CHAPTER I.

THE LITTLE REBEL.

Ir was a summer night at Stresa, on the Lago Maggiore. The sun had gone down behind the Monte Motterone, but the eastern hills across the lake still lay bathed in reflected tints of gold and purple and red. Slowly the opaline hues faded as the moon rose up over the Borromean islands, the whitewalled palaces and tufted groves of oleander and magnolia glittering brightly beneath its rays. Especially the Isola Bella, her rock-cut terrace-gardens and turrets sharply defined against the violet sky, gleamed like a mirage, fair, but too fanciful, too delicate to be real.

A scene to set the stocks and the stones dreaming! Even the soberminded Englishman, the wealthy owner of the villa Rondinelli, one of the numerous country-houses on the lake, who, with his son, a lad of eleven years old, was taking his regular evening walk along the shore, was so far beguiled by the spectacle before him as to lose himself for an instant in its contemplation.

He was a man over fifty,-an age when the living pleasures of hope have mostly been exchanged for the ghost-pleasures of memory; and as he stood watching the moonshine coquetting with the waves, the fish leaping in its flashes, the shimmering islets, and the darkly-shadowed purple hills, his dreams, if he had any, were of 'the days that are no more'

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXVII.

reminiscences with a charm beyond that of his days present or days to come.

The attention of the boy was otherwise absorbed. A little crowd, thickening fast, had for some while been collecting on the shore, where a number of pollarded acacias stood in a square close to the landing-place of the lake. steamers.

In the centre some half-dozen men were busy clearing a space, roping it round, setting up wooden barricades, and raising poles with cords and wires stretched across. A company of strolling acrobats adjusting their usual apparatus. Meantime, the whole native population of Stresa, pressing round, was watching the mysterious process with rapt interest.

Mr. Romer was abruptly awakened from his reverie by the sounds of music. But what music? An obstreperous cornet and shrill fiddle combining to execute a flashy, trashy air of Offenbach's, with liberal drum and trumpet accompaniments! Mr. Romer made a grimace, and was moving away, when his son twitched his sleeve, and called upon him to look.

Turning round, the father beheld a scene as fantastic as a picture of Callot's.

The enclosure, a little extemporised open-air circus, was lit up by rows of flaming torches set in long wooden stands, shedding a lurid glare over the foliage of the trees, the upturned faces of the crowd beneath, and the figure of a rope-dancer, suspended about ten

E

or twelve feet from the ground, upon whom all eyes were fixed; a stout lady in flimsy pink skirts, with paper flowers in her hair, who was going through all the accustomed feats and gyrationsball-trick, scarf-exercise, and so forth. The vivid effect of such a picture in such a setting was unique. Torchlight by moonlight; the bustling shore and the torpid lake; on the one hand mountains, a pure placid sky, and a soft fresh breeze; on the other, rouge, tinsel, spangles, the monotonous dancetune, and the faded columbine poised on the rope in mid-air. The strangeness of the scene riveted the Englishman for a moment.

His son was now tugging at his arm again, and trying to draw him into the ring of spectators, exclaiming eagerly,

'I say, look-do look at the little tiny girl with the fiddle!'

The orchestra,' stationed under a tree opposite, numbered four performers, two of whom were mere children. The leader was a small girl of seven or eight years old, scantily dressed in quaint quasi-Oriental fashion, whose infantile flourishes and feats of execution on her instrument, and particularly the energy with which she set to work, elicited repeated applause from the laughing crowd. Certainly the precocious skill she displayed was sufficiently extraordinary, and even Mr. Romer must notice, with passing wonder, the nimbleness and flexibility of the little thing's fingers, the correctness of her intonation, and her spirited attempts at bravura passages on a toy violin, probably picked up for a few francs at a fair.

Presently the dancer came down from the tight-rope, and the music ceased. Loud acclamations followed, chiefly directed at the

child-fiddler, who was summoned by the master of the troupe, and sent round to collect pence in the tambourine.

She was not a pretty child. That is, not a trace of plump, round, fair, rosy prettiness was hers. But her well-cast face, thin, but not puny, pale, but not sallow, still retained the refinement of childhood, the purity of outline intact. A very few years and it must needs become coarse and hardened, like that of her mistress the rope dancer; but the features, as yet, might have belonged to a little princess. Only the countenance wore a painfully constrained look, unnatural and overgrave for a child.

'Poor little thing! what a life! what a fate!' muttered Mr. Romer compassionately; but sentiment in him was tempered by the resignation of a philosopher comfortably off, and a successful man of the world. Unconsciously he grasped his son's hand more firmly as he turned away, adding aloud, 'Come, Val, we must get home, or we shall have our guests arriving before us.'

But first, at an urgent whisper from Val, he gave him a large silver coin to drop into the tambourine. Reluctantly the boy submitted to be led away. His father had company coming that night, and Val hated company. Besides, he was longing to stay and watch that funny little girl in the nondescript fancy dress.

The mountebanks went on with their entertainment. Now it was the clown, in an orange-coloured suit embroidered with black dromedaries, who came forward to tickle the crowd with stale jokes, bad puns, and repartees. Tumblers succeeded the clown, performing poodles the tumblers, and so on through all the dreary fun of a third-rate acrobatic troupe. Mean

while the toy-fiddler kept up the same spirited accompaniment on the toy-fiddle, with the same unflagging energy and ludicrous gravity.

