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Title: The little acrobat: a story of Italy

Author: Janie Prichard Duggan

Illustrator: Nana French Bickford

Release date: September 29, 2022 [eBook #69064]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Little, Brown and Company

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE ACROBAT: A STORY OF ITALY ***





THE LITTLE ACROBAT

[Illustration: The pale apparition of Natale startled them all.
_Frontispiece._

_See page 167._]




  THE

  LITTLE ACROBAT

  A STORY OF ITALY


  BY

  JANIE PRICHARD DUGGAN


  _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY_

  NANA FRENCH BICKFORD

  BOSTON

  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
  1919




  _Copyright, 1919_,

  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

  _All rights reserved_

  Published, September, 1919

  Norwood Press
  Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
  Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.




  DEDICATED
  TO MEMORIES OF
  TWO LITTLE “ANGELICALS” OF ROME
  SPOTTISWOODE AND SUSIE
  BY
  “CUDDIE”




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                               PAGE

     I ALONG THE WHITE ROAD                1

    II NONNA                              12

   III IN THE RING                        26

    IV THE FESTIVAL OF SAN LORENZO        39

     V A GIFT FOR THE CIRCUS              55

    VI SEPARATION                         73

   VII THE CAGED BIRD OF THE FIELDS       91

  VIII THE CAGE DOOR OPENED              105

    IX THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD            121

     X ON THE WING                       133

    XI FLUTTERING A LITTLE FARTHER       150

   XII AT LAST                           167




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  The pale apparition of Natale startled
  them all               _Frontispiece_

  Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent
  from the garden terrace       PAGE 45

  The priest led Natale to the other end of
  the house                     “    94

  “_Capitomboli_, such as the boy who was
  here just now made in the circus at
  Cutigliano”                   “   142




THE LITTLE ACROBAT

_A STORY OF ITALY_




CHAPTER I

ALONG THE WHITE ROAD


THE July sunshine lay hot and golden over the fields of wheat on the
Italian hillsides, and the deep shade of the chestnut woods along the
road was more inviting than the white glare beyond. The sun stood
directly overhead, and along the middle of that white, dusty road there
was not an inch of shadow.

A small brown house on wheels crept slowly along this sunny way,
drawn by a queer, ill-matched team of three--a plump white horse with
long, silky mane and tail, a large spotted horse with fierce eyes and
nostrils, and a lean, little brown pony, with strangely twisted neck.

Up and up, always a little higher up, the horses toiled with the
house-wagon, as the road rose into the mountains. From the interior
of the wagon came the sound of voices, mingled now and then with a
complaining note, or an exclamation of pain. The travelers were very
tired, and poor Pietro’s fever was rising with every turn of the wheels.

Several men and a sturdy girl of fifteen walked beside the horses in
the powdery white dust. Behind the big wagon lagged a boy of eight or
nine years. This was Natale,[1] a slight little fellow, with dusty lean
legs and dragging feet. His light brown hair curled damply about his
sun-browned forehead, and he wore an old, misshapen hat set far back on
his pretty head. His loosely fitting clothes were dingy with dust but
Natale did not mind, for, presently, they would come to Cutigliano,
the old, old town on the mountain side, and there they would camp out
on the soft, green grass. And Natale knew from much experience that
nothing could clean the dust from travel-stained clothes so well as
rolling down the grassy slopes of the chestnut woods, with Niero and
Bianco as companions.

[Footnote 1: Pronounced Nah-tah´le.]

Of course the sun was hot; was it not always hot at noon of a summer’s
day in the Apennines? But Niero did not complain, and why should Natale?

Bianco had tired of trotting along at Natale’s side, and at the last
stopping-place, when Pietro had had a drink of water from the wayside
fountain, the tired little black dog had begged to be allowed to ride,
and had been willingly taken inside the wagon.

Natale never asked to ride in the wagon, unless he were very tired and
sleepy. They were rather crowded in there even without him, for Pietro
took up a great deal of room, now that he had to lie down all the time.
Besides, the other children, good travelers as they usually were,
sometimes grew quarrelsome and made the mothers and the grandmother
angry. Natale did not like quarreling and loud voices, so he always
preferred his resting times to be given him on the back of one of the
horses. But now Tesoro and Il Duca were tired also, and they were so
near Cutigliano, it did not matter if Natale did lag behind a little,
always with big Niero for company.

Niero was a large, lean, white dog with a closely sheared body. About
his neck, however, he wore a fluffy collar of long white hair, and
bracelets of the same adorned his four paws, while his long tail ended
in a tuft, having very much the appearance of a dishmop. Why this
white dog should have been named Niero, meaning black, the clown who
had also named the little black dog Bianco, white, could have best
explained.

By and by, long after the gray church tower had come in sight and the
red-tiled roofs of the town showed bunched together against the green
of the wooded hillside, the travelers reached the arched stone bridge
across the river at the foot of the mountain. Here the wagon made a
halt before beginning the last steep climb to the town. Above, they
could see the stone wall which was the boundary of the road winding by
loops, one above the other, up the mountain side, but the town had now
disappeared from view, so sheer was the rise of the chestnut woods.

This halt gave Natale time to come up with the wagon, and then he sat
down with a tired sigh on a heap of mending-stones by the roadside, in
front of the wagon door. His legs ached with weariness, but this was
no time to think of riding, as even the women and all the children but
Pietro must alight now, to relieve the horses in the last pull up hill.
Natale watched them descend from the wagon one by one, by the steps one
of the musicians placed at the door.

First came Nonna, the grandmother of Rudolfo and Tito and the five
other children of the blond acrobat, Antonio Bisbini. She was not
Natale’s Nonna, of course, yet everybody called her Nonna, and why
should not he, who had no grandmother of his own?

Nonna carried Tito in her arms and led Rudolfo by the hand. Then
came Tito’s mother, the three-months’-old infant, Gigi, in her arms,
followed by Olga, who held little Maria by the hand. Next, Natale’s own
mamá stepped down, glad to stretch her active limbs by walking, after
nursing Pietro for so many tedious hours. Then the rest of Bisbini’s
children scrambled out, aided by the music-man’s helping hands.

On they went again then, the clown, who was Natale’s stepfather,
walking at the horses’ heads, and cracking his long whip, and
chirruping to them while the other men strode behind the wagon, pushing
upon it with all their might at the steep places in the road.

The women and children, meanwhile, left the road to climb the short
cuts upward, leading directly from terrace to terrace,--mere paths
paved with rough stones, here and there loosened and displaced by
rushing rain-torrents of the past. The little ones bore the heat and
the roughness of the way without murmuring, being allowed to straggle
along as they pleased, now stopping to gather a red poppy from the
edge of the wheat, now dropping on the ground to search for a briar
afflicting some tired foot. Natale was not the last in the procession
now, for he was anxious to get to the top and see what the tall wheat
and the green slopes were hiding from his eyes.

At last they reached the wide turn in the road where the wagon must
finally stop, at the edge of the town field. The wagon also came
toiling upward, and now the good horses might rest. So these were
unhitched from the wagon, and while one or two of the men led them
up the steep, paved street into the village to find food and shelter
for them, the others attended to the house-wagon, drawn close against
the low stone wall inclosing the field, placing great stones against
the wheels to steady it in its place. Now was Natale’s hour and the
dogs’, and they understood this as well as he! Over the low wall they
scampered and down on the soft, hot grass they lay, rolling over and
over down the gentle slope of the field until, suddenly, Natale found
himself landing directly upon his feet, with a whirring in his head,
and the sound of distressed barking in his ears.

The dogs had had the wit to stop on the very edge of a sharp descent
which Natale had not noticed, and now they stood on the bank,
half-a-dozen feet above him, their forefeet firmly planted on the brink
of the grassy precipice, and their tufty tails high in the air, begging
with all their might to know whether their dear little comrade were
hurt. Natale was not hurt, but the jar of the descent gave him a queer
feeling under the waistband of his trousers, and he sat down directly
where he stood, on the lower terrace, turning his back upon the dogs.

A fringe of bushes threw a narrow band of shade about him from above,
and he made up his mind to stay there till something should be made
ready for dinner. He hoped he would not be wanted to fetch anything
from the village,--he was always fetching something for somebody. He
had heard his mother calling to her husband to bring a little meal for
the polenta,[2] when he should finish stabling the horses, and he knew
there was wine left in the flask in the wagon.

[Footnote 2: Mush of corn meal.]

From where Natale sat he could look directly down upon the roof of a
house far down by the stone bridge and could faintly hear the rushing
of the little river Lima over the rocks. Presently he eased himself
out on the grass at full length, with his arms crossed beneath his
head. As he dropped off to sleep, he was thinking how well it was that
there could be no performance in the tent that evening. He was sure
that Arduina would laugh more than ever at his stiff little feats on
the circus carpet if he should have to turn somersaults after the long
tramp.

Then Natale slept, with the great green mountains closing around him,
and Bianco the black dog and Niero the white keeping watch above his
head from where they had stretched themselves on the edge of the
terrace in the sun.




CHAPTER II

NONNA


NATALE, as will have been discovered by this time, was an Italian
circus boy, a cheerful, happy little soul, who loved his “profession”,
and whose ambition reached to the giddy height of some day rivaling
even Antonio Bisbini in his wonderful trapeze performances. He loved
everything connected with the life he led,--the long slow journeyings
through his beautiful Italy, the camping out at night along the quiet
roads, the open-air loungings in some village through the sunny days,
until the evening should come and the oil lamps be lighted in the tent,
and the people come crowding in to see Arduina dance the tight rope,
and little Olga do her wonderful turns and twists on the carpet, and
to applaud Antonio and the clown and the horses, and--yes, and himself
too, little Natale, stiff as his short thin legs always were and
hopeless, as Arduina declared, in his bows and scrapes.

Besides the three musicians, there were two families in the strolling
company. Giovanni Marzuchetti was the clown, also the stepfather of
Paulo, Arduina, Pietro, Natale and little Maria, and husband of Elvira,
the black-haired mother of the five children. This man had no children
of his own but was kind in his rough, clownish way to Natale and the
rest.

It is not difficult to understand why Giovanni should have married
Elvira and her family, when it was known that the woman brought to her
husband a small fortune in the shape of her own wonderful skill as
a rider of horses, and the little ones as possible acrobats of the
future. They had been married for two years now, and if Giovanni had
counted largely upon his ready-made family for speedy reënforcements
in the “ring”, he must have become a little discouraged even by this
time. It is true that Paulo and Arduina were well trained in the art of
circus acting; but poor Pietro, the middle-sized one, who was twelve
years old, was always ailing and feeble. Sleeping out of doors in the
marshy regions had developed in his system a chronic fever which could
not be thrown off, even with the aid of Nonna’s assiduous doctoring,
and lately the weakness had settled in one leg and foot, threatening
permanent lameness.

Natale, who came next, was agile enough when running about on his slim
brown legs, but his funny stiff-legged somersaults and awkward antics
in the ring were matters of jesting among the whole troop. Poor little
Natale, who did so wish to be like Antonio Bisbini!

Lastly there was Maria, who was a mere baby and as yet only just
learning to stand upright on her stepfather’s head.

But Antonio Bisbini, the father of the other family, was the star of
the little troop of strolling players. Tall and lean and muscular, he
stood six feet two in his sandals. His blond hair and skin and strong,
clear-cut features gave him the look of some stern young Viking from
the cold forests of the North, yet this youthful-looking, ruddy athlete
was already the father of seven young children.

No one in the company, not even the clown, could hold a candle to
Antonio in looks or in graceful skill. Natale was sure that the noblest
and most beautiful figure in all Italy was that of Antonio Bisbini
as he would step forth from behind the tent-curtain, ready to thrill
the spectators about the ring. The flesh-colored tights clothing his
limbs showed to perfection their symmetry and grace, relieved by the
brilliantly spangled hip garment of black velvet and fringe, while the
proud glance of his gray eyes and the light tread of his feet never
failed to impress the beholder.

Antonio’s oldest, little red-haired Olga, tumbled and danced with all
a healthy child’s love of activity and applause, and Oh! how Natale
envied her the perfect “wheels” she turned, one after the other with
dizzying swiftness across the dusty strip of carpet in the ring. But
the rest of Antonio’s seven were as yet too small to be useful as
tumblers or dancers, and Nonna’s hands were always full, while their
mother did her daring dances in the air.

