“Stop that noise!” cried Brook, with slow emphasis.
He was not far wrong in saying that the carabineers would come. They patrol the roads day and night, in pairs, as they patrol every high road and every mountain path in Italy, all the year round. And just then, far up the road down which Johnstone and Clare had come, two of them appeared in sight, recognisable a mile away by their snow-white crossbelts and gleaming accoutrements. There are twelve or fourteen thousand of them in the country, trained soldiers and picked men, by all odds the finest corps in the army. Until lately no man could serve in the carabineers who could not show documentary evidence that neither he nor his father nor his mother had ever been in prison even for the smallest offence. They are feared and respected, and it is they who have so greatly reduced brigandage throughout the country.
Clare came back to Johnstone’s side, having done what she could to pin the rents together.
“It’s all right now,” she cried. “Here come the carabineers. They will take the man and his cart to the next village. Let me talk to them—I can speak Italian, you know.”
She was pale again, and very quiet. She had noticed that her hands trembled violently when she was pinning her frock, though they had been steady enough when they had gone round the man’s throat.
When the patrol men came up, she stepped forward and explained what had happened, clearly and briefly. There was the bleeding mule, Johnstone standing before it and rubbing its dusty nose; there was the knife; there was the man. With a modest gesture she showed them where her frock had been cut to shreds. Johnstone made remarks in English, reflecting upon the Italian character, which she did not think fit to translate.
The carabineers were silent fellows with big moustaches—the one very dark, the other as fair as a Swede—they were clean, strong, sober men, with frank eyes, and they said very little. They asked the strangers’ names, and Johnstone, at Clare’s request, wrote her name on his card, and the address in Amalfi. One of them knew the carter for a bad character.
“We will take care of him and his cart,” said the dark man, who was the superior. “The signori may go in quiet.”
They untied the rope that bound the man. He rose trembling, and stood on his feet, for he knew that he was in their power. But they showed no intention of putting him in handcuffs.