youthful wife of one of the robbers rushed forward and saved it. The helpless orphan was conveyed with the plunder into a cave (one of the secret resorts of the banditti); and brought up as the child of the bandit by whose wife she had been preserved.

The unfortunate Antonietta, in the mean time, had recovered from her stupefaction, and dwelt with agonizing fear on the fate of Peppè Tosco. When Vernet visited her, he found her walking hurriedly about the room, and tracing her steps with her fast-falling tears. She instantly turned to him, and, without answering his kind inquiries, began to supplicate for the brigand: she threw herself on the ground, and, clinging to his knees, begged, with heart-searching fervour, that he would not kill him. Vernet endeavoured to make her comprehend that his fate did not depend upon him; that it was his duty to consign him to the prison at Nicastro, and that he would there be disposed of by justice. To her mind, however, prison and justice conveyed the idea of tyranny and murder; and she continued to implore, that Vernet would set him at liberty. The young Frenchman explained the enormity of his offences; but she would not give credit to the greater part, and for the rest, as we have already said, she had been precluded, by her mode of life, from learning to estimate them aright. A feeling of horror prevented him then from acquainting her with the mystery he had discovered; that the wretch whose cause she advocated was one of the murderers of

her parents; and beside, he feared the effect such a dis

closure might have, on a brain that seemed already well nigh distraught. She continued to pray, and it was not easy to resist her prayers.

"You told me, in the cottage," said she, "that I was pretty, and that you loved me; that you would die for me! Now I only ask you this favour,-grant it, and I will follow you to the end of the world,-I will die for you!"

All that he could he promised, namely, that if Peppè Tosco should shew signs of repentance, and give hopes of amendment, he would interest himself in his favour, and endeavour to save his life. Her gratitude knew no bounds. She, on her part, undertook (if Vernet would permit her to visit Tosco) to induce him to abandon his evil calling, and never to carry a gun again: the permission was given, and they separated.

To second, as it seemed, the fulfilment of Vernet's promise, an order arrived from Nicastro, to detain the persons arrested where they were, until further directions; the prison of the town being already too much crowded. On the return of Antonietta from the chamber in which Peppè Tosco was confined, she acquainted Vernet that he had solemnly promised, on his being pardoned, to relinquish all connexion with his band; and then she began to conjure Vernet anew, to redeem his pledge.

Vernet acquainted her with the atrocities of her former associates, that Peppè Tosco was one of a band of assas

sins, who had deprived her of her parents when she was an infant; and by the favour of her natural good sense, they soon enabled her to form those ideas of social right and propriety, from which she had been precluded by the singularity of her fortune. Still she was eager for the life of the robber.

"I must yet supplicate for that unhappy man," said she. "I will never see him more! I had a father and a mother, and he, perhaps, killed them. Oh! his sight would now kill me!-but he saved my life,-he reared me under his roof,- he supported me, and delicately too, and sometimes he would be kind to me—so kind! Oh, he must not die, he must not!"

Vernet again pledged himself to do all he could to save his life, and gave her to hope that his endeavours would be successful.

It was then agreed that Antonietta should seek a temporary shelter in the house of a respectable inhabitant of a neighbouring town, and Vernet left his lovely protégée to enjoyments, of which she had till then had no experience, a participation in the harmony and repose of a virtuous family circle. An unwonted sadness fell upon his heart as he was leaving her,—a sadness he could not account for, as he knew he left her in safety and might soon see her again. Poor Antonietta was equally depressed, and perhaps with as little apparent reason: she accompanied him to the door, she returned the grasp of his hand, and when he ventured to press her cheek to his lips,-her tears flowed down it.

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