“Perhaps as old as you, signorina, although I am so much smaller.  I shall be fifteen in a month.”

“So old!”

Tato laughed merrily.

“Ah, you might well say ‘so young,’ amico mia!  To be grown up is much nicer; do you not think so?  And then I shall not look such a baby as now, and have people scold me when I get in the way, as they do little bambini.”

“But when you are grown you cannot wear boys’ clothing, either.”

Tato sighed.

“We have a saying in Sicily that ‘each year has its sunshine and rain,’ which means its sorrow and its joy,” she answered.  “Perhaps I sometimes think more of the tears than of the laughter, although I know that is wrong.  Not always shall I be a mountaineer, and then the soft dresses of the young girls shall be my portion.  Will I like them better?  I do not know.  But I must go now, instead of chattering here.  Farewell, signorini, until to-morrow.”

“Will you not remain with us?”

“Oh, no; although you are kind.  I am expected home.  But to-morrow I will come for the money.  You will be silent?”

“Surely, Tato.”

The child smiled upon them pleasantly.  It was a relief to deal with two tender girls instead of cold and resentful men, such as she had sometimes met.  At the door she blew a kiss to them, and darted away.

In the courtyard Frascatti saw her gliding out and discreetly turned his head the other way.

Tato took the old road, circling around the theatre and through the narrow, winding streets of the lower town to the Catania Gate.  She looked back one or twice, but no one noticed her.  If any of the villagers saw her approaching they slipped out of her path.

Once on the highway, however, Tato became lost in reflection.  Her mission being successfully accomplished, it required no further thought; but the sweet young American girls had made a strong impression upon the lonely Sicilian maid, and she dreamed of their pretty gowns and ribbons, their fresh and comely faces, and the gentleness of their demeanor.

Tato was not gentle.  She was wild and free and boyish, and had no pretty gowns whatever.  But what then?  She must help her father to get his fortune, and then he had promised her that some day they would go to Paris or Cairo and live in the world, and be brigands no longer.

She would like that, she thought, as she clambered up the steep paths; and perhaps she would meet these American girls again, or others like them, and make them her friends.  She had never known a girl friend, as yet.

These ambitions would yesterday have seemed far in the dim future; but now that her stern old grandmother was gone it was possible her father would soon fulfill his promises.  While the Duchessa lived she ruled them all, and she was a brigand to the backbone.  Now her father’s will prevailed, and he could refuse his child nothing.

Kenneth was not an expert detective, but he had managed to keep Tato in sight without being suspected by her.  He had concealed himself near the Catania Gate, through which he knew she must pass, and by good luck she had never looked around once, so intent were her musings.