and higher, and become revolt and rescue had not the military force been strong, and the mounted guards many.
All the multitude was awed and chilled. A heavy sense of the power of the law, of a law which they had no sympathy for, and which they feared with the angry fear of impatient resentment, was weighty upon them, like a sheet of lead.
Many of them were sensible of more or less close abetting of the hill thieves, more or less passive or active interest in the lawless acts of the band of Santa Fiora. Many a tradesman there had never sought too curiously to know how the black-browed seller of rich brocades or costly jewellery had come by them, or how foreign gold had found its way to sunburnt, powder-blackened hands.
Even those to whom the great Saturnino was but a name, the youngsters come down for work from the high villages of the Carrarese and Lucchese ranges, were dumbfounded and regretful. Saturnino had always been the friend of the forester and the ploughman and the shepherd; the lads felt that when no more tales could be told of the king of Maremma, savour would be gone out of the goatsflesh roasted in the charcoal in the
