This is called the dead man’s pile—­his “mucchio.”

Colomba stopped before the heap of foliage, broke off an arbutus branch, and cast it on the pile.

“Orso,” she said, “this is where your father died.  Let us pray for his soul!”

And she knelt down.  Orso instantly followed her example.  At that moment the village church-bell tolled slowly for a man who had died during the preceding night.  Orso burst into tears.

After a few minutes Colomba rose.  Her eyes were dry, but her face was eager.  She hastily crossed herself with her thumb, after the fashion generally adopted by her companions, to seal any solemn oath, then, hurrying her brother with her, she took her way back to the village.  They re-entered their house in silence.  Orso went up to his room.  A moment afterward Colomba followed him, carrying a small casket which she set upon the table.  Opening it, she drew out a shirt, covered with great stains of blood.

“Here is your father’s shirt, Orso!”

And she threw it across his knees.  “Here is the lead that killed him!” And she laid two blackened bullets on the shirt.

“Orso!  Brother!” she cried, throwing herself into his arms and clasping him desperately to her.  “Orso, you will avenge him!”

In a sort of frenzy she kissed him, then kissed the shirt and the bullets, and went out of the room, leaving her brother sitting on his chair, as if he had been turned to stone.  For some time Orso sat motionless, not daring to put the terrible relics away.  At last, with an effort, he laid them back in their box, rushed to the opposite end of his room, and threw himself on his bed, with his face turned to the wall, and his head buried in his pillow, as though he were trying to shut out the sight of some ghost.  His sister’s last words rang unceasingly in his ears, like the words of an oracle, fatal, inevitable, calling out to him for blood, and for innocent blood!  I shall not attempt to depict the unhappy young man’s sensations, which were as confused as those that overwhelm a madman’s brain.  For a long time he lay in the same position, without daring to turn his head.  At last he got up, closed the lid of the casket, and rushed headlong out of the house, into the open country, moving aimlessly forward, whither he knew not.

By degrees, the fresh air did him good.  He grew calmer, and began to consider his position, and his means of escape from it, with some composure.  He did not, as my readers already know, suspect the Barricini of the murder, but he did accuse them of having forged Agostini’s letter, and this letter, he believed, at any rate, had brought about his father’s death.  He felt it was impossible to prosecute them for the forgery.  Now and then, when the prejudices or the instincts of his race assailed him, and suggested an easy vengeance—­a shot fired at the corner of some path—­the thought of his brother-officers, of Parisian drawing-rooms,