder, but that they placed it together in the heap before mentioned, probably with a view to division. The word "Matteo" was also occasionally heard amid the tumult of voices, and presently every eye was turned in one direction, whence came a crashing sound as if some one were forcing his way through the brushwood. Mrs. Cleveland had sunk on the ground, Horace was kneeling beside her, half supporting her drooping form, when there strode into the dimly lighted space, the tall figure of the chief of the banditti.
Matteo was a large and powerful man, with a countenance on which the character of ruffianism was so legibly stamped, that had he appeared in gentlemen's society under whatever auspices, with whatever name, or in whatever dress, a child would have instinctively shrunk from him, and a stranger's first thought have been:
"There is one whom I would rather not meet alone at night in a solitary place."
Grizzled was the shock of coarse hair thrown back from his dark face,—grizzled the untrimmed beard; but his thick beetling brows were intensely black, and almost joined together in one. The most repulsive feature was the mouth, of which the lower jaw projected, and which was furnished with teeth so irregular and large, that they suggested the idea of the fangs of some beast of prey. The alarm of Mrs. Cleveland increased when the light fell on the countenance of the man in whose power she knew herself to be. Clasping her hands, she gasped forth in broken Italian:
"Oh, mercy—we will pay ransom—we will give anything—only spare me and my son!"
"Ransom!" repeated Matteo in a hoarse voice. "We want from you something more than money." And turning sharply round to one of his companions, he inquired, "Has not the Rossignol returned?"
"Not yet," replied the young man addressed, who, though seemingly several years older than Raphael, bore so strong a likeness to him, that the first impression of the bewildered travelers had been that the musician whose warning they had neglected, and whom they had left behind at the little inn, had by some strange means overtaken the carriage. The second glance at Enrico had however quite removed such impression. The cast of the features might be alike,—there might be the same classical outline, the same delicately penciled brow,—but the expression of the face was utterly dissimilar. Instead of the calm thoughtfulness, tinged with melancholy, which had struck Mrs. Cleveland in the improvisatore, there was a restless wildness in this young man's eye, like that of a hunted animal, and a nervous twitch in his lip peculiarly apparent whenever he was addressed by Matteo.
"Why has he not returned?" growled Matteo. "And why did he go at all?"