“Give them bread, if it so please you.  But I will not have you supply them with ammunition.”

“Brother,” said Colomba, in a serious voice, “you are master here, and everything in this house belongs to you.  But I warn you that I will give this little girl my mezzaro, so that she may sell it; rather than refuse powder to a bandit.  Refuse to give him powder!  I might just as well make him over to the gendarmes!  What has he to protect him against them, except his cartridges?”

All this while the little girl was ravenously devouring a bit of bread, and carefully watching Colomba and her brother, turn about, trying to read the meaning of what they were saying in their eyes.

“And what has this bandit of yours done?  What crime has driven him into the maquis?”

“Brandolaccio has not committed any crime,” exclaimed Colomba.  “He killed Giovan’ Oppizo, who murdered his father while he was away serving in the army!”

Orso turned away his head, took up the lamp, and, without a word, departed to his bedroom.  Then Colomba gave the child food and gunpowder, and went with her as far as the house-door, saying over and over again: 

“Mind your uncle takes good care of Orso!”

CHAPTER XI

It was long before Orso fell asleep, and as a consequence he woke late—­late for a Corsican, at all events.  When he left his bed, the first object that struck his gaze was the house of his enemies, and the archere with which they had furnished it.  He went downstairs and asked for his sister.

“She is in the kitchen, melting bullets,” answered Saveria, the woman-servant.

So he could not take a step without being pursued by the image of war.

He found Colomba sitting on a stool, surrounded by freshly cast bullets, and cutting up strips of lead.

“What the devil are you doing?” inquired her brother.

“You had no bullets for the colonel’s gun,” she answered, in her soft voice.  “I found I had a mould for that calibre, and you shall have four-and-twenty cartridges to-day, brother.”

“I don’t need them, thank God!”

“You mustn’t be taken at a disadvantage, Ors’ Anton’.  You have forgotten your country, and the people who are about you.”

“If I had forgotten, you would soon have reminded me.  Tell me, did not a big trunk arrive here some days ago?”

“Yes, brother.  Shall I take it up to your room?”

“You take it up!  Why, you’d never be strong enough even to lift it! . . .  Is there no man about who can do it?”

“I’m not so weak as you think!” said Colomba, turning up her sleeves, and displaying a pair of round white arms, perfect in shape, but looking more than ordinarily strong.  “Here, Saveria,” said she to the servant; “come and help me!”

She was already lifting the trunk alone, when Orso came hastily to her assistance.