“If you find Uncle John before morning I will give you a thousand lira additional,” promised Beth.

“We will search faithfully,” replied her captain, “but the signorina must not be disappointed if the lawless ones evade us.  They have a way of hiding close in the caves, where none may find them.  It is regrettable, very; but it is so.”

Then he followed his men to the mountains, and as the last glimmer from his lantern died away the girl sighed heavily and returned alone through the deserted streets to the hotel.

Clouds hid the moon and the night was black and forbidding; but it did not occur to her to be afraid.

CHAPTER XV

DAYS OF ANXIETY

Uncle John’s nieces passed a miserable night.  Patsy stole into his room and prayed fervently beside his bed that her dear uncle might be preserved and restored to them in health and safety.  Beth, meantime, paced the room she shared with Patsy with knitted brows and flashing eyes, the flush in her cheeks growing deeper as her anger increased.  An ungovernable temper was the girl’s worst failing; the abductors of her uncle were arousing in her the most violent passions of which she was capable, and might lead her to adopt desperate measures.  She was only a country girl, and little experienced in life, yet Beth might be expected to undertake extraordinary things if, as she expressed it, if she “got good and mad!”

No sound was heard during the night from the room occupied by Louise, but the morning disclosed a white, drawn face and reddened eyelids as proof that she had rested as little as her cousins.

Yet, singularly enough, Louise was the most composed of the three when they gathered in the little sitting room at daybreak, and tried earnestly to cheer the spirits of her cousins.  Louise never conveyed the impression of being especially sincere, but the pleasant words and manners she habitually assumed rendered her an agreeable companion, and this faculty of masking her real feelings now stood her in good stead and served to relieve the weight of anxiety that oppressed them all.

Frascatti came limping back with his tired followers in the early dawn, and reported that no trace of the missing man had been observed.  There were no brigands and no Mafia; on that point all his fellow townsmen agreed with him fully.  But it was barely possible some lawless ones who were all unknown to the honest Taorminians had made the rich American a prisoner.

Il Duca?  Oh, no, signorini!  A thousand times, no.  Il Duca was queer and unsociable, but not lawless.  He was of noble family and a native of the district.  It would be very wrong and foolish to question Il Duca’s integrity.

With this assertion Frascatti went to bed.  He had not shirked the search, because he was paid for it, and he and his men had tramped the mountains faithfully all night, well knowing it would result in nothing but earning their money.