"My lord, beware of our mutual enemy, the Baron Guelfo. My people lately intercepted a letter from him to the Cavaliere Belcastro, concerning some Buonapartist plot they were hatching. He has been enrolling an unusual number of sbirri, and reports are current that he intends to raise the standard of Joseph on this side of the Calabrian lines. And, my lord, let the excellent lady, your mother, be more wary in future, and avoid inviting to her own mansion those gamesters whom she meets at the palace of the bishop. Would to Heaven, I had never beheld the Signorina Bianca!—Pardon me, visconte.—Her beauty and innocence have awakened in my breast old feelings and long-forgotten sentiments of honour and love, which all the sins and toils of four-and-twenty years—wretched years of wandering and misery—have not been able to obliterate from the memory of the hapless, the crime-hardened, and heart-broken robber of Calabria!" He turned aside for a moment to conceal the passing emotion, which caused every muscle and feature of his handsome face to quiver perceptibly. "Gentlemen," said he, recovering, "you imagined I was completely at your mercy, yet you behaved with a noble generosity which I shall never forget. You might have proposed to slay me at that instant" (he darted a terrible glance at Andronicus), "or to deliver me up to the nearest podesta: you betrayed no intention of doing either; but, had you made the attempt, behold my prevention!" He placed to his lips a bugle of black buffalo horn, and blew a shrill signal, which made hill and valley, wood and shore, now growing dark and grim in the twilight, re-echo to the sound. It acted like the whistle of Black Roderick in the wilderness. His followers, to the number of twice five hundred men, sprang up from their concealment among the underwood, the dark green laurels, the long wavy grass, the rocks and the crumbling ruins, and crowded around us: a startling swarm of black-browed and ruffian-like fellows, all clad in the gay brigand’s garb, and well armed with the Calabrian rifle, pouch, and powder-horn; some with the spoil of the unhappy Frenchmen massacred at La Syla and the villa of Sauveria, but most of them with good British buff-belts, muskets, bayonets, and cartridge-boxes, which on our landing we had issued, perhaps rather too indiscriminately, to the peasantry. My friend and I confronted this appalling array with firmness; but old Zacheo grew pale as death: his legs tottered under him, and he sank humbly on his knees, while the memory of the fatal words by which he had urged us to despatch Francatripa, caused a cold perspiration to come over him.