The three musicians, then, and Nonna completed this strolling band of
twenty, with the two horses, the dogs and the twisted-necked pony. Poor
Caffero had grievously hurt his pretty neck one day when very young,
while tied in his stall and leaping to reach his food from a manger
set cruelly high. Since then he had trotted painfully through three
years of going up and down the earth, with his brown head and long neck
twisted far around to one side without the power of righting them.
Caffero would have made a pretty part of the show had not this accident
befallen him. As it was, he was good for little but helping to guide
the house-wagon along the weary roads. Yet every one loved Caffero.

On the day of the arrival at Cutigliano the two horses Tesoro and Il
Duca were left in their stalls in the village stables during the whole
afternoon, while Caffero was brought down the steep village street
and allowed to graze in the public field. Nonna herself had gone up
for him with Tito in her arms, after the midday meal of polenta, or
thick mush of yellow meal, had been eaten. As the trio passed through
the narrow street of the village, many heads turned to wonder at the
strangers--the gray-haired woman, the bright-eyed child in her arms,
and poor Caffero, who always seemed pulling against the leading rope
and trying to twist his head after something left behind.

It was while Nonna, a little later, was tying Caffero’s rope to a
tree in the field that she spied the two dogs asleep in the sun near
the edge of the terrace. As Tito recognized them at the same time,
and called them in his baby voice, the grandmother added her summons,
and was rather astonished at their failure to obey. They bounded to
their feet, it is true, but instead of scampering to meet her, they
stood still, quivering with nervous excitement and waving their tails
in much perplexity. Then as Tito began to fret and belabor the air
with his fists, Nonna started swiftly toward the dogs with something
threatening in her gait.

But where were they, those lazy brutes, which a moment before had
defied her and then had promptly disappeared? A few more hasty steps
brought Nonna near enough to the edge of the descent to see both Niero
and Bianco crouching over Natale on the lower terrace. The boy had been
awakened by the sudden onset of his faithful friends, and lay looking
lazily upward as Nonna and Tito peered over at him.

“Natalino!” the old woman exclaimed, and, at the word, Natale scrambled
to his feet.

“I am ready! Where am I to go?” he asked hurriedly, preparing to creep
up the bank. But Nonna only laughed and reached down a helping hand to
the child, as he clutched at the long grass for support.

“Come and eat your polenta,” she said, when Natale stood at her side,
the dogs panting close by. “I suppose they have saved you a bite. Why
did you run away? Though, as for that, you were not missed in all this
hurly-burly of arriving. Now, Niero, stand on your hind legs and beg.
See, Tito is fretting for you to do it--”

“But we haven’t a bone or a crust of bread for him, Nonna,” Natale
pleaded. “See how sadly his eyes look at you. Giovanni always gives him
a bone.”

“There! take to your legs then, poor thing!” Nonna cried in a friendly
way to the hungry dog. “Perhaps to-morrow there will be a bone. Who
knows?”

Natale ran off toward the wagon, followed by the patient animals, who
perhaps were well assured that he was going to share with them his own
scanty heap of polenta.

The brown house on wheels leaned slightly inward against the stone wall
for security, as the hill’s incline was steep at this point. The door
opened directly upon the top of the wall, which formed a broad and
convenient doorstep, reached from the ground by a short ladder. About
the wagon and in the field close by everybody was busy.

The great canvas of the tent had been unpacked from the top of the
wagon, and the two women sat on the ground patching the holes and
thin places worn in it by long use. Some of the men were making trips
back and forth from wagon and field, carrying sections of board for
inclosing the ring. These were to be set up in their places by and by,
when Antonio should have finished marking off the circle on the grass,
with the hole in the center for the tent pole. There was nothing, as
yet, for the children to do but loll in the shadow of the wagon, asleep
or awake, and chatter among themselves.

As Natale and the dogs drew near, Elvira, the boy’s mother, looked up
from her stitching and clapped her hand to her forehead on seeing them.

“Natale! I had forgotten the child. Little pest, where have you been,
away from us all, and your dinner? One would think you had friends in
the town and had been taking your polenta in grander houses than ours
here.”

Natale replied to these mocking words with only a rather naughty shrug
of the shoulders, and went to sit down on the lowest step of the short
ladder against the wall.

“Give him his polenta, Arduina,” Nonna called shrilly from a little way
behind. “He was asleep, Elvira, all tired out with walking to-day as
much as any man among us. I keep my eyes open. Don’t scold the boy.”

“One would think my Natale your own grandson, Nonna,” Elvira replied,
laughing good-naturedly.

“All boys are as her own sons or grandsons,” Nonna’s daughter-in-law
interposed carelessly, as the old woman passed on with Tito, perhaps to
see that Arduina gave Natale his proper share of mush.

In Nonna’s big warm heart there was indeed room for the sons and
grandsons of those who were too sparing of motherly love and care for
their own. The gray-haired woman had long ago accepted this wandering
life for the sake of continuing near to her only son, Antonio, the
acrobat, and Antonio’s children. When her boy at the age of twenty-two
had given up everything that his mother thought of worth in the
world--home, a decent, quiet life in it, books, school, a career as a
priest--in order to marry Cara, a rosy, lithe-limbed rope-dancer out of
Egypt, he had found that his mother was not going to be given up along
with these. By and by, when the babies began to come every year or two,
Nonna came to be appreciated even by the fantastic daughter-in-law
given her by Antonio, while in the hearts of all the little ones Nonna
was--well, Nonna,--and therefore everything good and patient and sweet.

It was Nonna who cared for the ailing Pietro, who rubbed Natale’s stiff
ankles and elbows with an ointment of her own invention to limber
them up, who thought to tuck Olga’s long red hair out of the way when
practice time came and the curling locks would have teased the little
face and shoulders turned upside down and hindside before. It was Nonna
who nursed the babies and put them to bed while the mothers rode the
horses in the tent, and Nonna who led the poor pony about to “fresh
fields and pastures new”, and Nonna who instructed giddy-brained
Arduina in the simple mysteries of concocting savory stews out of next
to nothing, and how to make corn meal for ten do service as polenta for
twice as many. The little troop could not have done without Nonna, no,
indeed!




CHAPTER III

IN THE RING


IT took all of that first day and most of the next to get everything
into shape for an exhibition on the second night after the arrival of
the circus troop at Cutigliano.

The turf had been removed from the ring, or round space inclosed by the
low panels of wood, and the tent pole erected, by the time the canvas
was mended and the side curtains were ready to be hung.

The sun was just about to slip over the mountain rim in the west when
everything was done, and it only remained to draw the stout ropes and
hoist the canvas into position. Natale was generally on hand when this
was done, listening for the creaking of the pulley at the top of the
pole, as the dull yellow canvas slowly rose into position, till, all
at once, it spread like a queer, pointed mushroom over the green grass
of the field.

It was a fortunate thing that there was no wind that first evening,
for if there had been even a stiff breeze there would have been no
performance. A very little wind caught under the canvas spread on that
exposed hillside before it was securely roped into place might have
carried it all away to be stranded in the tops of the chestnut trees
below, and a new canvas for such a _circo_ as that would have cost
certainly three hundred francs.

When at last the tent was raised, Giovanni hung above the entrance a
broad strip of blue canvas with clowns’ and horses’ heads painted upon
it, and the sign in large letters: “Circo Equestre”, which is Italian
for “Circus with Horses.”

Lastly, figured curtains of pale green calico were hung around the
little vestibule, so that outsiders who had not paid the entrance fee
might not peep inside and see what was going on, without payment.

Now all was ready, and it was still early, although almost dark in the
field. Among the mountains, where one lives perhaps at the foot or even
half-way up the slopes, night falls early, because the sinking sun is
hidden from sight over the mountain tops long before it really drops
into the sea behind them.

Yet it was not quite time to light the lamps inside the tent, as the
performance was not to begin until half-past eight o’clock. Cutigliano
was full of Italians, and a few English and Americans who had left
the hot cities behind, with their churches and picture galleries and
ruins, and had come to the pleasant hotels of the ancient mountain town
to enjoy the fine air and the beautiful chestnut woods during the hot
summer months. These visitors would not be through with their dinners
at the hotels before eight o’clock, while the servants and plain
village folk would find a late hour convenient for coming down the hill
to the yellow tent.

At seven o’clock, however, the three men, with the big brass horn, the
cornet and the drum, climbed the stony street into the town and made
lively music in the little stone-paved _piazzas_, or open squares,
where the children played in the sunset light.

By this time everybody in Cutigliano had learned what had been going
on down in the field for the past two days, and many even of the rich
strangers had made up their minds to go to see the show, partly out of
curiosity, partly out of kindly purpose to help the strolling players.
It had been announced that six _soldi_, or cents, would admit to the
side of the ring where there would be benches and a chair or two for
seats, while three cents offered room on the other side with a few
boards and the green grass as accommodation. Visitors were invited to
bring chairs for their sittings, if possible.

The music sounded very brave and loud as it returned down the very
steepest street of all, which ran between high walls past Madame
Cioche’s English _pension_ or boarding-house and ended in the field.
As this was a dark and even dangerous descent at night for the unwary,
Antonio had driven a nail into a tree at the foot of the street, and
had hung there a smutty tin lamp, with the light flaring and the smoke
pouring from two long spouts.

Nonna had beguiled most of the children away from the tent by this
time, and was putting the youngest to bed in the wagon, while the
others rolled over the grass behind the tent.

Natale was as busy as a bee in the small tent which opened out of the
large one. This was the dressing room, and the different costumes of
the actors lay in heaps on the boxes scattered about.

As half-past eight o’clock approached, the boy became as excited as if
this were to be his first appearance in public, and he kept lifting up
the flap of curtain dividing the two tents to see how fast the seats
were filling. The band had brought back a horde of village children in
its train, and though few of these were possessed of the three cents
charged for children, they served to keep up an appearance of bustle
and enterprise outside, where the band now played the National Hymn of
Italy gaily in the light of the big lamp at the entrance.

Cara, the mother of Olga and the rest of the seven, stood in the
vestibule and took in the great copper cents which by and by began to
pile up in the bowl on the table. She was a very striking person to
look at, with her coal-black hair frizzed bushily on each side of her
head, with her flashing black eyes and her heavy brows, her red, red
lips and cheeks, and her scarlet and black gown. No one dared to slip
in behind the rustling skirts or portly form of anybody without paying,
for her piercing eyes seemed everywhere. Once or twice, when the crowds
about the doors seemed to hesitate and to wonder whether, after all,
it were worth while to expend six or even three cents for what was to
be seen behind the curtain, the pretty little figure of her Olga was
seen to flit, as if by accident, across the vestibule, the full light
streaming over her little full blouse of yellow satin, and her pink
feet tripping as if on air.

The anxious half-hour of expectation ended in the sight of a full
circle surrounding the ring, and then the band came inside and all the
performers slipped into the smaller tent and hurried on their costumes.

The band played on; Arduina danced a measured dance on the tight
rope which was stretched near the ground; the clown made his funny
jokes; Antonio performed his clever feats on the bars; Elvira rode the
galloping horses with Cara dancing in and out and everywhere, while
Giovanni cracked the whip and Paulo held the bar for Il Duca to leap.
The pantomime then brought shouts of laughter and loud hand-clappings
from the spectators; and afterward the tumbling began.

There was nothing that Olga loved so much, and she showed it in every
line of her chubby, yet nimble little figure as she came prancing into
the ring, and then went heels over head, over and over again, without
stopping to breathe, as far as the strip of dusty carpet stretched.
Then back again she tumbled, only stopping to toss a stray wisp of hair
from her flushed face.

Next Arduina came tripping in, and over and over she went too, not so
gracefully and daintily as Olga had done, for Arduina was getting a
little too large for that kind of thing,--a great girl of fifteen years.

The clown followed Arduina, dressed in his clumsy suit of black
and white, and what a farce his tumbling was, to be sure; only the
spectators must have known that he failed in order to make them laugh
at his awkwardness, and make merry they did.

Somehow Natale never quite enjoyed the laughter which often accompanied
his own performances, and now his time had come.

“_Ecco!_ Natalino!” called his stepfather, the clown, rushing behind
the curtain all breathless and covered with dust. “Over and over and
over you go, youngster, without stopping to sneeze between!”

