“Who art thou?” demanded one, who had assumed the character of a leader.  “If men of the Lagunes and Christians, join your friends, and away with us to St. Mark for justice!”

“What means this tumult?” asked Don Camillo, whose dress effectually concealed his rank, a disguise that he completed by adopting the Venetian dialect.  “Why are you here in these numbers, friends?”

“Behold!”

Don Camillo turned, and he beheld the withered features and glaring eyes of old Antonio, fixed in death.  The explanation was made by a hundred voices, accompanied by oaths so bitter, and denunciations so deep, that had not Don Camillo been prepared by the tale of Jacopo, he would have found great difficulty in understanding what he heard.

In dragging the Lagunes for fish, the body of Antonio had been found, and the result was, first, a consultation on the probable means of his death, and then a collection of the men of his calling, and finally the scene described.

“Giustizia!” exclaimed fifty excited voices, as the grim visage of the fisherman was held towards the light of the moon; “Giustizia in Palazzo e paue in Piazza!”

“Ask it of the Senate!” returned Jacopo, not attempting to conceal the derision of his tones.

“Thinkest thou our fellow has suffered for his boldness yesterday?”

“Stranger things have happened in Venice!”

“They forbid us to cast our nets in the Canale Orfano, lest the secrets of justice should be known, and yet they have grown bold enough to drown one of our own people in the midst of our gondolas!”

“Justice, justice!” shouted numberless hoarse throats.

“Away to St. Mark’s!  Lay the body at the feet of the Doge!  Away, brethren, Antonio’s blood is on their souls!”

Bent on a wild and undigested scheme of asserting their wrongs, the fishermen again plied their oars, and the whole fleet swept away, as if it was composed of a single mass.

The meeting, though so short, was accompanied by cries, menaces, and all those accustomed signs of rage which mark a popular tumult among those excitable people, and it had produced a sensible effect on the nerves of Annina.  Don Camillo profited by her evident terror to press his questions, for the hour no longer admitted of trifling.

The result was, that while the agitated mob swept into the mouth of the Great Canal, raising hoarse shouts, the gondola of Don Camillo Monforte glided away across the wide and tranquil surface of the Lagunes.

CHAPTER XXII.

  “A Clifford, a Clifford! we’ll follow the king and Clifford.” 
                                        Henry VI.