'Cospetto, a clever monkey that!' remarked one bystander to his neighbour. She'll be worth a pretty penny to her master one of these days.'

'Poor little devil! He looks a rough customer. I wager he leads those brats a fine life. Well done, bambina! as the child wound up with a pluckily-executed flourish. 'Did you hear that? It's a prodigy!'

'She must have been put to it in her cradle,' responded the other. "Eh? Look there! Why, she's going on the rope now, by Jupiter -fiddle and all! and their attention redoubled.

As he spoke, the master of the troupe, a most unprepossessinglooking human creature, with a low forehead, shaggy eyebrows, and predatory stamp of countenance recalling certain animals of the baser sort, going up to the little girl, gave some peremptory order, motioning her forwards, and pointing to the rope.

Instead of obeying, she laid down her violin, seated herself on the stump of a tree, and folded her hands with a look of mute obstinate defiance.

'Come, quick; your turn!' he uttered impatiently, in an under

know what to be afraid of!' he retorted savagely, but still speaking low, so that the crowd who witnessed the dialogue never suspected its amiable purport. No nonsense! What the plague possesses you to play this trick on me again to-night?'

'I'm tired, and I hate it, and I won't. You can't make me.'

'Can't I?' He took hold of her shoulder roughly. Up with you this moment, or I—'

Look here, Baltazar, if you don't let me go, I'll lie down and scream.'

"O the little viper!' he hissed between his teeth, but relinquishing his hold; for he knew that the child would be as good as her word, knew, moreover, that-as she too was perfectly well aware-if she did make an outcry the spectators would interfere and take her part. So he swallowed his rage and made a hasty sign to his wife the rope-dancer, who repeated her gymnastic feats to the satisfaction of the crowd, none of whom noticed how the little

girl, who had taken up her fiddle again, had turned quite white.

Renza, you naughty silly thing!' whined the small boy who stood next her and beat the drum, in a plaintive sing-song tone. 'Aren't you afraid? Don't you see he's in such a passion? He'll kill you.'

'Not he,' said the child firmly ; but her hand shook nervously as she fiddled on. 'Why, he wouldn't dare. He'd get himself into trouble.'

'But why will you never do as he bids you?'

'Because I'm afraid to go on the rope; and I hate it, and I hate him. He stole me, and has no right to make me do as he pleases.'

Renza's insubordination to the powers that be sheerly frightened

the wits out of her comrade, who, wiser in his generation, thought only of the consequences, the immediate consequences. Baltazar was a brutal violent man, and, as such, accustomed to meet with as abject submission from his human dependents as from his poodles. Renza was the single living thing in that caravan that ever ventured to oppose him. It was not the first time; and Baltazar swore to himself it must be the last.

The performance over, the crowd dispersed, and the mountebanks strolled off to a tavern at the back of the village to supper and sleep, carrying with them their belongings. The two children, leading a bulldog that was harnessed to the drum, a fixture on wheels, brought up the rear.

'Keep yourselves out of the way to-night,' whispered the master's wife-a good-natured woman, who was always kind to the children in her way-warningly to Renza, as the party collected in front of the inn. 'You've put him into a fine rage this time, I can tell you. Go and sleep, you and Lollo. Perhaps, if he sees neither of you again to-night, he'll have forgotten about it by the morning; and, thrusting them aside, she contrived to screen them as Baltazar lounged up. She then followed the rest into the inn, leaving the two children outside in the dark, where they loitered under the windows of the rough eating-room.

Easy to say, 'Go and sleep;' but Renza and Lollo had tasted nothing since the early morning, and 'Qui dort, dine' was a maxim not at all to their mind.

Renza might have borne it in silence, but Lollo, who had not the faintest Spartan touch about him, overcome presently by the tantalising sight and smell of the steaming macaroni and polenta

within, on which his heart was set, began to cry helplessly at the situation. He knew better than to venture in alone.

Baltazar, finding Renza not to be worked upon by threats or their execution, had lately hit on the infernal expedient of involving her comrade in the consequences of her disobedience-a measure that had met with some success. The child was puzzled to death. If only Lollo would fearlessly have stood by her, resisted the injustice, and shared all hardships sooner than give in! as Renza secretly thought that he ought, and as she undoubtedly would have done in his place. But Lollo was no hero, alas! He was fond of Renza, but more than once had reproached her bitterly for bringing down penalties on his innocent head by her scrapes. Such an outburst threatened her now; she was ravenously hungry herself besides; all helped to embolden her.

'Let us go in,' she whispered suddenly. Perhaps he won't see us; perhaps he has half-forgotten already, or means to let me have my own way, and not dance.'

She took Lollo's hand, and the pair stole in through the doorway. The troupe were seated at a long wooden table. Baltazar was at one end drinking wine. His back was towards the children. They sidled up to his wife, who, trusting it might escape notice in the ill-lighted room, responded by handing them furtively a slice of polenta, with a hasty sign to them to flee.