"And now to satisfy the inner man," he said, walking over to the pot, seizing a wooden spoon, and drawing up a cricket. "My tramp of last night and this morning has made me famously hungry, Zara."
"And the hare soup is good," said Zara. "While you breakfast, Pietro,
I will go to mother. Come up when you finish."
A steep stair-way that was like a ladder led to the loft. Zara ascended this with agile fleetness, and the late astrologer was left alone at his very unmagician-like work of scraping the pot with a wooden spoon. Once or twice, as the fancy crossed him of the contrast between Achmet, the Astrologer reading the stars, and Pietro the tramp scraping the bones of the stolen hare, he laughed grimly to himself.
"And the world is made up of just such contrasts," he thought, "and Pietro at his homely breakfast is more to be dreaded than Achmet casting the horoscope. Ah! Sir Jasper Kingsland, it is a very fine thing to be a baronet with fifteen thousand pounds a year, a noble ancestral seat, a wife you love, and a son you adore. And yet Pietro, the vagabond tramp—the sunburned gypsy, with stolen hares to eat, and rags to wear, and a hut to lodge in—would not exchange places with you this bright March day. We have sworn vendetta to you and all of your blood, and we will keep our vow!"
His swarthy face darkened with passionate vindictiveness as he arose.
"'As a man sows so shall he reap,'" he muttered between his clinched teeth, setting his face toward Kingsland Court. "You, my Lord of Kingsland, have sown the wind. You shall learn what it is to reap the whirlwind!"
"Pietro! Pietro!" crowed a little voice, gleefully. "Papa Pietro! take Sunbeam!"
The little sleeper in the bed had sat up, her bright, dark face sparkling, two little dimpled arms outstretched.
The man turned, his vindictive face growing radiant.
"Papa Pietro's darling! his life! his angel! And how does the little
Sunbeam?"