Natale was such a little fellow, so much smaller than Olga even, that
many of the faces outside the ring softened at sight of him, as he
darted out into the light of the lamps and then halted to make his
funny little salute. He was dressed in imitation of the clown, in long
black trousers and a tailed black coat, with a pointed white waistcoat
reaching below his waist. With an earnest seriousness very different
from Olga’s smiling grace, Natale turned his first somersault, paused
on his back, turned another jerkily, while the little boys watching
him hooted, and a ripple of laughter ran around the ring. Back again
he came, however, his thin black legs sprawling in air, and his pale
little face flushing with the exertion. On his feet again, he clapped
one hand to the back of his neck, bobbed his head to the spectators,
and trotted off behind the friendly curtain, satisfied that he had,
at least, done as well as usual, and pleased with the loud clapping
attending his exit. Indeed, there was a clapping and a calling out of
something with laughing voices.

“_Il picino! Il picino!_”[3]

[Footnote 3: “The little boy! The little boy!”]

“You will have to go back, Natalino,” laughed the clown. “Salute them
and stand on your head, boy, but don’t lose it on the way.”

The music played loudly, and Natale stepped gravely back again, made
his odd little bow, and fell over on his hands as the first step toward
standing on his head. Poor, stiff little legs! It took more than one
effort to throw them into an upright position above his head, but
finally he really did accomplish it, and stood thus several seconds
while the shouting and laughing went on.

When Natale had disappeared a second time behind the curtain, there
were a few grave faces among the laughing ones looking on. An English
lady whispered to her companion and sighed.

“The poor little fellow is evidently afraid to disobey that dreadful
clown,” she said. “Did you see how he trembled as the man stood over
him, when he tried to stand on his head? Something ought to be done to
put a stop to this, Betty.”

“The child looks weak, as if he were not very well fed,” Betty
answered, “but I do not think he looks unhappy. And the clown was
certainly smiling, and seemed to be standing by as if to help the
little boy accomplish his wonderful feat, I thought. Don’t distress
yourself, Aunty. He is just learning, it may be, and they bring him in
to contrast him with that little beauty who turned the ‘wheels.’ Send
the boy some good bread and meat to-morrow, and that will be better for
him than our empty sympathy.”

But “Aunty” was not satisfied, as we shall see.

The last act of the evening again brought Natale to the fore. The big
spotted horse, Il Duca, was again brought into the ring, and after he
had cantered gaily around inside the ring many times, to the music of
a schottisch, striking terror to the ladies occupying the front seats,
with their knees pressed against the low barrier, the clown suddenly
called a halt and caught the bridle of the panting steed. Gently the
solemn strains of the “Dead March” sounded through the tent, and Il
Duca fell slowly and painfully upon his knees, and then rolled over
upon the ground, apparently dying. The light dust of the ring stirred
under the beast’s laboring nostrils, and deep groans issued from his
throat, while Giovanni stood mournfully by and the music played on.




CHAPTER IV

THE FESTIVAL OF SAN LORENZO


SUDDENLY the small black figure of Natale appeared, kneeling at the
horse’s side, although no one had seen him slip in. With his hands
clasped in distress, he lifted his voice in such a disconsolate wail
that even Betty started and wondered if the horse could be really dying.

The solemn march was still sounding in the tent, and before speaking
the clown gave the spectators full time to take in the tragic tableau.
Then he exclaimed briskly:

“What are you crying about, boy?”

“Because our horse is dead.”

“Do you think he is quite dead, Natale?”

“Oh, quite,” wailed the child.

“Get up and feel his pulse, boy. If there is any pulse he is not dead.”

Natale went nearer and took one of the great hoofs of the horse
fearlessly into his little hands, and felt for the “pulse.”

“Well, what do you find?” asked the clown impatiently.

“There isn’t any pulse,” the little fellow wailed again, laying down
the big black hoof with the utmost tenderness.

“Too bad,” quoth the clown, taking his seat deliberately on the
prostrate horse, which lay as motionless as if certainly dead. Then,
all in a moment, Natale’s manner changed, and he skipped around in
front of Giovanni, remarking glibly that the gentleman had found a
beautiful sofa to sit upon.

“And I shall have a kiss to prove that the beast is not dead,”
exclaimed the clown, chirruping a little and smacking his lips. And the
great brown head of the horse lifted itself from the dust, the graceful
neck turned, and Il Duca actually kissed his master, then scrambled
hastily to his feet as if glad for that job to be over, while Giovanni
hurried him out of the ring.

“Such silly jokes!” commented Mrs. Bishop, otherwise Aunty, as the
performance ended, and the rollicking crowd poured out of the tent.
“Think of my having spent two whole hours listening to them, and all
on pins too, for fear that poor, ill-used child should be forced to do
some other unchristian thing.”

“But, Aunty, what did you expect when you came?” Betty asked
impatiently. “Surely the little show was not bad, and there was
actually nothing but what was quite decent in every way.”

“I call it ‘bad’ to beat and starve children into turning themselves
into monkeys.”

“If people would not go to see the ‘monkeys’ it would be stopped,” was
Betty’s retort.

“Well, I am sure I only went to oblige Mrs. Choky,” Aunty said in an
injured tone. “She said she thought we ought to encourage the poor
people on their first night. But it will be my last night there, as I
shall very soon inform her. ‘Encourage’ them to martyrize that poor
child, indeed!”

From the first performance in Cutigliano, therefore, Natale’s trouble
began, although he did not know it. Contented and tired he lay down
in his corner of the brown house on wheels and went to sleep, while
the men let down the big yellow canvas of the large tent and furled it
about the pole. But first, he ate his supper of macaroni with the rest
of the actors, gathered in the small tent behind. Midnight suppers were
the rule on the nights when there were performances, as it would have
been at the risk of upsetting their stomachs in more ways than one to
eat food beforehand.

Later, the stars kept quiet watch above the little encampment, where
even Pietro slept well, with the open house door admitting the fresh
air of the mountains.

For ten days the yellow “mushroom” spread over the grass of the field,
although very much in the way of the fine city gentlemen, playing
at ball with bats like tambourines. The noisy music at night and
the cheering in the tent may have kept the invalids in the nearest
boarding-houses awake and nervous, and the people at large may have
grown tired of the performances which they soon learned by heart,
but no one felt inclined to hustle the poor people away, and no one
grumbled except Mrs. Bishop.

There was something pathetic about the clown in his everyday dress,
his gayety and paint all gone and the deep lines of his face showing
too plainly in the garish light of day, as he pottered about the tent,
adjusting ropes, and keeping off the village boys who would throw
stones upon the old canvas, or play hide and seek among the curtains.
It gave one a queer feeling, also, to fancy the drooping figure of
Pietro, with his pure little face like alabaster, a member of the
“wicked circus troop.”

This child was perhaps twelve years old, and he had the face of an
angel. He had begun to lose his daily feverishness after a week in the
mountains, and was soon able to limp, and later to run feebly about the
field with the village boys.

[Illustration: Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden
terrace. _Page 45._]

But Natale, spidery little Natale, interested every one more even than
did Pietro. Yet he looked only an everyday lad during the long summer
days, when he trotted up and down, to and from the town, carrying now
a bowl of this, now a flask of that, but always carrying something. To
most people he seemed as happy as the days were long, just as ready
for a chat with a strange foreigner who might address him in broken
Italian as with old Sora Teresa who sold fruit and vegetables in the
piazza, and who sometimes presented him with a ripe red tomato, or a
slice of melon all green and pink.

But Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace of
Madame Cioche’s boarding-house every day, and slowly formed a plan for
making Natale’s life happier. Poor little Natale!

The terrace garden above the field was shaded with plane trees and the
mountain ash, and the grass was soft and richly green. Each afternoon
some of the boarders would gather at the palings on the edge of this
garden and watch the gentlemen playing ball below, and the village boys
imitating Olga and Natale at turning somersaults and wheels.

One afternoon, while the boarders were drinking tea under the ash
trees, with the berries overhead turning red, and the sun streaming
across the croquet ground, there came a knock at the side door of the
boarding-house. Madame Cioche herself opened the door, and there stood
Natale, smiling up into her face, with the old blue hat set far back on
his dark curls. The lady noticed that the boy’s face was very clean.

“Happy day to you,” he said brightly, using the peasant form of
address, “and my mamá says will you please send her a cup of tea? She
is feeling ill to-day.”

Of course Madame Cioche would send the tea, fetching it herself from
the dining room and handing it to the boy. But she kept Natale a moment
to ask how it was that his mamá could possibly like tea.

“Oh, but she has it every day when we are in Egypt,” was the reply.
“And to-day her head aches. Thank you, Signora.” And Natale went off
down the hill carrying the big cup as carefully as his bowls and flasks
were always carried.

Mrs. Bishop overheard the word “Egypt” and sighed.

The next day was Sunday and an important festival, being the day of
San Lorenzo. A great harvest of _soldi_ was expected, as peasants from
all the mountain villages would come trooping in that day, to go to
high mass in the church under the old mountain firs, and to take part
in the procession of the “saints” in the afternoon. So there was, of
course, to be a performance in the tent that day, but in the afternoon
this time, just after the procession, instead of in the evening, when
everybody would be tired or toiling homeward along the dark mountain
ways. As there was nothing for him to do about the tent, however, until
five o’clock should boom from the stone tower of the church, Natale
made good use of his legs during the whole day, for there was much to
see.

Betty Bishop had tossed a penny into his hands down over the garden
palings that very Sunday morning. Perhaps she was thinking of some
little child at home in England who would be clamoring for a penny
to carry to Sunday school, but Natale had no thought of dropping his
precious two _soldi_ into the priest’s collecting bag in the church.

The _piazza_ was too fascinating a place to be passed by, when one held
a penny of his own fast in his fist. With the dogs on each side of him,
therefore, Natale spent most of the day above in the town, going from
booth to booth, and in fancy spending his money over and over again.
There were sweets of various kinds offered for sale on the little
tables along the steep, narrow streets, and booths of everything from
coarse stuffs and ready-made clothing to breastpins of gay mosaic work
and filigree rings.

Everywhere Natale was jostled by the peasants who all through the
morning had flocked to the town, dressed in their best clothes and
wearing holiday looks on their faces. The women and girls wore gay
kerchiefs on their heads, with brilliant borderings and flowing ends,
while even the men wore bits of vivid color in the shape of gorgeous
neck scarfs spread over their white shirt fronts. Mingled with these
walked the lords and ladies of a higher class dressed according to the
fashion plates of Paris, and seeming to enjoy the hot sunshine and the
gay restiveness of the multitude as much as the plainer folk. All day
the frolic and prayers and the music of the town band and the church
organ went on in the little town, till mid-afternoon, when there fell a
hush over all and a great expectation.

Natale had not a very good place from which to see the procession pass,
for he stood between a very stout peasant woman and a visiting priest
in his full black gown. Still, he managed to peer from under their
elbows without attracting their attention, and he was content, holding
securely in one hand, meanwhile, the balloon whistle which he had
finally purchased with his penny. The pretty red bubble of rubber had
not yet burst, and Natale was happy in its possession. The handful of
crisp wafers flavored with anise seed, which he had almost bought--so
very foolish he had been--would have been eaten long ere this, and it
would be as if he had never had a penny of his own tossed over the
fence to him by a smiling young lady, but now he still had the whistle!

On they came, the straggling company of men and boys, dressed in white
gowns and cowls, and bearing huge lighted candles in their hands.
Natale thought he would like to have been one of the two boys bearing
the immense candlesticks of brass; yet, after all, the candlesticks
must be very heavy, and they were propped very uncomfortably on the
little boys’ stomachs, and very red and perspiring were the little
boys’ faces.

Natale thought the men’s feet ugly and clumsy, showing below the white
gowns, and their harsh, chanting voices made him shiver. But he could
not follow the awkward marching steps of the peasants with laughing
looks as some of the onlookers were doing, for here, behind the banners
and crucifixes, came two very curious-looking objects.

“_Ecco!_ the dead saints!” he exclaimed softly to himself. “How heavy
they must be in the glass boxes on the men’s shoulders. Yet our Antonio
Bisbini would never bend so under a small box as those men do. Ah!
but the little girls are pretty, so pretty in their white veils, and
scattering flowers before the saints.”

The crowd closed in upon the end of the procession now, and Natale
could see no more, as he was nearly overturned where he stood. After
a breathless moment or two, he found himself left in peace and quiet
under the great old fir trees in front of the church, with the crowd
all gone and Nicro and Bianco with them.

