“They are dolts, they are mules, they are swine!” said Adone.  “Nay, may the poor beasts forgive me!  The beasts cannot help themselves, but men can if they choose.”

“Humph!” said Trizio doubtfully.  “My lad, you have not seen men shot down by the hundred.  I have —­ long ago, long ago.”

“There is no chance of their being shot,” he said with contempt, almost with regret.  “All that is wanted of them are common sense, union, protestation, comprehension of their rights.”

“Aye, you all begin with that,” said the old Garabaldino.  “But, my lad, you do not end there, for it is just those things which are your right which those above you will never hear of; and then up come the cannon thundering, and when the smoke clears away there are your dead —­ and that is all you get.”

The voice of the old soldier was thin and cracked and feeble, but it had a sound in it which chilled the hot blood of his hearer.

Yet surely this was no revolutionary question, no socialistic theory, no new alarming demand; it was only a claim old as the hills, only a resolve to keep what the formation of the earth had given to this province.

As well blame a father for claiming his own child as blame him and his neighbours for claiming their own river!

They were tranquil and docile people, poor and patient, paying what they were told to pay, letting the fiscal wolf gnaw and glut as it chose unopposed, not loving their rulers indeed, but never moving or speaking against them, accepting the snarl, the worry, the theft, the greed, the malice of the State without questioning.

Were they to stand by and see their river ruined, and do nothing, as the helpless fishermen of Fuscino have accepted the ruin of their lake?

To all young men of courage and sensibility and enthusiasm the vindication of a clear right seems an act so simple that it is only through long and painful experience that they realize that there is nothing under the sun which is so hard to compass, or which is met by such strong antagonism.  To Adone, whose nature was unspoilt by modern influences, and whose world was comprised in the fields and moors around Ruscino, it seemed incredible that such a title as that of his native soil to the water of Edera could be made clear to those in power without instant ratification of it.

“Whether you do aught or naught it comes to the same thing,” said the old Garibaldino, who was wiser.  “We did much; we spent our blood like water, and what good has it been?  For one devil we drove out before our muskets, a thousand worse devils have entered since.”

“It is different,” said Adone, impatient.  “All we have to do is to keep out the stranger.  You had to drive him out.  No politics or doctrines come into our cause; all we mean, all we want, is to be left alone, to remain as we are.  That is all.  It is simple and just.”

“Aye, it is simple; aye, it is just,” said the old man; but he sucked his pipe-stem grimly:  he had never seen these arguments prosper; and in his own youth he had cherished such mistakes himself, to his own hindrance.