Chapter 25

THE APPEAL

On the iron balcony of a house in the vicinity of the parish prison the two Sicilian girls were standing. Across from them loomed the great decaying structure with its little iron-barred windows and its steel-ribbed doors behind which lay their countrymen. From inside came the echo of a great hammering, as if a gallows were being erected; but the square and the streets outside were quiet.

"What time is it now?" Oliveta had repeated this question already a dozen times.

"It is after ten."

"I hear nothing as yet, do you?"

"Nothing!"

"We could hear if it were not for that dreadful pounding yonder in the jail."

"Hush! They are building barricades."

The peasant girl gasped and seized the iron railing in front of her.

"Madonna mia! I am dying. Do you think Signore Blake will yield to your appeal and turn the mob?"

"I'm afraid not," said Vittoria, faintly.

"He can do more than any other, for he is powerful; they will listen to him. If Caesar should escape! I am shamed through and through to have loved such a man, and yet to have him killed like a rat in a hole! I pray, and I know not what I pray for--my thoughts are whirling so. Do you hear anything from the city?"

"No, no!"

There was a moment's pause.

"Those barricades will not allow them to enter, even if our friend does not persuade them to disperse,"

"I have heard there is sometimes shooting." Vittoria shuddered. "It is terrible for men to become brutes."

"The time is growing late," Oliveta quavered.

There was another period of silence while they strained their ears for the faintest sound, but the fresh breeze wafted nothing to them. On a neighboring gallery two housewives were gossiping; a child was playing on the walk beneath, and his piping laughter sounded strangely incongruous. From across the way rose that desultory pounding as spikes were driven home and beams were nailed in place. Through a grated aperture in the prison wall an armed man peered down the street.

"Caesar is cunning," Oliveta broke out. "He is not one to be easily caught. He is brave, too. Ah, God! how I loved him and how I have hated him!" Ever since Maruffi's capture she had remained in a frame of mind scarcely rational, fluctuating between a silent, sullen mood of revenge and a sense of horror at her betrayal of the man who had once possessed her whole heart.

"It can't be that you still care for him?"

"No, I loathe him, and if he escapes he would surely kill me. Yet sometimes I wish it." She began mumbling to herself. "Look!" she cried, suddenly. "What is this?"

A public hack came swinging