any crime, and
his gratitude was in proportion.

"I will testify more strongly to thy merit, Maso, in face of this or any
tribunal;" he said, grasping the hand of the Italian. "One who showed so
much bravery and so strong love for his fellows, would be little likely to
take life clandestinely and like a coward. Thou mayest count on my
testimony in this strait--if thou art guilty of this crime, who can hope
to be innocent?"

Maso returned the friendly grasp till their fingers seemed to grow into
each other. His eye, too, showed he was not without wholesome native
sympathies, though education and his habits might have warped them from
their true direction. A tear, in spite of his effort to suppress the
weakness started from its fountain, rolling down his sunburnt cheek like a
solitary rivulet trickling through a barren and rugged waste.

"This is frank, and as becomes a soldier, Signore," he said, "and I
receive it as it is given, in kindness and love. But we will not lay more
stress upon the affair of the lake than it deserves. This keen-sighted
chatelain need not be told that I could not be of use in saving your
lives, without saving my own; and, unless I much mistake the meaning of
his eye, he is about to say that we are fashioned like this wild country
in which chance has brought us together, with our spots of generous
fertility mingled with much unfruitful rock, and that he who does a good
act to-day may forget himself by doing an evil turn to-morrow."

"Thou givest reason to all who hear thee to mourn that thy career has not
been more profitable to thyself and the public," answered the judge; "one
who can reason so-well, and who hath this clear insight into his own
disposition, must err less from ignorance than wantonness!"

"There you do me injustice, Signor Castellano, and the laws more credit
than they deserve. I shall not deny that justice--or what is called
justice--and I have some acquaintance. I have been the tenant of many
prisons before this which has been furnished by the holy canons, and I
have seen every stage of the rogue's progress, from him who is still
startled by his first crime, dreaming heavy dreams, and fancying each
stone of his cell has an eye to reproach him, to him who no sooner does a
wrong than it is forgotten in the wish to find the means of committing
another; and I call Heaven as a witness, that more is done to help along
the scholar in his study of vice, by those who are styled the