After the pleasure of trapping and shooting, in and out of season, the main and favourite diversion of the squatters of Le Selve was smuggling; the smuggling of all kinds of game netted out of season, of ingeniously-hidden wines, carried across the woods from the Este districts to the very gates of Rome, or as far as Nepi and Corneto; of charcoal burned by themselves from the stolen wood of the violated groves around them, and taken in sacks under the walls of villages and little towns; even of the very pips of the pine-cones baked in their ovens they made traffic, and carried them away and sold them for what they could get; they took everything across the forest by night, with their poor starved cows or buffaloes harnessed to the wagons; and it was not only the small gains which were dear to them but the pleasure in the contraband-dealing, and the relish of cheating the _gabellotti_ at the gates of the capital itself. More than one of them had stabbed a guard and taken to the hills, where such a fugitive could no more be traced than if he were an adder under a pile of stones. The ground was honeycombed with subterranean places, in the past Etruscan sepulchres, now the storehouses of these men, their entrances known to them alone, and their retreat safe from discovery. “Every man may be betrayed, for Christo was,” said Alcide once; “but an outlaw is almost always safe and welcome.” It was quite true. There is an universal feeling amongst the people of fraternal unison against the law and the fiscal agents; and the little children will carry bread and wine to such a fugitive from justice and never speak, or tell where they have found him. Whatever feud there might be between the families in other matters, they are of one accord, of strict and mutual support concerning their enterprises in smuggling and in brigandage. “This contraband carrying is an organised conspiracy,” said Cyrille to the under-steward, when he had become aware of the practice. “No doubt,” said Fausto, with a gesture of indifference. “And you have never attempted to put it down?” “No; before me nobody ever did. Why should I?” “Do you think it right?” Fausto shrugged his shoulders. “I do not say whether it is right or it is wrong. It has always been done. The people would not like it meddled with, be sure. They regard it as one of their rights.” “But it is a bad, dangerous, and dishonest life.” “They do not see it so. It pleases them.” “And you connive at it?” “It hurts nobody,” said Fausto sullenly. “There is no thief so big as the Revenue.”