"No!" exclaimed Horace, starting to his feet. "If a prisoner must remain in your hands, keep me and release my mother."
"Oh, my child! My child!" cried the lady. "Never shall they part us—never!" and she stretched out her clasped hands to Matteo in an attitude of agonizing entreaty.
"I'll send her," growled the brigand; "she is a mother. She will not spare cries or tears to wring mercy out of the merciless. Hear me, woman!" he continued in a louder tone, to the trembling supplicant before him. "You shall go to those high in power and plead for my son as you would plead for your son; and pour out your gold to those who never yet refused gold, yea, if it were the last ducat which you possessed to keep you from beggary. If Otto be standing here in three days—"
"Three days are not enough," interrupted Enrico, "you require an impossibility; application may have to be made to Naples, to the king himself."
"Ay, ay," said the brigand impatiently; "Naples is more than a stone's throw, and time may be needed, even though love and fear alike give wings. If, woman, in seven days my son be standing here free and uninjured," Matteo stamped on the ground as he spake, "free and uninjured shall your son be restored; if there be an hour's delay—" Matteo uttered with an oath some threat which the lady could not understand, but of its horrible nature she could judge both by the gesture of him who made it, and by the livid paleness which overspread the face of her son.
"O Horace! What does he say?" she exclaimed.
"Never mind, mother; it was something that you had better not understand. You know quite enough. You know that my life depends upon your procuring within seven days the release of this Otto, this son of Matteo."
Horace spake less distinctly than usual, and even his lips looked bloodless and white.
Matteo turned to the heap of plunder. "Is everything here?" he sternly inquired.
"Everything," promptly replied several voices.