h pain--not like the sunshine of her girlhood, in which
middle-aged Giorgio had wooed her gravely and passionately on the shores
of the gulf of Spezzia.

"You go in at once, Giorgio," she directed. "One would think you do not
wish to have any pity on me--with four Signori Inglesi staying in the
house." "_Va bene, va bene_," Giorgio would mutter. He obeyed. The Signori
Inglesi would require their midday meal presently. He had been one
of the immortal and invincible band of liberators who had made the
mercenaries of tyranny fly like chaff before a hurricane, "_un uragano
terribile_." But that was before he was married and had children; and
before tyranny had reared its head again amongst the traitors who had
imprisoned Garibaldi, his hero.

There were three doors in the front of the house, and each afternoon the
Garibaldino could be seen at one or another of them with his big bush of
white hair, his arms folded, his legs crossed, leaning back his leonine
head against the side, and looking up the wooded slopes of the foothills
at the snowy dome of Higuerota. The front of his house threw off a black
long rectangle of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart track.
Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, the harbour branch
railway, laid out temporarily on the level of the plain, curved away its
shining parallel ribbons on a belt of scorched and withered grass within
sixty yards of the end of the house. In the evening the empty material
trains of flat cars circled round the dark green grove of Sulaco,
and ran, undulating slightly with white jets of steam, over the plain
towards the Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by the
harbour. The Italian drivers saluted him from the foot-plate with raised
hand, while the negro brakesmen sat carelessly on the brakes, looking
straight forward, with the rims of their big hats flapping in the wind.
In return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the head, without
unfolding his arms.

On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his chest.
His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the threshold; he
did not look up once at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity
seemed to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes examined the
plain curiously. Tall trails of dust subsided here and there. In
a speckless sky the sun hung clear and blinding. Knots of men ran
headlong; others made a stand; and the irregular rattle of firea