sketch-book and overtaken my
escort, with whom I rode triumphantly back into Ascoli, where my absence
had been the cause of much anxiety and my fate was even then being
eagerly discussed. My friends with whom I usually sat round the
chemist's door were much exercised by the reserve which I manifested in
reply to the fire of cross-examination to which I was subjected for the
next few days; and English eccentricity, which was proverbial even in
this secluded town, received a fresh illustration in the light and airy
manner with which I treated a capture and escape from brigands, which
I regarded with such indifference that I could not be induced even to
condescend to details. "It was a mere scuffle; there were only four;
and, being an Englishman, I polished them all off with the 'box,'"
and I closed my fist and struck a scientific attitude of self-defence,
branching off into a learned disquisition on the pugilistic art, which
filled my hearers with respect and amazement. From this time forward the
sentiment with which I regarded my air-gun underwent a change. When a
friend had made me a present of it a year before I regarded it in the
light of a toy and rather resented the gift as too juvenile. "I wonder
he did not give me a kite or a hoop," I mentally reflected. Then I
had found it useful among Italians, who are a trifling people and like
playthings; but now that it had saved my life and sent a bullet through
a man's heart, I no longer entertained the same feeling of contempt
for it. Not again would I make light of it--this potent engine of
destruction which had procured me the character of being a magician. I
would hide it from human gaze and cherish it as a sort of fetich. So I
bought a walking-stick and an umbrella, and strapped it up with them,
wrapped in my plaid; and when, shortly after, an unexpected remittance
from an aunt supplied me with money enough to buy a horse from one of
the officers of my friend's regiment, which soon after arrived, and I
accepted their invitation to accompany them on their brigand-hunting
expeditions, not one of them knew that I had such a weapon as an air-gun
in my possession.

Our _modus operandi_ on these occasions was as follows: On receiving
information from some proprietor that the brigands were threatening his
property,--it was impossible to get intelligence from the peasantry,
for they were all in league with the brigands; indeed, they all took a
holiday from regular work and jo