He sat still a few moments, but he did not eat.
In a little while he heard a step on the dead winter leaves and tufts of rosemary. He sprang erect; his eyes brightened; his face changed. He went forward eagerly:
"Signa!—my dear!—at last!"
He only saw under the leafless maples and brown vine tendrils a young man that he had never seen, who stopped before him breathing quickly from the steepness of the ascent.
"I was to bring this to you," he said, holding out a long gun in its case. "And to tell you that he, the youth they all talk of—Signa—went back to Rome this morning; had no time to come, but sends you this, with his dear love and greeting, and will write from Rome to-night. Ah, Lord! There was such fuss with him in the city. He was taken to the foreign princes, and then the people!—if you had heard them!—all the street rang with the cheering. This morning he could hardly get away for all the crowd there was. I am only a messenger. I should be glad of wine. Your hill is steep."
Bruno took the gun from him, and put out a flask of his own wine on the threshold; then shut close the door.
It was such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such in gunsmiths' windows and the halls of noblemen: a breech-loader, of foreign make, beautifully mounted and inlaid with silver.
He sat still a little while, the gun lying on his knees; there was a great darkness on his face. Then he gripped it in both hands, the butt in one, the barrel in the other, and dashed the centre of it down across the round of his great grindstone.
The blow was so violent, the wood of the weapon snapped with it across the middle, the shining metal loosened from its hold. He struck it again, and again, and again; until all the polished walnut was flying in splinters, and the plates of silver, bent and twisted, falling at his feet; the finely tempered steel of the long barrel alone was whole.
He went into his woodshed, and brought out branches of acacia brambles, and dry boughs of pine, and logs of oak; dragging them forth with fury. He piled them in the empty yawning space of the black hearth, and built them one on another in a pile; and struck a match and fired them, tossing pine-cones in to catch the flames.