Besides, all Maremma knew that it was not for the wine-carrier at all that their demi-god had been hunted down, but for a straniero, that no one cared about except the Government; a traveller that Saturnino had shot in a paroxysm of jealous rage, and who had been a person of distinction enough for the nation to which he belonged to demand that justice should be done on his assassin. The stranger had been waiting for a ransom to be sent, and had looked at the beautiful Serapia who dwelt with Saturnino too long or too boldly, and Saturnino without waste of words had blown his brains out; a rash act of violence which had become his own undoing.
And now he had been taken; taken just like any common thief who robbed an old dame of a copper coin; taken by those general foes, the soldiery, and brought down into the lower lands with his feet tied under a horse's belly, as helpless as though he were a kid in a butcher's hands. They were restless, curious, passionately eager to see and hear; but there was only one emotion amongst them—regret. A regret which was full of resentment, and sympathy, and indignation, and which would have burned fiercer
