The words sounded in his own ears as if spoken by some other voice. This poor, hunted, despised and wounded outcast his son! It seemed as if before him was unrolled the record of the sad, desolate, neglected, most unhappy years through which his first-born son had passed, while every year of them had been crowned with prosperity and happiness to himself. The thought of it passed swiftly though vividly through his brain, as such remembrances do in the hour of death. A profound and uneasy silence had fallen upon the crowd around him. This rich Englishman had caught them in an unlawful act, and had witnessed their savage treatment of Martino. They knew how much influence such wealthy foreigners had with the mayor in the town below, where such men were treated with servile respect, and they were in dread of some terrible vengeance for their treatment of his son.
"I did not know he was living till the day before yesterday," said Sidney at last, speaking to himself rather than to them.
Was it only so short a time ago? It appeared to be ages. He had lived through a century of troubled emotion since he reached Toblach.
"I will reward any man well who brings him to me," he added, "and now you had better put out this blazing thatch, if you wish to save your own huts."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
AT BAY.
When Martino escaped from the burning hovel, he fled like a wild beast hunted by enemies. The precipitous rocks had ledges and stepping-stones familiar to him, and his naked feet took firm hold on every point of vantage ground. He was quickly beyond all chance of being captured. In his boyhood he had often taken refuge in an almost inaccessible cavern, which he had found for himself, and where he could hide like a wolf in its lair. In later times, when Chiara's hard yoke grew too galling, he had sometimes established himself in this den, and stayed in it till famine had driven him back to his miserable home. There was no means of getting food up there, for on the Dolomite rocks not even a blade of grass will grow; and Martino knew well that if he became a marauder on the scanty fields below, so difficult to keep in cultivation, his neighbors would shoot him down as relentlessly as they would destroy a wolf or a vulture. He had carried up there, with much trouble and at a great risk, a small store of wood and turf, and he had made for himself a rude litter of dried leaves and straw. As there was no vegetation there was no animal life on these barren rocks; there was no chance of catching a bird or a rabbit. But he could bear hunger for a long time, and here he was at least in safety.
He slept the long hours of the day away, and awoke toward night; then he went to the entrance of his cave and sat down on the ground, his knees being almost on a level with his shaggy head. Very far below him lay the valley and the twinkling lights of Cortina, glistening in the distance like so many glowworms. The stars sparkled in the sky above like little globes of light. The watchman was already on the clock tower, striking the quarters of the hour upon the great bell, and its clear note came up to his listening ear. A thousand feet beneath him, so vertically below that he could have cast a stone on any of the roofs, lay the hamlet where he was so much hated. Now and then he saw a figure carrying a lantern flitting uneasily from hut to hut. All the day he had heard voices calling, from time to time, "Martino! Martino!" but he had paid no heed to them in the depths of his cave. Now once more, before the people settled to their night's rest, he heard a voice, pitched to a high, piercing note; it was a woman's voice, a young woman, whom once he had loved in a rough fashion and who had scouted him as if he was indeed an outcast and a pariah.
"Martino!" she cried, "come down. We will not hurt you. Here is a rich English signore, and he says he is your father."
Martino laughed a low, cunning chuckle. They meant to snare him, and put him to death out of their way, and this woman thought she could betray him to them. He made no answer, and gave no sign of life. Presently all the lights were put out, and every sound ceased in the hamlet, save the bleat of a kid now and then as it pressed nearer its mother's side for warmth. Far away he could hear the howling of a wolf answered by the furious barking of a watchdog. A moon near the full was rising over the cliffs, and shed a white light on the sharp, needle-like peaks. There was an incessant play of summer lightning on the northern horizon, throbbing behind the long and jagged outlines of the mountains. All about him was solemn, impressive, and mysterious. If Philip had been there he would have been filled with the most profound admiration and awe. But Martino was too savage to feel either; the aspects of nature had little more effect upon him than upon a wolf. When all was at last still and dark, even in Cortina, he rose, and cautiously descended toward his old home.