Nonna had told him to be sure and see the saints, if possible, so he
went into the dark old church and sat down on a low chair to wait for
the procession to return. He knew that San Lorenzo and Sant’ Aurelio
would surely be brought back to spend the night in the church, perhaps
in front of the candle-lighted altar, and he wished to please Nonna. It
was dark and quiet in his corner under the organ gallery, and it was a
very easy and natural thing for a tired little boy to fall asleep in
that quiet place.

When the procession returned after half an hour, it was without the
blare of trumpets and the crash of organ music, though for a long
while shuffling feet passed in and out. This continued until everybody
had looked at the two saints robed in costly garments and reposing now
at full length on their satin cushions within their caskets of glass
set before the altar. Many touched the rich cloths draping the caskets
with reverent fingers, and pressed kisses on the cold glass before
passing out into the radiant sunset light.

When Natale waked, the church doors were still open, but only one light
swung before the high altar, and there was no trace anywhere of dead
saint or living soul. He groped his way among the disarranged chairs
and benches quite to the altar rail, but even the empty biers had been
borne away to some inner recess of the church, so, with a dread that
he had overslept awaking in his mind, Natale found his way out of the
church again.

The purple bloom of evening was creeping up the mountain sides, and a
star glowed in the sky. Just above the mountain line in the west the
crescent moon hovered, as if uncertain over which side to sink. The
dread in Natale’s mind had nothing to do with saints or dark churches.
On awaking, his first sensation had been a fear that he might have
missed the afternoon performance in the beloved tent, and now, standing
outside the church in the dusk, he knew that he had missed it!

With a sob in his throat he turned his face from the telltale sky,
and fled through the village down to the field. When he reached the
wagon,--for he would not go to the tent, quiet now and unlighted,--the
first words he heard came from Olga:

“Have you not heard, Natalino? Giovanni has lost a hundred francs!
Somebody stole them when he changed his coat in the little tent. Yes, I
know you were not there! We wondered where you could be!”




CHAPTER V

A GIFT FOR THE CIRCUS


NATALE held his breath with horror. One hundred francs lost! And he
not at hand to hear of it, to help look for the money, among the very
first? He could not ask Olga how it had happened, because his heart was
almost too disappointed and sore for words. He sat down on the wall,
with his back toward the tent, and waited for her to tell all about the
loss, although he was not at all certain that she would condescend to
do so. In fact, she said not a word more, but stood in front of Natale,
wondering not a little at his unusual quiet.

“You are sulky!” she exclaimed finally, “and Giovanni is very angry
with you. So am I, for I had to feel Il Duca’s pulse, and I did not
like it at all. Suppose he had kicked me, seeing that it was not you.”

“Il Duca was dead!” Natale retorted, with a twinkle in his eye, if only
Olga could have seen it. “He would not know you from me!”

“Dead!” cried Olga. “I believe you truly do think that, when you set up
your crying, Natale; really I did not do it half so well as you,” she
confessed honestly.

“But you ‘wheel’ much better than I do,” Natale conceded with ready
generosity in return.

“Il Duca did not shut his eyes at all,” Olga went on, nodding assent
to Natale’s remark, “and I am sure he _winked_ at me, Natale, just to
frighten me. It did not take _me_ long to feel his pulse! But where
were you, Natalino, all the time? Nonna said she was afraid some of the
peasants had stolen you and carried you off, when Niero and Bianco
came home without you.”

“As if they would have let anybody steal me! Olga, I went to sleep in
the church, waiting for the saints to come back, and when I waked it
was dark, almost as dark as this!”

“Oho! then you must have been in the church when Arduina and I went
in to look at the saints. Arduina said--but you must not dare to tell
anybody--she said that she did not believe there were any bones under
the saints’ fine velvet robes because San Lorenzo had a hand of pink
wax, and the rest of him looked rather stuffed. But do not tell Nonna,
Natale!”

“Arduina is very wicked,” said Natale, but he laughed with Olga, and
then felt much better, and as if he could ask about the losing of the
money.

They were in a little nook to themselves, behind the wagon, and no one
heeded them.

“_Ecco!_ it was this way,” Olga began, charmed to be the first to
recount the misfortune to Natale, who was usually behind none in his
knowledge of the affairs of the company. “Just when Giovanni was going
in to do the clown in the first dance on the rope, the Signor Barbera,
the stable man, came behind the big tent with his bill for keeping the
horses, and Giovanni took the big pocketbook out of the pocket of his
coat--”

“Yes, I know which pocket,” Natale interposed. “I saw him put the money
there this morning.”

“Well, the signor could not make the change, so he told Giovanni it was
all right, and any time would do, and then Antonio rang the bell for
Giovanni, and he just put the pocketbook back in his coat and hung the
coat on the nail in the little tent, and hurried on the black coat, and
went into the ring.”

“Yes, and then?” asked Natale breathlessly.

“When he came back, he saw his coat on the ground, and he knew he had
hung it up. ‘How comes my coat on the ground?’ he said, very loud
indeed, and your mamá told him he must have put it there himself. But
he did not hear her, because he was shaking the coat and feeling in the
pocket,--but there was nothing there!

“We made a great fuss about it,” Olga ended, shrugging her shoulders
and throwing up her hands, “but what was the use?”

Natale was silent with dismay. A hundred francs meant so much. It was
all that they had made during the ten days’ stay at Cutigliano, and now
it was gone, in a moment.

“The stable man?” he questioned in a distressed tone of voice, and very
low.

“No, Giovanni said it could not have been the signor. He is a rich man
and honest, everybody says.”

So subdued were they all over the trouble of the afternoon that
not even Elvira thought it worth while to scold the quiet boy who
presently slipped in among the little crowd of players in the tent,
deep in fruitless discussion over their grievous loss. They had had a
crowded tent that afternoon, and the receipts had been so good that
this evening would have been one of rejoicing if only the money for
the labors of the ten other days and nights had been again safe in
Giovanni’s pocket. There was not the slightest clew to the thief, as
no stranger had been known to enter the tent, and Giovanni had even
interviewed the Signor Barbera from outside the doorway. It had been
necessary to be on the lookout for possible thieving, as the field was
crowded all the afternoon with strange peasants, attracted by the band
music and the big yellow tent, and by peddlers with their wares. One
very decent-looking peddler had begged pretty, vain Arduina to look at
his beautiful jewelry and ribbons, but she had refused him entrance
very reluctantly, and Giovanni himself had noticed how patiently and
decorously the man had turned away. He had worn a red fez cap over his
long black hair, and his bushy black beard had reached nearly to his
waist.

“I saw him!” Emilio, one of the musicians exclaimed, “and his legs
were as crooked as Pietro’s, only they bent out at the knee instead of
in!” There was a laugh at this sally, but Pietro frowned and muttered
something about Emilio’s having little right to criticize the legs of
others.

“I met such a man as I came out of the church in the crowd,” said
Nonna, hastening to speak that a dispute might be avoided. “He walked
very well notwithstanding his poor, bent legs, and he asked me if he
were too late to get a glimpse of the blessed relics. A politer man I
never saw, though Tito was afraid of him, and began to cry when the man
snapped his fingers at him.”

Poor Natale felt so left out in the cold with this talk that he could
not bear it long, and was just about to creep away, down to his corner
in the wagon, when a strange hand lifted a corner of the tent flap, and
a strange voice inquired for “_Il piccolo Natale_.”

“Some ladies up at the house there have a little present for you all,”
the black-coated Italian butler of the boarding-house announced,
peering in upon the group gathered about the sputtering lamp inside,
“but they wish to send it down by the boy, Natale.”

Then Natale was himself again, and without demur or bashfulness
presented himself to the servant.

“It is well you turned up in time, Natalino,” said the clown, giving
him a little shove toward the dignified butler waiting just outside.
“Perhaps Olga would not have done, in this case. Off with you to the
_forestieri_[4] above!”

[Footnote 4: Foreigners.]

Many a boy would have been abashed at finding himself the center of
such a group as awaited Natale in the hallway of the house in the
garden. But Natale was too well accustomed to an array of faces fixed
upon him to make the least show of bashfulness. The lady of the house,
whose pleasant face he knew very well, laid her hand on his shoulder
and asked him kindly in Italian if anything had been heard of the money
lost that afternoon, and her soft, dark eyes looked sympathetically
into his own.

“No, signora, and my papá says we shall never see a _soldo_ of it
again,” was Natale’s prompt answer.

“Ask him if they have any idea of the person who stole it,” Betty
Bishop suggested in English, and Madame Cioche did so. Natale’s answer
to this was more expressive than polite perhaps, for without words
he simply raised his shoulders as high as possible, pressing his
elbows against his sides, and spreading his hands wide to indicate the
complete ignorance of his people as to the coward who had taken their
hard-earned money. And the drawn-down corners of his mouth so changed
the expression of his face that one would hardly have known him.

“Who would have believed the child could make himself so ugly,” Mrs.
Bishop exclaimed. “Have you no tongue, boy, to answer properly?”

But as English words were far less intelligible to Natale than
Caffero’s whinny, or Niero’s bark, he only looked up into Madame
Cioche’s face and smiled.

“There! it is a bonny little face after all,” said that lady, “and now
shall we give him the money and send him away?”

“No, let me speak to him first,” demanded Mrs. Bishop, “and you, Mrs.
Choky, must interpret. Ask him if he likes to be a wicked little circus
boy.”

“Aunty!” gasped Betty.

“Never mind, I have a reason for my question, Betty. Hush, what does he
say?”

“Do you like to play in the circus, dear?” asked Mrs. Cioche’s kind
voice, in Italian.

Natale’s eyes shone.

“Ah, yes, signora! And when I am a man, I shall be another Antonio
Bisbini.”

“He says he likes it very much, Mrs. Bishop,” was the interpretation.

“Already corrupted, poor boy, and so young!” the old lady sighed, while
Betty laughed outright.

“Ask him if he would not like better to have some nice clothes, and go
to school, and grow up to be a decent man some day, Mrs. Choky.” That
lady hesitated a little before putting this question into Italian.

“What does she say to me?” Natale asked, his brown eyes twinkling as he
looked from one to the other, his teeth showing white between his red
lips. Natale’s was a wide, good-natured mouth, very prone to laugh upon
small provocation.

“She wants to know if you would not like to go to school, and learn to
read and write,” said Madame Cioche.

“And leave the _circo_?” Natale asked with a gasp.

“Yes, you could not go to school unless you should stop in one place,
you know.”

“And not travel about with the horses and wagon any more, and leave
Nonna?”

“Of course, Natale. But she is only asking you about it, _carino_, so
do not look so troubled.”

Natale laughed then, and happily.

“She wanted to find out how much I love the _circo_!” he exclaimed.
“Please tell her, signora. You know, how we all love the _circo_!”

“I think I do, Natale. He does not want to go to school, Mrs. Bishop,”
turning to the eager old lady, “because he loves his life with the
circus and his own people too much.”

“And he does not wish to leave his grandmother,” chimed in Betty who
had very cleverly picked up a good deal of Italian during a winter and
summer in Italy, and all grandmothers are Nonnas in that land.

Mrs. Bishop was silent for a moment, her gaze taking in every detail
of Natale’s little figure standing sturdily before her, dusty shoes,
and rough peasant leggings, velveteen trousers, faded blue blouse, and
rumpled curls, with the old hat held in one sun-burned hand. His face
was not so clean as usual now, and there were tired circles about his
eyes. It had been a long, exciting summer’s day.

“Children--especially boys--do not know what is best for themselves,”
she said presently, bending her brows, but not in the least frightening
Natale, “and I am not going to give up my plan, for this baby’s
nonsense. Why, he cannot be over eight years old, at the most.”

“Here, Natale,” said Madame Cioche, judging that the interview might
well be concluded, and handing the boy a small packet. “Take this to
your papá, and tell him that the ladies and gentlemen in my house have
heard of the loss of the money, and are sending him thirty-five francs
as a little present. Can you carry it safely?”

Again Natale’s sweet smile broke over his face, but he only nodded
happily in reply, tucking the money away in the bosom of his blouse.

“Ask him how long they are going to stay,” Mrs. Bishop called after
Madame Cioche, who was going to the gate with Natale.

