He had often seen her, for her uncles were favourites with him; men who understood that he was in his place for his own interests, not for those of Le Selve, or of the owners of Le Selve. “Between the wise a wink suffices,” says an Italian proverb; and that wink had been often exchanged betwixt him and Alcide and Lucio. The coldness with which she had always treated him, when any other young woman between the Apennines and the Liris was but too proud of his notice, had attracted him all the more by its rarity and offence, for _il bel Faustone_ was accustomed to easy conquests. He was disconcerted now by what she said to him; for he knew that it was true. He was saved from reply by a great clamour which uprose from the throats of all the farm servants and others present; for whenever yet since the world began would people of their kind admit that any compensation, however generous and just, could make amends for the loss of old and dear abuses enjoyed with impunity, and turned to profit unexamined? Such abuse is the very marrow of their bones, the supreme joy of their souls; no bird which is brought has the flavour of the bird which is poached; no oaken log which is given burns so boisterously and so warmly as the one which is hewn by stealth and stolen. In speaking as she did Muriella aroused against her all the wrath of her own class; she seemed to them an apostate allied with the enemy. Time, temperament, inclination, habit, were all arrayed against her; the dearest privilege of all who heard her was to pilfer and to plunder, a privilege confirmed by centuries of usage; who was she, forest bred if not forest born, to take the part of one who suppressed the time-honoured thefts of foresters? _L’uso fa legge_ in this country more than in all others. Who was she to set herself up against that time-honoured axiom? The hubbub was so great, the roar of crossing voices, and the scream of angry denunciation, were so loud that Caterina rapped sharply on the table with her horn-handled carving knife. “Silence, children! Who dares speak here? Quiet! Quiet at once, or no wine will be drunk by anyone to-morrow.” Under so dire a threat, which they knew would be inexorably carried out if they disobeyed her, the men and women held their peace, and hung their heads sheepishly. Even the mendicant-friars were mute. “Come, wenches,” said Caterina, and as she rose all the other women rose also and left the kitchen in her train, Muriella with them. Against the will of the Massaja there is no appeal in the household which she rules. When she had sent the servants to their several evening tasks, Caterina took the girl to her own room, and showed her a little closet out of it where she was to sleep. “You are plunging your arm into a hornet’s nest,” she said, with not unkind severity. “The woodlanders will never suffer you to go preaching against them and their rights.”