went down to hell damned beyond redemption. No, make an end of me as you said. See, I stand quite still. This gun,' he pushed it away from him with his foot, 'I will not touch. Fire, captain, and with my last breath I will forgive you. For by God's holy blood the life I have led was purgatory, and now it would be hell itself since I have seen her again, and you whom she loved.' While so speaking, his strength seemed to fail him, he fell on his knees before the picture, and hid his face in his hands, his whole body, as it were, convulsed.

"At last the conflict ended. He sobbed aloud, wailed and writhed like one mortally wounded, then trying to rise he groaned out, 'My God! My God! She is dead! Lord have pity upon her murderer!' and down he fell again as in a swoon and pressed his sobbing lips against the cold flags, and seemed to have utterly forgotten that any one stood by and saw it all.

"And meanwhile there was the picture on the wall standing silent and stately, and in its bloom of bliss and youth looking down upon the poor sinner.

"'Domenico,' said the captain, gently drawing near, binding over him, and laying a hand on his shoulder, 'neither of us can call her back, and what we have to do is to get through our remnant of life. If you will take my advice you will leave this country and cross the seas. There is war going on in Africa, and the French need brave men. Your crime--I forgive it, and there is One who weighs with other scales than we do, who sees your heart and knows how you repent and suffer. If I can help you in any way to get off, and fling your past behind you, tell me. You shall find a brother in me.'

"Il Rosso had meanwhile risen, and was now standing with face averted from the picture, gazing hopelessly into the night. At these last words of his rival he vehemently shook his head. 'It is over,' he replied. 'You and I are quits. The rest is my affair. You and I shall never meet again, that I swear to you by her shadow. But leave this house in which I can no longer protect you. With the others it is an affair of your money and your fire-arms, they hanker after them. If they hear that it was in my power to give you up to them, and that I have not done so, they will never forgive me, and there are some of them who still carry about the tokens of that first tussle we had. Take care of yourself, and good night to you. Yon have seen the last of me.'

"He bent down, picked up his gun, and with one last look at the picture that in serene beauty shone out in the moonlight, glided from the room.

"The captain heard him go slowly down the stairs, step by step, and when outside, open the iron gate and lock it again. Then the night was once more still as death. He required some time to collect himself. He felt, he said, as though he had been thrown down from a high tower and had reached the ground without broken limbs indeed, but unable to move from sheer giddiness. For awhile he lay half fainting on his couch, but the streak of blood on the moonlit floor reminded him of his wound. He roused himself to call Maddalena to bring him water and help him with his bandage. But no one answered, call as he would. So at last he tottered down the stairs and entered her room. There in a corner he saw the poor creature lying huddled up, bound hand and foot, and with a gag in her mouth. When he had unloosed her she fell half dead at his feet, and only recovered when he had sprinkled her well with water, and poured a little wine down her throat, and then crying and laughing, she began to kiss his hands and his coat. But there was no getting a single rational word from her; her fright when Il Rosso surprised her, and then her agony when she heard her master return and go up the steps at the top of which his enemy was awaiting him--these upset her poor mind completely, and during the remainder of her life, the years followed each other without her being conscious of any alternation except of heat and cold, hunger and repletion.

"I took the captain to my house, and nursed him for a week until his wound had pretty well healed. The sortie against the banditti had to take place of course without him, but nothing more decisive was effected than the procuring us peace for about a couple of years. The only prisoner taken was a small boy whose father was one of the bandits, and who himself had sometimes joined them. Nothing could be made of him, so he was let go again. However one fact he did have to tell us: on the morning after the night in which Il Rosso had that reckoning with his enemy, a quarrel arose, and some of the party accused Domenico of being a traitor. At last knives were drawn, and before the cooler-headed could interfere, Domenico lay dead on the bare rock, the knife in his breast, almost on the very spot where he had met Erminia.

"As for Signor Gustavo he went to Naples, and thence sailed to Greece. Later I heard from an artist that he had been drowned there, swimming in the open sea. Possibly the wound in the leg was imperfectly healed, or it may have left some weakness behind it, for once he could, as he told me, have swum a match against that great Lord himself. But as to what became of the picture of Erminia, which the artist well remembered to have seen, I could learn nothing. I would gladly have given half my substance if only I could have got possession of it.

"And now, amico mio, you know the history of Barbarossa and Erminia."

END OF BARBAROSSA.

THE