"A droll country gentleman!" I exclaimed. "And he will not admit any one, say you?" "None save the accursed witches who come all the way from the peak of Fiesole to hold their Sabbath with him." "Ay! and devils from the Val di Demona, to bring distempers on our blessed infants!" cried another hag, starting up from behind the fountain, where she had shrunk down to conceal the scantiness of her attire, which consisted only of a red sottana, or coarse petticoat, and leather sandals; "and to blast our crops and herds, and make the fiends who dwell in the bowels of the mountains rend the solid earth, and shake our huts to pieces." "Madonna! speak lower! he is told whatever is said of him by the sybil of Norcia, who made him proof against fire and steel and water." "I care not. I am alone in the world now: my husband died on Regnier’s gibbet at Monteleone, and my sons have perished fighting under the chiefs of the Masse, Gésu Cristo! I am old, lonely, and very miserable!" "Proof against steel did you say, signora?" said I, addressing the first gossip; "we may test that, if he plays any of his pranks with us." "Signor, heard you ever such stuff?" exclaimed Castelermo, while our horses drank of the well, and we enjoyed a hearty laugh at the excessive credulity of the Calabrians; to whose wild superstitions, I was by that time no stranger. "Old gossips," he continued, putting some silver into their attenuated hands to quicken their apprehension: "for what reason does this terrible Feudatory keep garrison so closely? Nay, speak one at a time, but as quickly as you please: our time is short." "You must have come from a distant country, illustrissimi signori, that you have not heard of the poor Cavalieressa Belcastro," said one of the old women, taking her jar from her head, on which she had poised it, and replacing it on the margin of the well, to point the periods with her fingers while speaking. "There is not a child on this side of La Syla, but knows her story. Some people say her husband stole her from a convent; others that she left a noble signor whom she loved better, and married the Cavaliere Belcastro for the sake of his rank." "His rank!" reiterated Marco contemptuously, his brows contracting: "Yet, I may mistake—proceed." "After marriage came repentance, and the Signor Belcastro was tormented by jealousy; believing that a woman who was false to another could never be very true to himself. And truly he had proof of her light carriage with a handsome young captain, who was carried away to the Val di Demona by those imps who are always at the signor’s elbow awaiting his commands. Since then he has kept the poor lady locked up in a dreary chamber of the Villa, from which he brings her forth but once a week to go to mass on horseback; and she is so strictly watched that, notwithstanding three attempts made by the brave capobandito, Scarolla, she yet remains a captive."