voice of thunder; "fall in, and be
silent: the fellow who utters a word I 'll put a bullet through."

If the first sight of the little fellow thus insolently issuing his
orders might have inspired laughter, his fierce look, his flashing
eye, his revolver in hand, and his coat blazing with orders, speedily
overcame such a sentiment, and the disorderly rabble seemed actually
stunned into deference before him.

"What!" cried he, "are you deserters? Is it with an enemy in front that
I find you here? Is it thus that you show these civilians what stuff
soldiers are made of?" There was not a degrading epithet, not a word of
infamous reproach, he did not hurl at them. They were Vili! Birbanti!

Ladri! Malandrini! Codardi! They had dishonored their fathers and
mothers, and wives and sweethearts. They had degraded the honor of the
soldier, and the Virgin herself was ashamed of them. "Who laughs there?
Let him come out to the front and laugh here!" cried he. And now, though
a low murmur little indicative of mirth ran through the crowd, strange
to say, the men began to slink away, at first one by one, then in groups
and parties, so that in very few minutes the piazza was deserted,
save by a few of the townsfolk, who stood there half terrified, half
fascinated, by the daring insolence of this diminutive hero.

Though his passion seemed almost choking him, he went on with a
wonderful fluency to abuse the whole nation. They were brigands
for three centuries, and brigands they would be for thirty more, if
Providence would not send an earthquake to swallow them up, and rid the
world of such rascals. He scoffed at them, he jeered them; he told them
that the few Sicilians that followed Garibaldi would make slaves of the
whole kingdom, taking from the degenerate cowards of Calabria wives,
daughters, home, and households; and it was only when the last straggler
shuffled slowly away, and he stood alone in the square, that he would
consent to re-enter the carriage and pursue his journey.

"I 'll know every face amongst them if I meet them again," said he to
Skeffy, "and it will be an evil day for the scoundrels when that time
comes." His wrath continued during the entire stage, and never flagged
in its violence till they reached a cluster of poor cabins, around which
a guard of soldiers was stationed. Here they were refused a further
passage, since at Mauro, three miles further on, Melani, with a force
of three thousand men and some guns