“He says that the _sindaco_--the mayor--has offered them the use of the
field for another week,” Madame Cioche said, her eyes glowing, as she
returned to the hall. “I am glad of that, as the poor creatures will
need all they can make here, now.”

“I call it a sort of punishment, their losing the money when playing on
Sunday,” Mrs. Bishop said severely, and one or two other English ladies
nodded their approval of this speech. “And I think the whole business
wrong and that it ought to be discouraged. I was not at all sure about
the propriety of giving my francs to your little collection, Mrs.
Choky.”

“Would it have been more Christian to have let them suffer, perhaps for
food, and the poor beasts too?” the hostess asked, pausing on her way
through the hall.

“But surely you think circusing wrong and _un_christian?” the
disputative old lady exclaimed.

“Aunty, do be quiet,” cried Betty warmly. “I am sure you ought not to
dispute ‘on Sunday’! Besides,” she added, as everybody laughed, and two
or three softly applauded, “they make their living that way, and we
cannot change them into farmers, or preachers. But I think it is always
wrong not to help honest people who are in trouble.”

“If they _are_ honest,” Mrs. Bishop remonstrated, but under her breath,
this time, for Madame Cioche’s eyes were sparkling, and she seemed
waiting to speak.

“Those poor creatures down there deserve nothing but praise,” she said
stoutly; “they are quiet folks, who teach their children obedience and
keep themselves remarkably clean and mended. If they make their living
in a way we do not approve, we cannot change them, as Miss Betty says,
but we can feed them when they are hungry, and that seems to me not
‘unchristian’!”

“I am afraid she has a little temper,” said Mrs. Bishop, as their
hostess went upstairs.

“A temper I like!” exclaimed a gentleman who had before kept silent,
looking up from his book. “But do you still think of carrying out your
plan, Mrs. Bishop?”

“If possible, certainly,” was the reply, while Betty, shaking her head,
walked out into the garden. There, under the stars, she stood looking
down upon the tent in the field. There was no wind, and the heavens
were fair, so the canvas had not been furled.

“I should like it myself,” she murmured. “What a fascinating life to
live! Camping out the year round in Italy, with no troublesome dressing
four times a day, no tiresome _table-d’hôte_ dinners at night. But
after all I should not like to be that girl,--Arduina, they call her.
Of course, Aunty is right about the rope dancing and other ‘circusing’
on Sunday, only she need not be quite so fussy over what we certainly
cannot help. Poor Natale! how disturbed he did look when Madame Cioche
asked him about going to school!”




CHAPTER VI

SEPARATION


NATALE lay flat on the grass, his face hidden on his arms, and his feet
rebelliously kicking the ground. The added week granted by the mayor
had passed, and the circus-wagon was about to move on.

“You are only to try it, child, and if it will not do, you can come
back to us. One year is not a hundred.”

No reply from Natale.

“You ought to think, sometimes, of how many mouths your stepfather has
to fill,” another voice began. “Five children, and not one his own.”

“Why did he marry us then?” fiercely muttered Natale, but without
lifting his head, so perhaps nobody heard.

“You will have new clothes and shoes!”

“And a new hat, Natalino!”

“And you will learn to read much faster than I can teach you ’Lino,
with all the practicings and the journeyings. Perhaps you will even
learn to be as clever as my Antonio was, before--” Nonna ended with a
sigh instead of more words.

The women and girls were in the side tent, busied about dinner, and
Nonna would not finish her sentence in the presence of Antonio’s wife.

“I would rather be our Antonio than--than the King or the
_principino_,”[5] Natale cried helplessly. Then he sat up on the worn
grass, and faced them all, tearful but resolute. “I shall not stay here
with the priest and go to school, mamá,” he said earnestly. “You shall
not leave me behind and take Maria and Pietro and the rest.”

[Footnote 5: Young prince.]

“Perhaps we can persuade Giovanni to leave little Bianco with you, if
the good priest does not object,” Nonna whispered in his ear.

“No, I shall go with you,” returned Natale.

“Ah! what is all this?” came suddenly in Giovanni’s gruff, good-natured
tones. “What? Natale will not stay? The beautiful little star of the
ring will not leave us in the darkness?” And the clown entered the tent
and flung himself down, laughing, beside the little boy.

“Hurry with the polenta, Arduina,” he called to his stepdaughter, who
had lifted her hot face from the steam of the mush pot to laugh at the
man’s rough wit. “The biggest hole yet torn in the tent must be mended
this afternoon, and the canvas is almost dry now in this wind. If it
had not rained yesterday, and if the wind had not played us such a
trick on the very eve of our going, we should have made our fortunes
yesterday. A cattle fair does not offer itself every day, with its
crowd of country bumpkins who never saw a man in tights. Now, that will
do, Natale,” turning to the boy, who was sniffing audibly. “Hours ago
it was all decided, and there is nothing more to be said.”

“Then I am _not_ to stay in this horrid place, Giovanni--papá--”

“‘Giovanni--papá--!’ No more of these tears, Natalino. You are to stay
in this beautiful place, and after polenta, you are to go up to the
garden and thank the lady.”

With a loud, rebellious howl, Natale sprang to his feet and rushed
out into the open air. Nor did he stop until he stood among the briar
bushes below the garden palings. Clenching his small grimy fists, he
stood there looking up toward the many-windowed _pension_ and shook
them vehemently, while his shrill voice cried out passionately:

“I shall not stay here! I shall not go to school! I like my old hat,
and I want Nonna to teach me to read. I shall never thank you, _never_,
NEVER, NEVER!”

He had seen no one in the garden, and was only addressing the whole
houseful of his enemies up there in the big yellow building with the
staring windows. Why should they interfere with him? Why should any one
be trying to make him wretched,--the most wretched boy in all Italy?

“Heyday! what’s all this about?” and a white-haired old man, speaking
from the garden, came close to the palings and looked over at the
small, threatening figure among the bushes. “I cannot understand your
gibberish, if you are talking to me. You would better go away now,
little boy, or some of your people will come and whip you.”

“How suddenly you stopped the noise, Mr. Grantly,” exclaimed Betty,
coming up to his side. “Who was it? Why, Aunty’s little protégé,
Natale! How pitiful he looks, walking away as if his feelings were
hurt. You must have frightened him.”

“Not a bit of it, ma’am. He frightened _me_ with his fierce little
voice. It came suddenly, just as I was dropping off to sleep in my
chair. It is a relief to have them moving on this afternoon, with
their horns and drum. But that boy stays, some one tells me. Is it
possible that the family agreed to give him up? I have understood that
the Italians cling to each other as much as even we do in America or
England. Do they really leave the child?”

“For more money than he could ever bring them by his somersaulting,
yes,” Betty answered. “Sometimes I think Aunty really does not know
what to do with her money,” the girl went on confidentially to the
old gentleman, who was listening with interest. “Now, that boy has no
desire to be taken away from ‘the evil life he is leading’ in Aunty’s
estimation, and he does not wish to be sent to school and become ‘a
decent man.’”

“Ah! tell me the whole plan, now. I heard something of it a few days
ago.”

“It is very simple--all but getting Natale to agree to being imposed
upon,” Betty went on a little vexedly. “Aunty has had the stepfather
and the mother up here several times this past week to be talked to,
and an old woman who seems to be the grandmother of them all. Miss
Lorini has done all the interpreting, and also saw the priest about it,
as Madame Cioche would not. They have agreed to leave Natale here for
one year; he is to be taken care of by the priest’s mother, and to be
sent to school and made ‘decent,’ poor little fellow.”

Mr. Grantly laughed, but said nothing, for his heart was still young
and understanding of boyish hearts, if his head was white, and he felt
a wise interest in Mrs. Bishop’s philanthropic scheme.

“Aunty is to pay everything, and she says she thinks she knows now why
all the hotels up at Abetone were full so she could not get a good
room there for these three weeks. She finds that she was ‘ordained’
to rescue a boy from his persecutors, as she persists in calling
the circus men. It is supposed, I believe, that all little boys and
girls of circuses have been stolen from kind parents, and if not are
half-killed with cruelty by their own.”

“You speak very warmly, young lady,” Mr. Grantly remarked, a little
reproof in his tone. “There is no doubt that many such children do
suffer and are very unhappy.”

“Those certainly do not!” retorted Betty, pointing to a number of the
circus children frolicking in the field with Niero and Bianco. Olga’s
red cotton dress was flitting over the grass, and her merry laugh was
echoed by the other little ones, as Niero finally caught her red skirts
in the chase.

“Of course the clown objected at first,” Betty continued, “but Aunty
was more determined than he and soon proved to him that it would be
worth his while to agree. The old lady, whom they call Nonna, was
curiously anxious for Natale to have a chance at schooling. I wondered
at that till I heard about her son.”

“Yes, I know,” Mr. Grantly assented. “Some, however, would think he
had made a very fair exchange in giving up the future of a priest for
the easy, out-of-doors life of an acrobat. There is no accounting for
tastes, though. And is this boy to be made a priest?”

“Only let my Aunty hear you say that!” laughed the girl. “No, indeed,
but the priest was the only one who would agree to be troubled with
the child, after Miss Lorini had explained all Aunty’s conditions--how
Natale was to have a cold bath every morning, meat to eat every day,
and new shoes as soon as his old ones come into holes. The priest,
too, has agreed to write a letter to Aunty every month to tell her of
Natale’s progress--”

“Toward growing into a ‘decent man’?” interposed Mr. Grantly. “Well, I
hope the plan will work well for all parties. Few Italian peasant lads
get such a chance.” Then the old gentleman went back to his chair to
continue his nap.

All that afternoon, until four o’clock, there was an unusual bustle
going on about the little encampment. The tattered, damp, half-ruined
canvas was rolled up and packed along with poles and planks and ropes
on a small cart hired for this occasion, while the cooking utensils
and the scant furniture of the tents were gathered together for
conveyance in the house-wagon. It was a cold and dreary day, following
the night of stormy wind, with the clouds settling close about the
mountain tops and the wind sweeping down the valley wet with rain. And
in the heart of Natale there was even less promise of sunshine. He sat
apart from the others on the damp wall, frowning and sullen.

Half an hour before, he had been almost forcibly dragged up the hill
to the house in the garden by Giovanni, who had made little jokes to
hide the sulkiness of the boy’s replies to the questions of the ladies
gathered there. Madame Cioche had promptly hidden herself when she saw
the green gate open and the pair coming in, but the clown had walked
directly through the hall and up to the little table where Mrs. Bishop
sat taking her tea.

No command of Giovanni nor persuasion of Miss Lorini, who was an
artist, could induce Natale to say: “Thank you, signora, for your
kindness.” His revolt had been beforehand hushed into silence by some
very plain threats of punishment by his mother, but nothing could make
him say that he was glad to stay in Cutigliano and go to school every
day.

He stood before them all, miserable as a child could be, his face very
clean and pale, and a new pair of shoes already upon his feet. They
pinched his toes woefully, but his heart ached more than his feet.

“You will love the signora very much, some day, when you are a man
and remember how good she was to the poor little boy who knew nothing
but how to turn somersaults,” Miss Lorini had said caressingly in her
softest Italian, studying the piteous face meanwhile with an eye to
painting it some day, when it should smile again.

“I shall learn to do something besides the _capitomboli_,[6] when I
am a man,” Natale had said eagerly. “I shall be like our Antonio some
day.” Perhaps these foreigners would be willing to leave him in peace
if he could convince them that he _wished_ to be a strolling player all
his life.

[Footnote 6: Somersaults.]

“He speaks as if he does not exactly understand,” said Miss Lorini,
looking at Giovanni inquiringly. “Does he not know that he is to give
up the circus now?”

Giovanni shrugged his shoulders, then shook Natale’s slender shoulder,
muttering:

“No more of your silly talk, boy!” Then louder, “If you will not thank
the lady, I do, with all my heart.” And with that he bowed low, then
pushing Natale before him, went quickly away. He was, in secret, rather
sorry for the boy, who had never before given any trouble with foolish
willfulness, and who had moreover such high ambitions! It did seem a
stupid life to which they were leaving the poor child, but then there
was to be considered the roll of money already sewed into his own
belt, with more to accumulate there, if Natale should be left still
another year with the priest Luigi. If rich _forestieri_ had nothing
else to do with their money but give it away in this frantic fashion,
the stepfather was not unwilling to share the bounty, and Elvira, the
mother, had seemed not to mind.

