Anon a cry of dismay burst from the sbirri. An enormous mass became detached from the highest peak; rolling from its perpendicular front and rebounding from cliff to cliff it came thundering into the plain below, bringing with it a mighty ruin of shattered stones, dust, trees and soil, which fell like the fragments of a mountain, and with a force that shook the ground we stood on. The crash was deafening; a storm of leaves, small stones, and dust flew past us, and for a minute the air was fearfully dense, gloomy, and palpable. I reeled, and clung to the carriage-wheels for support; Bianca swooned; Gask was praying devoutly with his grenadier cap off, and the sbirri muttered their aves aloud: above us the thunder rolled on from peak to peak, and the lightning shot between them, while the air grew darker and more sulphureous. Terrified by the shaken rock and the bursting thunderbolts, our fiery horses became mad: they foamed, snorted, plunged, and kicked fire from the stones; the four that were unharnessed from the calesso broke loose and fled, at full speed, towards Seminara, pursued by the decurione and his sbirri, who were eager to save them: they were noble bays, and favourites of the duchess. Thus the sergeant and I were left alone standing by the calesso. "Ghieu, ho! ho!" cried a croaking voice in the thicket; I heard a chuckling laugh, and a figure rolled up like a ball, making a summerset over the rocks and stones, lighted close by my feet. "Buon giorno, signor capitano! he, he! ho, ho! fine evening, eh?" Like a gigantic toad, Gaspare Truffi stood before me, with his long matted hair waving over his frightful visage; his torn cassock revealing a leathern baldrick furnished with pistols, poniard, and horn. Like the very demon of the storm, he whooped and yelled. A broad-leaved hat of the largest size overshadowing his figure like an umbrella, gave a peculiarly droll effect to his aspect. "A delightful evening!" he croaked; "how does our Calabrian weather agree with your stomach, Signor Inglese? Ill, I think, to judge from that lugubrious visage of thine. Ola, Lancelloti! come hither and behold the good padre confessor who came so devoutly to worm a story out of you in the bishop’s vaults: he, he! ho, ho! Feel you how the ground shakes?" he added, stamping his shapeless feet on the quaking turf; "feel you how earth and air tremble? Ammirando! there is a rebellion in hell, for our good friend the devil is gone to the witch-tree at Benevento to-night: ha, ha!" "Beard of Mahomet!" cried a distant voice, "where are you, cursed crookback?" and at that moment I saw my friend of the vaults advancing towards us, clad in the usual brigand costume, with malice in his eye and a cocked rifle in his hand. Other figures, like dim ghosts appeared through the dark misty vapour that floated round us, and I knew that we had fallen in with a party of banditti.