“Save me for the sake of her whom we both reverence,” he cried. He spoke, like the last man who had addressed Nello, in lame and halting French. He had evidently appreciated the fact that Corsini was not a fellow-countryman.
Corsini started back and his hand stole to his hip pocket, from which he produced a very serviceable revolver, which he levelled straight at the intruder.
“Who and what are you?” he cried loudly, with a resolution he was far from feeling. This rough, unkempt man looked as if he was possessed of giant strength. If it had come to a hand-to-hand tussle, he could have broken the slim young Italian in two. But Nello would not let it come to that. He kept his pistol well levelled at the stranger’s head. The least movement and he would fire.
“Save me for her sake, for the sake of the Virgin,” pleaded the man in despairing accents. “You are not an outlaw like me; you have not been through what I have. I trust you, for a man who says his prayers with the devotion you do—I watched you behind the trees—would never betray his hunted fellow-creatures.”
And then a light came suddenly to Corsini, standing there, armed with that eloquent pistol.
“You speak of yourself as an outlaw. I have just come from the little village yonder, which is in a state of commotion with mounted soldiers. They are looking for an outlaw, a convict escaped from the mines of Siberia. I am right in saying that you are ‘Ivan the Cuckoo.’ Where is your band of assassins and robbers who prey upon the travellers and peasants?”
The miserable man fell at his feet. Nello, in the dim light, saw that his face had gone livid.
“You have guessed, Monsieur. It is true. I am Ivan the outlaw. You cannot appreciate the misery that drove me to this.”
In a dim sort of way Nello understood. This man was an outlaw. Was it not just a chance that he was not one himself? Many a night, as he had played in the cold streets for a few miserable pence, he had passed the flaring restaurants, the well-lighted shops, their windows full of precious things to be coveted by the poor and hungry. He could not deny that many a time he had railed at the world’s injustice, that criminal thoughts had surged through his half-maddened brain.