So now Natale sat alone on the wall, feeling very much out of it all,
and longing to hear some one say, “Natalino, do fetch me this”, or
“Carry that”; but no one said anything of the kind. They seemed to feel
that he was no longer one of them, and his little heart swelled to
breaking.

He was too young to long harbor ill-will and of too sunny a spirit
to sulk for many minutes at a time, so presently he slipped off the
wall and ran to meet Olga, who was struggling over to the traveling
house-on-wheels, dragging two stools behind her. The very last things
were being done, and already the horses were standing by, ready to be
hitched at the last moment.

“Do let me carry the stools, Olga,” Natale pleaded with unwonted
entreaty in his voice. “Well, one of them, then.”

“I am sorry you are going to stay behind here, Natalino,” the little
girl panted. “Why do you? I should run after the wagon if I were you!”

Natale had never thought of such a simple thing to do by way of escape!
He promptly set down the stool he had grasped and looked fixedly away
from Olga’s red-brown eyes.

Alas! in that critical moment, what did he see approaching from the
village? The flat, broad-brimmed hat and flowing black skirts of a
priest, descending the street and turning in at the field!

There was then not a moment to be lost! Forgetting Olga and the heavy
stools, Natale turned and fled, away--anywhere--out of sight of the
jailor advancing. Everything flashed out of his mind except the impulse
to escape, to hide himself from those searching eyes under the felt hat
brim. His flying feet skimmed across the field, and when they had borne
him out of sight down the nearest slope, Natale flung himself on the
ground under a thicket of thorny blackberry bushes.

He lay there for what must have been a long time, for, after a while,
a sudden shower of rain swept down the valley and for a few minutes
enveloped everything in a gray mist. Even after it had passed, Natale
delayed returning to the wagon until the priest should have quite gone,
in despair of capturing his prisoner. When at last he did venture
forth, and crept to the upper verge of the slope, his first glance was
across the field for the brown wagon.

It was not there!

He set out in a headlong run for the place where it had stood. There
was nothing left--absolutely nothing. Only a priest sat quietly waiting
in a gap in the wall.

Natale, with eyes only for the deserted spot, came stumbling upon the
man, without so much as seeing that he was there, and then the priest
rose, and taking the boy’s hand, spoke with the utmost quietness.

“Come home with me now, Natalino,” was what he said, and Natale heard
as one hears dream voices.

Poor child! If he had only listened, he might have heard the dull
screeching of the brakes as the wagon crawled carefully down the hill
toward the arched bridge, and it would have been an easy matter to
snatch his hand from the limp grasp of the priest and go hurrying down
the short cuts in pursuit. But his head seemed so full of a hundred
roaring noises that he could not hear, and his heart beat so fast that
he could not speak, and so up the hill he went at the priest’s side.

Nor did he see the quiet smile upon Luigi’s shaven lips, as they passed
the green gate of the garden where Betty stood peering through. She
would not have spoken to the boy just then for all the world, and as
for Madame Cioche, she could not have done so if she had wished. She
gazed down from her latticed window, her bright eyes dimmed as they
fell upon the little caged bird of the fields fluttering by.




CHAPTER VII

THE CAGED BIRD OF THE FIELDS


THERE is a short, crooked street in Cutigliano, which leads back of the
church and out upon the promenade of San Vito. This street is confined
on either hand by stone houses and stone walls of gardens, and paved
with large square stones. Here and there a gateway gives a peep at
lapping hills across the river. The massive church tower rises directly
from a narrow turn in this street, and when the bells ring down from
the arches in the top of this tower, the stony street reverberates with
a deafening clamor.

By the time the priest and Natale reached the foot of the church tower,
the boy was weeping bitterly but quietly. His one free arm hid as much
of his face as possible, and his feet in the clumsy new shoes stumbled
so helplessly that Luigi had some trouble in preventing his falling.

As they had passed through the town, where everybody sat at their doors
or lounged in the _piazza_, all had recognized the little acrobat, as
Natale realized only too well. Many accosted him in wonder, and some
would even have stopped him to inquire into his misfortune in being
left behind by his family. But the young priest motioned such away
with authority, silencing with a gesture of his long finger the too
curious. Others had already learned how it had come about that Natale
was to spend a year with Sora Grazia, and her son the priest, and these
contented themselves with shrugs and smiles for the boy’s companion, as
who should say: “We wish you well of your bargain, Signor priest.”

The great hands of the church clock pointed to ten minutes of four,
as the bell boomed the hour of six. No one, however, ever thought of
consulting the huge figures painted on the stone face of the tower
clock, for those long iron hands had not stirred for many a day.

The deep sound of the bell struck so suddenly upon Natale’s ears that
he started, and dropping his arm from before his eyes, gazed dully
ahead. It was not often that he had strayed farther than this corner of
the old church, and he had never followed the San Vito promenade to the
end. Most of the town was left behind now; whither could this man be
taking him?

A row of houses with numbers in blue figures on one side of the lintels
extended back of the church, but before none of these did Luigi pause.
Next came a low, broken wall, and then a house, detached from its
neighbors and with a long, sloping roof, covered with slabs of slate.
This house had no door opening on the street, and in the blank front
wall there was only a very small window at one corner close under the
eaves. Over a door in the end of the house nearest the church there was
a small crucifix in carved stone set into the wall, but this door was
seemingly closed and unused.

The priest led Natale a few steps farther, to the other end of the
house, and then they left the street and entered a long balcony leading
to a wide-open door.

A middle-aged woman sat just inside this doorway at the foot of a
flight of stairs leading up into the room under the roof. She wore
a kerchief of red and black cotton over her head and tied in a knot
under her chin, and her eyes were bent upon a coarse piece of mending
occupying her work-worn hands.

[Illustration: The priest led Natale to the other end of the house.

_Page 94._]

At Luigi’s heavy step on the stone flooring of the balcony, she
lifted her face to his and something like a smile softened the
expression of her stern features. Her black brows unbent and she made
way for her son to enter by twisting her stool slightly and shifting
her feet. Luigi passed by her and took up his stand in the gathering
gloom of the little passage, his eyes fixed warily upon Natale. The
little boy had released his hand from the priest’s outside the door,
and now stood leaning against the railing of the balcony, staring
frowningly at the woman.

“You are content to have it over with, Gigi?” the mother asked,
glancing from man to boy and back again.

Luigi nodded his head.

“Give him something to eat and put him to bed,” he counseled in a low
tone, “and do not argue with him to-night. To-morrow the sun will shine
and he will begin to forget.”

Natale’s sharp ears caught every word, stolid as he looked. “Forget?”
What did they think he would forget? Not Olga’s last words, certainly:
“I would run after the wagon, if I were you.”

But, _why was he not running now_? No door, as yet, kept him prisoner.
There was the empty street. Below ran the long, long white road. The
night was coming down, and he was not afraid of the dark. Once out
of sight, around one of the loops of the road, it would take but a
moment to slip off the heavy shoes with their soles half an inch thick,
and then on and on in the cool darkness he might run on light bare
feet--“after the wagon.”

He thrilled with the thought as it flashed through his mind, but a
flash of the same thought thrilled Sora Grazia at the same time, for
just then she leaned forward and laying her hand on Natale’s arm, she
drew him to her side.

“Once I had a curly-haired little boy of my own,” she said with a
serious smile, “but after a while, he grew to be a man, and now he has
brought to me another little boy. Natalino, I hope you will be as good
a boy as my Gigi ever was.”

Natale gazed earnestly into the woman’s face.

“I am not at all good, signora,” he said unsteadily, and he could not
help the stirring of hope in his heart, with this confession, but Sora
Grazia only smiled again and tapped his cheek, and said that perhaps
the good Luigi would teach him to be good.

And there was no more opportunity left Natale for running away, for he
was presently led into the kitchen where he had to sit and watch Sora
Grazia prepare the macaroni for supper. He was hungry enough to enjoy
a plateful of this but the slip of boiled beef served him on a clean
plate afterward could not be choked down. He had overheard some one in
the tent--could it have been only that very day?--say that he was to
have meat every day in his new home, and his sister, Arduina, had added
that she wished _she_ were sure of getting a morsel three times a week.
Had not a doctor in Sicily said that she must have all delicate and
nourishing food? And what were dry bread and sour wine as substitutes?
No, Natale could not eat the meat that night. Happily the plate of
macaroni had been generous, and what in all the land of sunny Italy is
so filling as a plate of macaroni?

The valley looked dismally dark that night, as Natale crept from his
little trestle bed and crouched on the brick floor at the window,
after he was supposed to be asleep. He was to share the priest’s attic
chamber, and a few moments before Sora Grazia had carried away the
candle. He peered out between the flower pots on the window ledge
and again wondered in his childish way why anybody in the big world
outside should have troubled to make him miserable.

He was very sure that he had done nothing to harm the foreign lady
with the spectacles. Once he had laughed when she had sneezed many
times very loudly, in crossing the field near him, but he was sure no
one had heard him, for he was lying on the ground and had buried his
face in the grass. The pretty signorina with her had laughed too, and
said something in their strange language which the lady had answered
by another loud sneeze. Besides this, there was absolutely nothing he
could have done to provoke any of the people in the garden. Yet, here
he was being punished!

The thought of Sora Grazia oppressed him, her serious face and her
high hopes of his goodness. The house, too, was quieter than any place
he had ever known,--he who had been used to few roofs save those of
the caravan and tent. There were no children about, and there was no
sound inside of crying, or laughing, or singing, or whistling. It was
almost as bad as having to live in a solemn church when the candles
are all out and the crowds are gone, and one feels, in the dimness and
silence, as if something were coming up stealthily behind one to scare
one’s wits away. It is all very well to rest for a minute in a cool
church, out of the glare of the sunlight, when one may run out again at
will, free as a wild bird or butterfly. But to have to stay, night and
day, for a whole year in such a place! Natale shuddered, for this was
just the way in which the awful quiet of the little stone house of the
priest affected him.

When Luigi came up to bed, hours later, he lifted the sleeping boy from
the bricks at the window and covered him up snugly in bed.

“My mother thinks we can do it,” he muttered to himself, as he threw
off his black gown. “I shall do my part, but I am not sure they have
done a wise thing.” Then he sighed a little. Perhaps he was wishing
that he could be a little boy again, with the wide, wide world before
him, and no one to interfere with his choice of a career,--free to be
acrobat or priest, but always to have his own choice.

With the passing of the first night all idea of running away seemed
to have left Natale’s mind, and Sora Grazia was at first delighted to
find her charge as submissive as a lamb to all her arrangements. After
the first day or two, however, it became not quite so comfortable to
see the little boy sit immovable for hours at a time, on the floor of
the balcony, gazing down into the valley where the river ran merrily
over the rocks. She would even have preferred to rebuke the child
for something a little more outrageous than his listless torpor. She
herself had to eat the meat prepared for Natale, if she would not see
it wasted, for Natale could not touch it, nor would Luigi, her usually
tractable son.

The young priest was no less puzzled over Natale’s conduct than his
mother was. The schoolmaster reported to him that the boy held his
little paper-covered spelling-book before his eyes with the utmost
diligence, and really seemed to try to remember the letters as they
were pointed out to him with patient repetition, but that he might as
well have been gazing off into the valley instead, for all the good the
pages did him, and Luigi believed it.

The other boys tried to lure him into their games and to practice his
funny _capitomboli_ but he would only sit quietly by, on the stone
steps of the church, watching them till playtime was over, when he must
sit up on the bench in the schoolroom again and hold his book before
his eyes.

“He cannot keep up his sulking forever,” Sora Grazia said on the
sixth day of Natale’s stay with her. Luigi was standing near her in
the balcony, brushing the dust from the skirts of his long gown, which
he shook vigorously with his strong hands, as his mother continued, “I
confess that I am surprised he has taken things so quietly.”

“A little too quietly!” muttered Luigi into the folds of his gown.

“But now, one would like to see him brighten up a little instead of
glooming over his food and everything else,” Sora Grazia went on.
“He is not the same child he was a week ago, making his ridiculous
_capitomboli_ over the circus carpet. I wonder if he could turn a
somersault now, Luigi.” The woman lifted her head from her work to look
over at Natale, who sat on the low street wall with his feet dangling
into the road.

