The owl and the raven screamed upon the tower; they sang the vocero--the dirge for the dead. A grenadier was walking up and down, with his musket on his shoulder, not far off. No wonder that he shuddered to his inmost marrow, and buried his face in his mantle, as he moved slowly up and down. Maria had wrapped herself in the black faldetta, that her form might be the less distinct in the darkness of the night. She breathed a prayer to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of Sorrows, that she would help her, and then she walked swiftly to the scaffold. It was the seventh body--she loosed Bernardo; her heart, and a faint gleam from his dead face, told her that it was he, even in the dark night. Maria took the dead man in her arms, upon her shoulder. She had become strong, as if with the strength of a man. She bore the corpse into the Church of St. Francis. There she sat down exhausted, on the steps of an altar, over which the lamp of the Mother of God was burning. The dead Bernardo lay upon her knees, as the dead Christ once lay upon the knees of Mary. In the south they call this group Pietà. Not a sound in the church. The lamp glimmers above the altar. Outside, a gust of wind that whistles by. Maria rose. She let the dead Bernardo gently down upon the steps of the altar. She went to the spot where the grave of Bernardo's parents lay. She opened the grave. Then she took up the dead body. She kissed him, and lowered him into the grave, and again shut it. Maria knelt long before the Mother of God, and prayed that Bernardo's soul might have peace in heaven; and then she went silently away to her house, and to her chamber. When morning broke, Bernardo's corpse was missing from among the dead bodies before the convent. The news flew through the village, and the soldiers drummed alarm. It was not doubted that the Leccia family had removed their kinsman during the night from the scaffold; and instantly their house was forced, its inmates taken prisoners, and thrown chained into a jail. Guilty of capital crime, according to the law that had been proclaimed, they were to suffer the penalty, although they denied the deed. Maria Gentili heard in her chamber what had happened. Without saying a word, she hastened to the house of the Count de Vaux, who had come to Oletta. She threw herself at his feet, and begged the liberation of the prisoners. She confessed that it was she who had done that of which they were supposed to be guilty. "I have buried my betrothed," said she; "death is my due, here is my head; but restore their freedom to those that suffer innocently."