o the
soldiers.

Obed then set out for Rome, and, after some stay, came on to
Florence.

Such was the substance of his story.

CHAPTER LXII.

THE VILLA.

There were many things in Obed Chute's narration which affected Lord
Chetwynde profoundly. The story of that adventure in the Pontine
Marshses had an interest for him which was greater than any that
might be created by the magnificent prowess and indomitable pluck
that had been exhibited on that occasion by the modest narrator.
Beneath the careless and offhand recital of Obed Lord Chetwynde was
able to perceive the full extent of the danger to which he had been
exposed, and from which his own cool courage had saved him. An
ordinary man, under such circumstances, would have basely yielded;
or, if the presence of his family had inspired him with unusual
courage, the courage would have been at best a sort of frenzy, at the
impulse of which he might have devoted his own life to the love which
he had for his family, and thrown that life away without saving them.
But in Obed's quiet and unpretending narrative he recognized the
presence of a heroic soul; one which in the midst of the most
chivalrous, the most absolute, and the most devotion--in the midst of
the most utter abnegation of self--could still maintain the serenest
calm and the most complete presence of mind in the face of awful
danger. Every point in that story produced an effect on the mind of
the listener, and roused his fullest sympathy. He had before his eyes
that memorable scene: Obed watching and smoking on his bed by the
side of the door--the family sleeping peacefully in the ajoining
room--the sound of footsteps, of violent knockings, of furious
entrance, or wild and lawless mirth. He imagined the flight of the
old man and his wife, who in terror, or perhaps through cunning and
treachery, gave up their hotel and their guests to the fury of the
brigands. He brought before his mind that long time of watchful
waiting when Obed lay quietly yet vigilantly reclining on the bed,
with his pipe in his mouth and his pistol in his pocket, listening to
the sounds below, to see what they might foreshadow; whether they
told of peace or of war, whether they announced the calm of a quiet
night or the terrors of an assault made by fiends--by those Italian
brigands whose name has become a horror, whose tendererst mercies are
pitiless cruelty, and to fall into the hands of whom is the direst
fate that man o