“I gave him leave to go and play with the boys down in the field, this
afternoon,” said Luigi, shaking his gown almost viciously. “He said he
did not wish to go where his tent had been, and that he never expected
to turn a somersault again.”

“Impertinent!” exclaimed Sora Grazia. “We’ll let him alone a while
longer, and he’ll come all right. A child cannot sulk forever, as I
said before.”

“But one can die of starvation and homesickness, perhaps,” quoth Luigi,
stepping past his mother and springing up the stairs, his gown upon his
arm.

Grazia’s retort was stayed upon her lips by what she now saw passing in
the street.




CHAPTER VIII

THE CAGE DOOR OPENED


NATALE, too, was looking up, but only dully, as a party of ladies and
gentlemen sauntered toward him laughing and talking gayly as they came.
Many such groups had passed him already, taking afternoon strolls
toward the beautiful promenade of San Vito leading around the mountain
side. But this particular group paused, when a spectacled old lady
did, and all gathered about Natale, except the white-haired gentleman
standing a little aloof and tapping the paving stones with his stick.

“Why haven’t you been to see us, Natale Marzuchetti?” Miss Lorini asked
cheerfully in Italian. “Mrs. Bishop was sure you would come.”

“He does not look like the same child!” whispered Betty to her aunt,
who now pushed forward.

“Ask him if he is a _smart_ boy in school, and if he is not _glad_ to
be dressed so decently and to be learning something _useful_,” Mrs.
Bishop said hurriedly to the Italian lady, all of which was repeated to
Natale in his own language as was requested. But Natale only shook his
head slowly and wistfully.

“You used to talk fast enough!” Mrs. Bishop cried impatiently. “Look,”
she went on, pointing to the next house, a little farther on, “don’t
you see that white stone in the wall? The words on it tell about a man
who was born there, two hundred and fifty years ago, who was so good
and useful that the people here put his name up there that he might
never be forgotten. What’s to hinder there being a stone put up on
this house, to tell about little Natale who was only a poor circus boy,
but who came to live here when he was eight years old and became a very
useful and good man? Tell him, Miss Lorini, just what I say!” And Mrs.
Bishop pointed from the memorial tablet in one house to the blank front
wall of the other, while Luigi, peering out of his window between the
flower pots, dodged behind a tall geranium, and hoped the sharp eyes of
the old lady were not searching for him.

Natale listened gravely to Miss Lorini’s communication, his eyes
passing carelessly from the memorial tablet to the wall of an opposite
house.

There was a rude painting on this wall of a Madonna holding a baby
in her arms, and it was protected from the weather by a shallow arch
of masonry. As Natale looked at the picture, he was reminded in some
mysterious way of Nonna, who was never without a child in her arms,
unless she were bending over a fountain washing the children’s clothes.
A new look sprang into his eyes.

“Our Antonio had _his_ name printed in Egypt and in Turkey and in
Greece!” he answered proudly, for the first time opening his lips. “I
would rather be like that than have my name cut here on the priest’s
house!”

“Good for the little chap,” cried the gentleman softly. He had
understood what the shrill little voice said.

“Printed on what, child? What was ‘our Antonio’s’ name printed on, in
all those places?” Miss Lorini asked.

“On paper, of course,” answered the child simply. “And there were
pictures of him too, all red and yellow and blue, performing on
the bars. Everybody in the streets was looking at his name and the
pictures.” The little fellow’s face was glowing as he spoke of his
friend, and Miss Lorini had not the heart to translate his words to
Mrs. Bishop, who could hardly have passed them by calmly.

“But you are content here?” Betty managed to ask in intelligible
Italian.

The shadow fell again over Natale’s face, and his figure visibly
drooped. He did not pretend to answer her question.

“Oh, Aunty, let him go back to his people,” Betty pleaded, seeing the
change. “Anybody can see that he is miserable. He is too little to be
made to suffer.”

“He is too little to suffer long,” Mrs. Bishop replied calmly, with but
one thought in her mind, of course.

“Poor little Egyptian!” sighed the gentleman. “He was born in Egypt,
was he not, Miss Betty?”

“At Port Said, yes, and Pietro in Tunis they say.”

“Well, be a good boy, Natale,” said Mrs. Bishop, patting his head, in
its new cap. “Then you will be happy. In a few days, I shall send for
you to come to see me, and we will drink tea in the garden. Good-by!
_Addio!_”

Natale touched his hat, as he had long ago been taught to do, and the
pedestrians moved away, all but the gentleman who had called him a
“little Egyptian.”

He stood for a moment at Natale’s side, with his back turned to the
house and his departing friends, and in a trice a handful of copper
coins was transferred from his pocket to Natale’s hands. Mr. Grantly
had just had a paper note changed into small coins, at the fruit shop,
and he was glad to relieve his pocket of some of its weight.

“I hope his guardians will let him keep the money,” was his thought
as he turned away from Natale’s brilliant smile of thanks. The boy’s
training had made him none too proud to accept the money of a
stranger, and he lost no time in stowing it away in his jacket pocket,
while Mr. Grantly hurried after the echoing steps of his party.

Luigi at the window above had seen the money given to Natale, but he
asked no questions of the boy, who, after kicking his heels against the
wall for some time longer, was presently called to his supper.

There was a flush on Natale’s cheeks and a brightness in his eyes which
even Sora Grazia noticed, and as the evening was cool, she thought it
wise to forbid his sitting out on the balcony or the wall, as was his
wont, until bedtime. He looked feverish, she said, and in her own mind
she planned a cup of hot camomile tea as a remedy at bedtime. Natale’s
disappointment at this command to keep indoors showed so plainly upon
his childish features that Sora Grazia was provoked, and for the first
time since the boy had been with her she used harsh tones.

“There! you may as well go to bed at once!” she cried, as he was
leaving the kitchen, without a word it is true, but with the light all
gone from his face. “I can never please you, whatever I do, and you are
here only to waste food and sulk. Go to bed, Natale!”

Luigi had gone off directly after eating his supper, about some matter
of business with one of his superiors at the church, so he was not
there to take Natale’s part.

It is hard enough to be sent to bed on an ordinary night and at one’s
regular time, as any child will agree, but to be forbidden the early
hours of a moonlit evening outdoors, especially when one’s little head
is teeming with wild, delicious ideas of flight--away from daily baths,
from the cramping walls of a house, and out into the freshness and
freedom of the night, which has no terror for the dwellers in tents,
was well-nigh unbearable.

Ah! how little Sora Grazia knew of the anguish she was causing!

But Natale obediently stumbled slowly upstairs in the dark to the
bedroom, and when there, crouched in his usual place on the floor
behind the flower pots without an audible murmur.

The little acrobat had made no plans at all, but with the touch of the
money given him by the kind old gentleman on San Vito, an impulse to
seek his freedom had occurred to his mind, and in the half-hour while
he continued on the wall, furtively handling the coins in his pocket,
he had wished,--only wished, however,--that he might have the courage
to steal out into the moonlight, after eating, while Sora Grazia should
be about her dish-washing, and Luigi poring over one of his little
black books, perhaps, by the light of the candle in the kitchen. He had
often thought of Olga’s words, “I would run after the wagon, if I were
you,” but he had been too closely watched during the first day or two
to admit of his carrying out so bold a plan, and since then, for the
rest of the long, dreary week since the caravan had gone, he had not
had the spirit to undertake such a measure. The whole world seemed to
intervene between himself and the beloved company who had gone, and he
felt sure that he would be seen by some mistaken person and brought
back, even before he could reach the river, if he should attempt to
follow.

Until to-night no thought of leaving under the protection of the
friendly darkness had come to him, and he had only been able to see
himself flying down the sunny road in full view of all the village, to
be promptly turned back again by some carriage driver of the place, or
some schoolboy bigger than himself and therefore stronger. Besides, he
had had no money, and Natale had traveled enough to know that a few
cents in one’s pocket make one’s road easier and less long. So the
days had passed, and Natale was fast drifting into a state of listless
torpor which must have ended in illness, had not Mr. Grantly changed
a five-franc note at the fruit shop that sunny afternoon and taken a
stroll along San Vito where Natale sat “sulking” on the wall!

Presently, as the little child continued to gaze longingly out into the
moonlight, a ray of further hope illumined his mind. As Luigi had gone
to the church now, it would be late before he would return. Sora Grazia
always sat dozing on her stool in the doorway until time for barring
the door and going to bed. Why should he not slip past her and away
into the shadows of the street, before Luigi should return? His heart
leaped at the thought, and he rose noiselessly to his feet and glanced
around the darkening room. His small cot stood smooth and white against
the wall. Another thought struck him, and he quailed with a sense of
utter discouragement. When Luigi should come in,--and he might be very
early, one never knew,--the runaway would be missed straightway from
the empty little bed, and easily overtaken if he should have taken the
regular road down the hill.

It is true there were paths innumerable down the terraces from the
back of almost any house in the street, most of them probably leading
down to the river far below, but Natale had been no explorer of the
neighborhood during his week of captivity, and was ignorant of the
precipitate windings and the final ending of even the most practicable
of these. No, he must go by the road, and he must wait until Luigi
should return, and get to bed and to sleep.

Natale knew that the priest slept soundly, for, one night he had
had the misfortune to knock over upon the floor a pot containing a
carnation plant, and the crash had not awakened Luigi. The boy had
waked and had gone to the window to peer out into the night, fancying
that he heard the hoarse creaking of the caravan brake as the clumsy
vehicle crawled down the hill, and in craning his head between the
pots, his elbow had pushed over one of them. Fortunately, neither pot
nor plant had broken, and he had spent a good deal of time in packing
the loosened earth about the carnation’s roots and replacing the pot
among its fellows. The next morning, Sora Grazia had bidden him be more
careful about carrying mud upstairs on his shoes, only to be cleaned up
by her afterward, and he supposed he must have left some of the earth
upon the floor, in the dim light.

At any rate, Luigi slept soundly, and if he, himself, could only
manage to keep awake until all was safe, he knew that he would have
no difficulty in unbarring the door. He had accomplished it unaided
only that morning, with Sora Grazia standing by and saying that it was
the first thing of use he had set his hands to do since coming there
to live. She had spoken good-naturedly though, and Natale had nothing
against her. No, not even now did he remember her late harsh words, for
he was too sweet-natured to harbor malice. He had only suffered, and
now there was a prospect of escaping more suffering of the same kind.

So after sitting on his bed with a wild turmoil of thoughts engaging
his busy little brain, he began rapidly to undress. Luigi must not find
him up! But, after taking off the strong new suit of clothes which Mrs.
Bishop had had made for him, he rummaged under his mattress where his
old things had been stored by Sora Grazia and quickly got into the worn
trousers, the faded blouse and leggings, tucking the old shoes under
his pillow. He had set the new shoes and stockings in orderly fashion
on the floor and folded up the new clothes and laid them at the foot of
the little cot. How fortunate that his old shoes had not been thrown
away, for he could hardly have traveled barefoot over the flinty stones
of the road and the river. Natale chose to wear the old easy shoes,
for the new ones had always hurt him, and he would not have been able
to steal unheard out of the house with those heavy, creaking soles
tramping over the bricks. If he had known of the long way ahead of the
old worn shoes, perhaps he would have planned to carry the despised
footgear in his hands. But forethought had little place in the mind of
so young a runaway, and he was guided in his change of clothes only by
his own desires for comfort. The old clothes were as familiar as old
friends, and therefore he preferred them.

Then, after making his preparations, not forgetting to change the money
from the pocket of the new jacket to that of his old trousers, he laid
himself down on the cot, and drew up the light covering snugly about
his shoulders, devoutly hoping that he would not fall soundly asleep.

If Natale had only known it, Sora Grazia, believing Natale safe for the
night, had slipped off for a gossip with a friend living just back of
the church, simply drawing the door to behind her and leaving the coast
clear for flight. And it would not have been difficult for the boy to
leave a semblance of himself tucked under the bed covering, in the
shape of the roll of discarded clothes and shoes! But little Natale was
not possessed of a very designing brain, and after all, Luigi _might_
have come in untimely, and spoiled it all!

In a few moments, the would-be runaway was fast asleep, while the moon
sailed across the valley from the eastern toward the western sky.




CHAPTER IX

THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD


WHEN Natale next opened his eyes he became very wide awake indeed, in
an instant. In fact, he did not know that he had been asleep at all,
until the moonlight, slanting in, showed Luigi’s long body stretched
upon the iron bed close by.

