The brigand pointed to Jacomo. "Make that fellow take the reins again," he said, "and drive as one who drives for his life. Thrust the woman back into the carriage; she must be at Staiti within the hour."
Two or three rude hands were instantly laid on Mrs. Cleveland, but she clung to her son as if it were to death instead of to liberty and safety that she was to be hurried. In that moment of terror and anguish, all his faults and her own perils were forgotten. The mother thought only of her child. To tear her from him was to rend asunder the very strings of her heart!
"Mother, dear, don't give way like this. There's no use resisting, no use entreating. We may yet meet again. All may be well. Don't you give these wretches an excuse for treating you roughly." And as he uttered these broken sentences, Horace tried gently himself to unclose those clinging arms.
It was only, however, by sheer force that the robbers tore Mrs. Cleveland away from her boy, and her cry as they were severed, rang in the ears of Horace like a death-knell. He had a terrible persuasion at that moment that he was parted from his mother never to see her again. A crowd of recollections rushed through the youth's brain: a consciousness that he had been a self-willed, undutiful son; that his conduct had caused all this misery; that he had forgiveness to implore for a thousand faults, and yet that his tongue had no power to ask for it.
Horace saw his mother dragged to the carriage, and rather thrown than lifted into it. From her silence after that one cry, he believed that her senses must have failed her, and was almost thankful for that belief.
He saw a robber strike one of the horses with something that made it, weary as it was, bound forward with such frantic violence that Jacomo was almost unseated. His exclamation of terror raised hoarse laughter from the lawless band, and before that laughter had ceased, the carriage with its gleaming lamps had disappeared in the darkness, and Horace stood, helpless and alone, a captive in the midst of banditti.
[CHAPTER V.]
ROUGH COMPANY.
If one feeling were more overpowering than another to Horace at that trying hour, it was the pang of remorse—despair of ever being able to make up by devotion in the future for ingratitude and disobedience in the past. Oh! That the selfish and self-willed would anticipate the hour of final separation from one whose tender love they are now throwing away as a worthless thing, under whose reproofs they chafe, for whose infirmities they have no indulgence! A time may come when they will in vain wish that by the loss of every earthly possession they could purchase one smile from the eyes, one fond word from the lips of a now neglected parent.
Horace was roused from his gloomy thoughts by the hoarse voice of Matteo. "Has any one brought the irons?" he said.