seizure of their own river, and to whom you offer an unwholesome and indoor labour as compensation for the ruin of their lives?  Now, they are poor indeed, but they are contented; they keep body and soul together, they live on their natal soil, they live as their fathers lived.  Is it just, is it right, is it wise to turn these people into disaffection and despair by an act of tyranny and spoilation through which the only gainers will be foreign speculators abroad and at home the gamblers of the Bourses?  Sir, I do not believe that the world holds people more patient, more long-suffering, more pacific under dire provocation, or more willing to subsist on the poorest and hardest conditions than Italians are; is it right or just or wise to take advantage of that national resignation to take from half a province the natural aid and the natural beauty with which God Himself has dowered it in the gift of the mountainborn stream?  You are powerful, sir, you have the ear of the Government; you will not try to stop this infamous theft of the Edera water whilst there is still time?”

Don Silverio spoke with that eloquence and with that melody of voice which few could bear unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard heart of the official who heard him were for one brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song sung by some great tenor.

But that moment was very brief.  Over the face of Giovacchino Gallo a look passed at once brutal and suspicious.  “Curse this priest!” he thought; “he will give us trouble.”

He rose, stiff, cold, pompous, with a frigid smile on his red, full, bon viveur’s lips.

“If you imagine that I should venture to attack, or even presume to criticise, a matter which the Most Honourable the Minister of Agriculture has in his wisdom approved and ratified, you must have a strange conception of my fitness for my functions.  As regards yourself, Reverend Sir, I regret that you appear to forget that the chief duty of your sacred office is to inculcate to your flock unquestioning submission to Governmental decrees.”

“Is that your Excellency’s last word?”

“It is my first, and my last, word.”

Don Silverio bowed low.

“You may regret it, sir,” he said simply, and left the writing-table and crossed the room.  But as he approached the door the Prefect, still standing, said, “Wait!”

Gallo opened two or three drawers in his table, searched for some papers, looked over them, leaving the priest always standing between him and the door.  Don Silverio was erect; his tall frail form had a great majesty in it; his pallid features were stern.

“Return a moment,” said Gallo.

“I can hear your Excellency where I am,” replied Don Silverio, and did not stir.

“I have here reports from certain of my agents,” said Gallo, fingering his various papers, “that there is and has been for some time a subversive movement amongst the sparse population of the Valdedera.”