“To a free hotel,” answered Bernard.
“It’ll have to be free, for they haven’t left us any money to pay for that or anything else.”
“Their hotel can’t be much worse than the one we stopped at last night at Melfa.”
“I wish their bill might not be any larger,” said Walter Cunningham.
The cigars were smoked, and then the party subsided into silence. Even the lively American realized that they were in a difficult and perhaps dangerous situation. All three were busy with their own thoughts, Bernard was anxious, but he was also curious, and excited. He remembered to have read a story three years before in which a party had been surprised by banditti somewhere in Sicily. He forgot how the story ended. When he read it he certainly was very far from thinking that some time a similar adventure would happen to himself.
CHAPTER XXX. IN A TRAP.
They proceeded thus for a short distance, when there was a sudden stop. The vetturino was ordered to descend from the driver’s seat, and he and the bandits had a conference.
Bernard was the only one of the party who understood Italian at all, and he failed to get any idea from the rapid words spoken by the four Italians. What they could be talking about not one of the party could conjecture.