you to do
it. Stop a moment. You're blown. I think you gulp down your minestra too
hot; you drink beer."

"You dog the signorina! I swore to scotch you at last."

"I left Milan for the purpose--don't you see? Act fairly, my Beppo, and
let us go up to the signorina together decently."

"Ay, ay, my little reptile! You'll find no Austrians here. Cry out to
them to come to you from Baveno. If the Motterone grew just one tree!
Saints! one would serve."

"Why don't you--fool that you are, my Beppo!--pray to the saints earlier?
Trees don't grow from heaven."

"You'll be going there soon, and you'll know better about it."

"Thanks to the Virgin, then, we shall part at some time or other!"

The struggles between them continued sharply during this exchange of
intellectual shots; but hearing Ugo Corte's voice, the prisoner's
confident audacity forsook him, and he drew a long tight face like the
mask of an admonitory exclamation addressed to himself from within.

"Stand up straight!" the soldier's command was uttered.

Even Beppo was amazed to see that the man had lost the power to obey or
to speak.

Corte grasped him under the arm-pit. With the force of his huge fist he
swung him round and stretched him out at arm's length, all collar and
shanks. The man hung like a mole from the twig. Yet, while Beppo poured
out the tale of his iniquities, his eyes gave the turn of a twinkle,
showing that he could have answered one whom he did not fear. The charge
brought against him was, that for the last six months he had been
untiringly spying on the signorina.

Corte stamped his loose feet to earth, shook him and told him to walk
aloft. The flexible voluble fellow had evidently become miserably
disconcerted. He walked in trepidation, speechless, and when interrogated
on the height his eyes flew across the angry visages with dismal
uncertainty. Agostino perceived that he had undoubtedly not expected to
come among them, and forthwith began to excite Giulio and Marco to the
worst suspicions, in order to indulge his royal poetic soul with a study
of a timorous wretch pushed to anticipations of extremity.

"The execution of a spy," he preluded, "is the signal for the ringing of
joy-bells on this earth; not only because he is one of a pestiferous
excess, in point of numbers, but that he is no true son of earth. He
escaped out of hell's doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to puff
out a bad light, and send him back. Look at thi