Then he took Michel's arm, and walked with him and the Piccinino to a more extensive excavation a hundred yards away, which was occupied as a dwelling by a wretchedly destitute family. In the man who joined them there a few moments later, Michel might have recognized one of the peasants who were on friendly terms with the brigands, but Michel knew nothing of what was going on, and recognized nobody. The peasant assisted the monk to dress the Piccinino's wound, which was deep and beginning to cause him much pain, so much that it required all his strength of will to conceal it. Fra Angelo was a better surgeon than most of his countrymen who held diplomas. He performed a painful but rapid operation on the Piccinino, and extracted the bullet. The patient did not utter a groan, and Michel did not recover consciousness of his surroundings until he saw him turn pale and grind his teeth. "Are you going to die too, brother?" he said, taking his clenched hand. "Would to God that I had died instead of your friend!" Carmelo replied, in an outburst of fierce anger with himself. "I should no longer suffer, and I should be mourned; whereas now I shall suffer all my life and nobody will mourn for me!" "Is this your gratitude for your brother's self-sacrificing devotion, my friend?" said the monk, throwing the bullet on the ground. "Brother," rejoined the Piccinino, putting Michel's hand to his lips, "you did not do it from affection for me, I know; you did it for your own honor. But you are revenged for my hatred; for you continue to hate me, and I am doomed to love you!" Two tears rolled down the brigand's pale cheeks. Were they a manifestation of genuine emotion, or were they caused by the nervous reaction that follows the violent strain of physical suffering? Doubtless they were due in some measure to both causes. The peasant suggested a strange remedy, which Fra Angelo accepted with great eagerness: the application of a bituminous ooze which was found at the bottom of a spring of brackish water heavily charged with sulphur. The country people collect it and keep it in earthen jars to use in making poultices; it is their panacea. Fra Angelo made a poultice of it and placed it on the brigand's wound; then, having washed him and covered him with some wretched clothes which they bought from the peasant; having also washed off the blood with which Michel and himself were covered, he gave his companions a few swallows of wine, placed Carmelo on their host's mule, gave the man a round sum in gold, to prove to him that there were advantages in serving the good cause, and left him, having first made him swear that he would go the following night and get Magnani's body, and bury it with as much respect as if it were his own son's. "My own son!" said the peasant in a hollow voice: "do you mean the one the Swiss killed last year?"