“Compagnos!” cried the chief, “make inquiry, and find out who of those left behind has been absent while we were gone.”
A man was pointed out by the accuser of Popetta. He was a greenhorn—one of the recent recruits of the band, not yet admitted to the privileges of the “giro.” The cross-questioning to which he was submitted soon produced its effect. Notwithstanding the promise of secrecy given to her who had selected him for a messenger, he confessed all. Unfortunately for Popetta, the fellow had been taught to read, and knew enough arithmetic to tell that he carried two letters instead of one. He was able to say that one was for the father of the prisoner. So far, Popetta had spoken the truth. It was the second letter that condemned her. That had been directed to Signor Torreani.
“Hear that!” cried several of the brigands, as soon as the name was announced, and without listening to the address. “The Signor Torreani! Why, it is the sindico of Val di Orno! No wonder we’re being beset with soldiers! Every one knows that Torreani has never been our friend!”
“Besides,” remarked the brigandess who had started the accusation, “why such friendship to a prisoner? Why has he had all the confetti, rosalio, the best things in the place—to say nothing of the company of the signorina herself? Depend upon it, compagnos, there has been treasonable conspiracy!”
Poor Popetta! her time was come. Her husband—if such he was—had found the opportunity long wanted—not to protect, but get rid of her. He could now do so with perfect impunity—even without blame. With the cunning of a tiger he had approached the dread climax; with the ferocity of a tiger he seized upon the opportunity.
“Compagnos!” appealed he, in a tone pretended to be sad; “I need not tell you how hard it is to hear these charges against one who is dear to me—my own wife. And it is harder to think they have been proved. But we are banded together by a law that cannot be broken—the law of self-preservation. That must be mutual among us. To infringe this law would lead to our dissolution—our ruin—and we have sworn to one another, that he, or she, who does aught contrary to it, shall suffer death! Death, though it be brother, sister, wife, or mistress. I, whom you have chosen for your chief, shall prove myself true. By this may you believe me.”
While in the act of speaking the last words, the brigand sprang forward, until he stood by the side of his accused wife—Popetta. Her cry of terror was quickly succeeded by one of a different intonation. It was a shrill scream of agony, gradually subdued to the expiring accents of death, as the woman sank back upon the grass, with a poniard transfixed in her heart!
The scene that followed calls for no description. There was sign of neither weeping, nor woe, in that savage assemblage. There may have been pity; but if there was, it did not declare itself. The murderous chieftain strode quietly away to his quarters, and there sought concealment. He was too hardened to have remorse. Some of his subordinates removed from the spot the ghastly evidence of his crime—burying the body of the brigandess in a ravine close by. But not until they had stripped it of its glittering adornments—the spoils of many a fair maiden of the Campagna.
The prisoner was carried back to his cell, and there left to reflect on the tragedy just enacted—on the fate of poor Popetta. To his excited imagination it appeared but the foreshadowing of a still more fearful fate in store for himself.