"Yes, I hear!" replied the agonized Goffoni; "I know! a highway robbery! I did it! I did it!" "Mark that, gentlemen!" said the drover to the soldiers. "The fellow confesses he did it; mark that!" "Oh, you did it, did you?" said the soldier. "Come, then, you must go with us. So quick! stir yourself, I say." And again the regulation-boot hammered away at the sides of the unfortunate Goffoni. "Do let me die here, _do_!" implored the moribund Signor G. "Die here!" returned the man of war. "No, no! you'll have to die in a rather more public place than this, I'm thinking. But come! we're not going to be played the fool with in this manner. Get up, I tell you once more!" So saying, the soldier took the prostrate Signor by the collar and set him on his legs. "Oh! why _wont_ you let me be quiet?" groaned Goffoni; "I've taken poison—indeed I have!" "Taken poison!" the soldier exclaimed, with a sneer; "taken a purse, you mean, and it will prove just as fatal to you, I'll be sworn. However, we're not to be gulled by any such flams, don't think it. So let's see what you've got in your pockets. Oh! a pair of diamond earrings, eh? Very pretty indeed! the produce of some other robbery, no doubt! A gold watch, and ditto snuff-box! Equally honestly come by, I'll wager. A good stroke of business you've been doing this evening, my man! And here's a silk purse, with lots of money in it; and here's a leathern one without a soldo." "The leathern one's mine!" cried the drover; "but it was full when the scoundrel took it from me." "Of course it was! and the rogue's emptied the contents of the one into the other. But that don't matter—the mere finding of the purse upon him is quite enough to take the breath out of his body. So, come! give over this shamming," continued the soldier, violently shaking the drowsy Signor, who was again nodding under the somnorific effects of the laudanum. "We're too old birds to be caught by such chaff as this, I can tell you. So on to prison with you—get on." Whereupon two of the soldiers placed themselves, one on either side of the ill-fated Goffoni, and commenced dragging him by the collar to the Casa di Correzione, while the two others attended him in the rear, and by the aid of their bayonets, applied to that part of his person where a gentleman's honour is supposed to reside, kept continually dissipating the incipient slumbers of the somnolent Signor, and goading him like an untractable donkey on to the nearest house of entertainment for brigands and patriots. * * * * *