ferocity from under his shaggy brows.  He was a huge, heavy man, broad and muscular; his two hands clinched, tied and manacled behind him, looked like formidable hammers capable of striking a man down dead at one blow; his whole aspect was repulsive and terrible—­there was no redeeming point about him—­for even the apparent fortitude he assumed was mere bravado—­meretricious courage—­which the first week of the galleys would crush out of him as easily as one crushes the juice out of a ripe grape.  He wore a nondescript costume of vari-colored linen, arranged in folds that would have been the admiration of an artist.  It was gathered about him by means of a brilliant scarlet sash negligently tied.  His brawny arms were bare to the shoulder—­his vest was open, and displayed his strong brown throat and chest heaving with the pent-up anger and fear that raged within him.  His dark grim figure was set off by a curious effect of color in the sky—­a long wide band of crimson cloud, as though the sun-god had thrown down a goblet of ruby wine and left it to trickle along the smooth blue fairness of his palace floor—­a deep after-glow, which burned redly on the olive-tinted eager faces of the multitude that were everywhere upturned in wonder and ill-judged admiration to the brutal black face of the notorious murderer and thief, whose name had for years been the terror of Sicily.  I pressed through the crowd to obtain a nearer view, and as I did so a sudden savage movement of Neri’s bound body caused the gendarmes to cross their swords in front of his eyes with a warning clash.  The brigand laughed hoarsely.

“Corpo di Cristo!” he muttered—­“think you a man tied hand and foot can run like a deer?  I am trapped—­I know it!  But tell him,” and he indicated some person in the throng by a nod of his head “tell him to come hither—­I have a message for him.”

The gendarmes looked at one another, and then at the swaying crowd about them in perplexity—­they did not understand.

Carmelo, without wasting more words upon them, raised himself as uprightly as he could in his strained and bound position, and called aloud: 

“Luigi Biscardi!  Capitano!  Oh he—­you thought I could not see you!  Dio!  I should know you in hell!  Come near, I have a parting word for you.”

At the sound of his strong harsh voice, a silence half of terror, half of awe, fell upon the chattering multitude.  There was a sudden stir as the people made way for a young man to pass through their ranks—­a slight, tall, rather handsome fellow, with a pale face and cold, sneering eyes.  He was dressed with fastidious care and neatness in the uniform of the Bersagliere—­and he elbowed his way along with the easy audacity of a privileged dandy.  He came close up to the brigand and spoke carelessly, with a slightly mocking smile playing round the corners of his mouth.

“Ebbene!” he said, “you are caught at last, Carmelo!  You called me—­ here I am.  What do you want with me, rascal?”