We stopped in the trail, and in less than five minutes after the disappearance of our faithful guide we were captured by a gang of bandits, whose garb and countenance convinced us that robbery or murder or both would be our fate.
We were dragged off our horses, hustled into the forest gloom, through briars, over streams and rocks, until finally pitched into the tiptop mountain lair of Roderick, the Terrible.
The evening camp fire was lit, and Tamora, the queen of the robbers, with a couple of robber cooks, was preparing supper for the whole band when they returned from their daily avocations.
They seemed to be a jolly set, and with joke, laughter and song, these chivalric sons of sunny Italy were relating their various exploits, and laughing at the trepidation and futile resistance of their former victims.
Just before the band sat around on the ferny, pine clad rocks for supper, Roderick addressed William, and asked him if he had anything to say why he should not be robbed and murdered.
William said he was perfectly indifferent; for, being only a writer of plays and an actor, working for the amusement of mankind, he led a kind of dog's life anyhow, and didn't give a damn what they did with him.
The Robber Chief gave a yell and a roar that could be heard for three miles among the columned pines and oaks of the Apennines, and yelled, "Bully for you! Shake!"
Roderick then turned to me and said, "Who are you?"
I replied at once, "I am a fool and a poet."
He grasped my hand intensely and yelled, "I'm another." That sealed our friendship.