nni leave off pinching Roberto, and commenced.

"The government hates the banditti," began Lisetta, wisely, "and indeed
it should," and she looked gravely at Giovanni, "for they are very wild
men, who live reckless bad lives, and steal, and are quite dreadful. But
we poor, we do not hate them as the government does, because they are
good to us, and do not war with us, and sometimes those we love join
them--a brother or a cousin, perhaps,"--and Lisetta's black eyes filled,
and her lip quivered. "As for the Madre, she loved them all, and said
they were all relations.

"At this time of which I speak, the soldiers were chasing and hunting
the banditti very hard, and they had been compelled to hide for their
lives up among the mountains. There they would have died, had it not
been for the peasants, who supplied them with food. Small parties of the
bandits would come out for it. There were two very powerful men of the
banditti, who were skirmishing about in this way, not far from the
Madre Ilkana's, when they saw two soldiers, in advance of their company,
approaching them. The banditti were not afraid for themselves, but they
wanted to get back to their friends with the bread and meat, so instead
of fighting, they fled to the Madre. She took them in, and bade them be
sure they were safe with her. But the soldiers had caught sight of them,
and they stopped at every house and enquired and searched for them; and
so, soon they came to the Madre Ilkana's. They charged her in the name
of the government to give up the banditti in her house. The Madre kept
on with her knitting, and told them there were only her two sons in the
house, and mothers never gave up their sons to any one.

"'Ha!' laughed one of the soldiers,' mothers must give up their children
to King Death, and it is He who wants your bad boys.' Upon which, the
Madre arose and cursed them. Curses are common with us, Signorina, but
not La Madre's curses. She talked of their mothers to them, and of their
sons, and of the Holy Virgin and child, and she cursed them in the name
of all these, if they dared steal her children from her. They should
take them over her old dead body, she swore, though her knitting-needles
and her eyes were her only weapons, and then she turned her eyes full
upon them, with the evil spirit leering and laughing out of them, and
the soldiers, one of whom was an officer, fell on their knees and shook
like leaves, and prayed her to forgive them; saying