t its hour of rest.

The table still stood unused. The rose-leaves had fallen in a little
crimson pool upon it. Bruno sat down on the bench by the door, not
having broken his fast.

"They are keeping him in the town," he thought. "He will come later."

He sat still a few moments, but he did not eat.

In a little while he heard a step on the dead winter leaves and tufts of
rosemary. He sprang erect; his eyes brightened; his face changed. He
went forward eagerly:

"Signa!--my dear!--at last!"

He only saw under the leafless maples and brown vine tendrils a young
man that he had never seen, who stopped before him breathing quickly
from the steepness of the ascent.

"I was to bring this to you," he said, holding out a long gun in its
case. "And to tell you that he, the youth they all talk of--Signa--went
back to Rome this morning; had no time to come, but sends you this, with
his dear love and greeting, and will write from Rome to-night. Ah, Lord!
There was such fuss with him in the city. He was taken to the foreign
princes, and then the people!--if you had heard them!--all the street
rang with the cheering. This morning he could hardly get away for all
the crowd there was. I am only a messenger. I should be glad of wine.
Your hill is steep."

Bruno took the gun from him, and put out a flask of his own wine on the
threshold; then shut close the door.

It was such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such in
gunsmiths' windows and the halls of noblemen: a breech-loader, of
foreign make, beautifully mounted and inlaid with silver.

He sat still a little while, the gun lying on his knees; there was a
great darkness on his face. Then he gripped it in both hands, the butt
in one, the barrel in the other, and dashed the centre of it down across
the round of his great grindstone.

The blow was so violent, the wood of the weapon snapped with it across
the middle, the shining metal loosened from its hold. He struck it
again, and again, and again; until all the polished walnut was flying in
splinters, and the plates of silver, bent and twisted, falling at his
feet; the finely tempered steel of the long barrel alone was whole.

He went into his woodshed, and brought out branches of acacia brambles,
and dry boughs of pine, and logs of oak; dragging them forth with fury.
He piled them in the empty yawning space of the black hearth, and built
them one on another in a pile; and struck a match and fired them,