"Well," said the widow, not changing her voice, but with some animation on her spectral countenance, "he was a robber. For ten years he was a robber--yes, ten. He took to the country a few months after our wedding. I used to go and visit him up there on the mountain of Gennargentu. He hunted eagles and vultures and strayed sheep. Every time I went to see him we used to roast a good haunch of mutton. We slept out of doors, in the wind, on the tops of the mountains. We covered ourselves with that cloak, and my husband's hands were always burning even when it snowed. He kept company with----" "With whom?" asked Olì, forgetting her own troubles. The child was listening too, his great ears pricked till he seemed a hare listening to the voice of a distant fox. "Oh, well, with other robbers. They were all most intelligent men, sharp, active, ready for anything, ready especially for death. Do you suppose brigands are bad folk? You are wrong, my dear sister. They are men who live by their wits, that's all. My husband used to say, 'In the old days men made war on each other; that's over now, but they still need to fight. They organize thefts, highway robberies, _bardanas_,[6] not to do harm, but to make use of their ability and strength.'" "A fine sort of ability!" said Olì; "why don't they knock their heads against a wall if they've nothing to do?" "You don't understand, my daughter," said the widow, proud and sad; "it's all a matter of Fate. If you like, I will tell you how my husband made himself a brigand." She said "made himself a brigand" with great dignity. "Yes, tell me," answered Olì, shuddering a little. The shadows had grown denser; the wind howled with a continuous thunder rumble; they seemed in a hurricane-pervaded forest. The words, the cadaverous face of the woman in that black surrounding, now and then momently illuminated by a flash of livid flame, excited Olì to a childish voluptuousness of terror. She seemed involved in one of those fearful legends which Anania used to relate for her little brothers; and she herself, she with her infinite wretchedness, was a part of the hideous story. The widow went on--