We supped heartily. The wine was excellent: and if Francatripa came by it lightly, he did not spare it on his guests. The flasks of red and white capri were numerous and potent enough; but when I remembered the unhappy proprietor, whom we had found weltering in blood by the wayside, it was not without considerable compunction that I regaled on the contents of his plundered hamper. However, the affair lay between Francatripa and his conscience. Castelermo and I soon fell asleep, under a sheltered part of the ruins which had witnessed the midnight carousal. When we awoke, the morning sun had risen far above the hills of Maida; our horses with our arms and valises, all in perfect order, stood picqueted beside us: but our late host and his followers had departed, leaving no trace behind them, save the well-picked venison bones, and the ashes of the fire which had cooked it. My mouth was still painful, and a little swollen by the blow from the hunchback: whom I hoped to repay at a future time; but I sprang gaily up to rub down Cartouche with a tuft of dried grass, and shook off the dreams and odd fancies which had floated through my brain: caused, doubtless, by the Capri wine, and the stories related by Francatripa of his mountain friends. My ears yet rang with the exploits of the Abbot Proni, who drove the French from Abruzzi; of Frà Diavolo, the cruel and vindictive bandit of Itri; of the miller of Sora, and Benedetto Mangone, who was so savagely executed at Naples by being beaten to death with hammers. Mammone of Sora was no ordinary bandit, but a fiend in human shape, out-Heroding in cruelty all the monsters of romance: he could boast of having slain with his own hand four hundred fellow-beings; he never dined without having "a bleeding human head placed on the table," and in his mildest mood is said to have drunk human blood "gushing from his victims." These, and such as these, were the brigand leaders of Italy, and the terror of France, before the merciless General Manhes—"the man of iron"—brought the Calabrian war of extermination to a close, by almost depopulating the country. *CHAPTER III.* *A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.*