What could have waked Natale? For a moment he lay still without
recollection of the momentous plans made at his early bedtime. Then
he recalled a sensation of icy cold water about his feet, and he
remembered that he had dreamed of a sudden plunge into the river while
trying to find the stepping-stones. It must have been the chill of the
dream-water that had awakened him! He sat up and found that he was
still dressed and in his old clothes.

Ah! it was easy to remember all now, and after a breathless glance over
his shoulder at Luigi, who was comfortably snoring, Natale slipped out
of bed. Catching up his old hat and his shoes he stole softly over the
brick floor and down the stone stairs as quietly as any mouse would
have done.

Sora Grazia slept downstairs, but the door of her room was mercifully
closed, and Natale knew that she often locked it at night. He turned
his back upon it, therefore, with confidence, as he felt in the
darkness for the balcony door. He exerted all his strength to raise the
heavy bar of iron which guarded the door. Then he was very careful to
keep his hold on the bar, as it swung downward, lest it should rouse
the house with its usual clanging fall. The huge key was in the lock,
and Natale succeeded in turning it with both hands, although this was
much more difficult than raising the bar above the lock. It creaked
dully as it turned, and Natale’s heart leaped into his throat, and a
dozen noises buzzed in his ears.

Breathless, he stood with his hand on the latch, afraid to move lest
the door behind him should open, and everything come to an end. But
nothing happened, so he swung open the door, and without stopping to
close it behind him, he again caught up his shoes, which he had had to
set down, and ran along the balcony and out into the street, his feet
pattering softly on the stones.

In his haste he did not stop to think of the direction he should take.
His only impulse was to get out into the night somewhere, away from the
houses and street. So he ran swiftly along in the shadow cast by wall
and house, in just the opposite direction from that which would have
led him past the church tower and through the village, out upon the
downward road. Presently he crouched in a shadow to draw on his shoes,
then fled onward again.

Once away, he lost his bearings utterly and hurried on without turning,
past the small house with the Madonna painted on the wall, past the
large house where the white tablet to “Pietro Pacioni” gleamed in
the moonlight, and then downward, by a roughly paved path leading
to the Campo Santo. Perhaps he would have kept on aimlessly along
San Vito,--the fashionable promenade leading always higher along the
mountain side till it ended in an open plateau high up above the
valley,--if he had not heard steps approaching. Whether these steps
came from behind or from ahead he did not stop to discover. The
downward path offered safety, and a small pink villa threw a dark
shadow across its entrance, so Natale lost not an instant in scudding
down the friendly by-way.

On he trotted, past the shrine where the tiny Della Robbia Madonna sits
under her arch, the moonlight touching the shining blue of her hood,
the yellow of her robe and the pink of the baby on her knees with a
radiance that was almost startling on the edge of the shadow. Now the
path grew level, and the stones were left behind, and no more noise of
footsteps disturbed the quiet.

A few rods more, and Natale stood in front of the small mortuary chapel
outside the cemetery. The iron gates set in the wall of the cemetery
were locked, as Natale found on gently shaking them. He had paused to
peep through the slender grating into the inclosure where the moonlight
touched the white tomb of the foreign gentleman buried close under the
wall, and showed so plainly the numbers on the low stakes marking the
graves of the nameless poor. The shadows of the cypress trees lay like
long black fingers outstretched upon the wilds of weedy undergrowth,
and the wind stirred dismally on the exposed hillside.

One day, Natale and Olga had wandered together as far as these iron
gates. He remembered it now, and with the recollection he sprang away,
eager to continue his journey,--then stood still, uncertain as to his
path.

The way which had brought him downward came to an abrupt end with the
little chapel, outside the gates. It would not do to lose himself among
the chestnut woods in search of a path! Yet, how could he plunge down
the pathless slopes among the great trees, with nothing to guide him
but the murmur of the river far below? Still less was he willing to
return to the road above and turn about to take his way through the
village and so on out upon the road. He was almost sure that if he
could only see to find his way, some downward path from where he stood
would bring him to a river crossing, perhaps a long, long way below the
arched bridge, and therefore much farther on his journey.

Bewildered and tired, he was almost ready to give up his flight, and
to creep into the dark portico of the little chapel, and back into the
shade beneath the picture of the Saint with the skull in his hand, and
there end this strange night, which already seemed to him longer than
any night he had ever known. But he roused himself to one more effort,
and crept around to the back wall of the chapel. There, to his joyful
surprise, he came upon a semblance of a path!

All indecision was gone now, and he fairly slid down the rocky and
precipitous way, which was more gully than footway, being in fact a
watercourse for the torrents leaping down the mountain side, after
some storm of rain, as well as a short cut to the river for roughly
shod peasant feet.

More than once Natale stumbled, and once he fell headlong, bruising his
hands and knees, but he did not mind, for the rushing of the little
river down among the rocks was becoming very loud in his ears.

When at last he came out of the woods, and stood on the edge of the
waste of rounded stones loosely paving the river bed, he looked back
a moment to where the village must be, high above, a huddle of gray
wall and roof, with the square church tower in its midst. All seemed as
silent in the sleeping town as in the home of the sleeping dead on its
outskirts. Then, just as Natale again turned his back upon the mountain
side, where perched Cutigliano like a bit of gray lichen growing on
some mossy bowlder, the beautiful, bright, friendly moon slipped quite
over the mountain in the west, and darkness fell upon the valley,
where deep down in its darkest shadow Natale was ready to cross the
river. The light of the moon still touched the chestnut woods higher
up the slopes, but every moment the shadow would be creeping higher
and higher, until there would be no more moonlight on this side the
mountain, and only the stars would come peeping out at Natale.

After slipping off his shoes and leggings, the boy began picking his
way carefully over the large dry stones which were worn smooth and
round by slow wasting in the wet seasons, when the river flooded its
narrow course and spread to the grassy banks. The stones rolled under
even his light footsteps, but Natale kept his balance in crossing the
smaller stones, and clambered patiently over or around the largest
ones, and presently arrived at the edge of the black, rushing water.
The brawling Lima makes a great ado hereabouts, as it tumbles over the
rocks, for its bed slopes decidedly all the way to Lucca and beyond,
and there is no opportunity for it to moderate its pace, or calm its
chafings against the rocks.

With the first touch of the icy water upon his bared feet, Natale
recalled his dream. How long ago it had been since he had lain safely
in his bed under the slanting roof of Luigi’s house! Again and again
he tried to plant his foot firmly in the midst of the swirling water,
which was perhaps as much as twenty feet wide at that point, but
always it was deeper and colder than he had expected, and the stones
more slippery and unsteady. Then he began wandering up and down the
bank, in quest of the stepping-stones, which here and there certainly
crossed the river both above and below the arched bridge. Unsuccessful
in this, Natale finally exerted himself to make a reckless dash into
the current, where he found himself the next instant up to his waist
in the black water and clinging desperately by one free hand to a wet
rock, with the instinct of preserving himself from being carried off
his feet. Then miserably he felt his way back to the dry rocks on the
edge of the stream, and dropping down upon their harsh bosom, he began
to cry bitterly.

He had so hoped there would be a crossing place! If he could only find
it! His feet were sore with bruises now, and he felt as if he could
not walk another step. He grew cold as he crouched there, sobbing with
disappointment, for though the sun shines hot during the daytime on
the chestnut trees and the vines of the Apennines, the nights, even of
summer, are cool, and now a chill wind came sweeping down the valley
from the fir-crowned summits of Abetone.

Presently the little wanderer roused himself and stood on his feet.
Nothing could tempt him to try to find his way back to the house of
the priest, not even aching feet or shivering limbs, but he began to
think there might be a more sheltered place near by--this little boy of
the road, who had taken many a noontide nap curled up at the foot of
some wayside tree. Perhaps the earliest light of dawn would show him
the stepping-stones and the road, of which there was no hint now in the
blackness of darkness across the river. Painfully he crept back toward
the bank, where presently he curled himself into a knot at the foot of
a huge, distorted old chestnut tree, a short distance up the slope.
The grass was soft and springy about the roots of the old tree, and a
huge boulder near by shut off the wind from Natale’s shivering legs.
So, with a sigh of content, and for the first time tasting the sweets
of his new freedom, the little acrobat closed his eyes upon the stars
winking down at him from above the stirring leaves, and fell asleep for
the second time that night.




CHAPTER X

ON THE WING


LONG before Natale waked, the day had dawned, but the sun had not long
looked down into the valley before he turned stiffly on his grassy
couch and rubbed his eyes. Then, however, he lost not an instant in
taking up his journey where it had left off the night before.

How easy it was in the light of the sunbeams of the early morning to
spring over the dry stones of the bank, and with a swift glance up
and down select a safe place to cross the water which had seemed so
dangerous and cruel in the dark.

The daylight changed everything, of course, and it was but a few
moments after waking before he was across the stream and scrambling
up to the low wall bounding the road on the river side. From the inner
edge of the road the mountains rose precipitately.

As Natale clambered over the wall the church bells of Cutigliano
burst into a wrangle of sound, which must have echoed from one end of
the village to the other. Though the distance softened the metallic
tones, the little boy was startled by them into a scamper away down
the sunlit road as if the mischievous village boys whose office it was
to ring the bells were in headlong chase after him. The day must have
been the _festa_ of some saint, and for a long time Natale heard the
bells’ voices, sweetened more and more as his bare feet trudged onward
and the distance fell between him and them. But he soon gave up his
running because his legs were stiff and his feet sore, and as yet no
one appeared coming along the road behind him, in pursuit.

There had been no doubt in his own mind of the direction he should take
after once gaining the road. He knew that Giovanni and Antonio with the
house-wagon had been bound for the Bagni di Lucca, and also he knew
that the road to the Bagni led downward with the stream, and not up
toward the cold region of Abetone, the “Great Fir Tree.”

So all he had to do was to follow the road, broad and white, by the way
they had come three weeks before, without need, even, of asking his way
of the peasants he should meet. He had turned the shoulder of a great
green mountain-spur which entirely shut off the view of Cutigliano
before he would stop for an instant in his lame tramping. Once assured
that the town was out of sight behind him, he sat down breathlessly on
one of the heaps of loose stones such as flank every mountain road in
Italy. Then he deliberately took each foot in turn in his small hands
and gravely and pitifully examined its bruises. There was nothing to be
done, then, but plant them in the road again and continue his way.

For an hour or more he trudged painfully on, but the stiffness in his
legs left him after a while, and he began to be only hungry. He wished
he had thought of hiding in his pocket, the night before, a crust of
the dark, coarse bread he loved, and which had always been plentiful at
Sora Grazia’s. But the coppers jingled comfortably there instead, and
Natale contented himself to wait for breakfast till he should pass some
bread shop along the road.

The morning air was sweet with the freshness of early day, and the
delicious odor of the wild thyme’s tiny blossoms. Tall harebells nodded
to him from the thyme and heather bank shoulder-high above the road,
and sparkled with the sunshine and dew upon their purple flowerets. The
river, which in the darkness had seemed to mock him with its roaring,
now only murmured softly as it slipped over the stones in the sunlight.

By and by, Natale began to meet people in the road, men with donkeys
bearing huge basketfuls of wet grass and wild flowers shorn from the
steep terraces above for the cow or donkey at home, and women tramping
in their thick-soled shoes to Cutigliano with baskets of fresh fruit
or eggs or cheeses for the summer hotels balanced on their heads. From
all of these Natale kept his face steadily averted, lest they should
bear back to the town tidings of his going. Usually, after passing a
group of these wayfarers, the boy broke into a quick run in order to
lengthen the distance between them and himself, but these spurts of
speed availed him little, for he had always to stop and rest afterward,
and so lost many more minutes than he had gained of the golden day.

The road had already become a curving white glare before Natale came
in sight of a long stone house having many windows and doors, and
standing on the inner edge of the road. He came upon it suddenly, on
turning a sharp curve, and then he saw that another house faced it on
the opposite side of the road, and that an inviting shade lay between.
The back of one of the houses looked directly upon the steep slope of
the mountain behind, while the rear wall of its opposite neighbor had
its foundation in the rocky banks of the tumbling river. In the shade
between, barefoot peasant children played noisily. Near by, a stream
of spring water, clear and cold, trickled from a wooden trough into a
rough stone basin.

And here at last were rest and food and drink for the runaway,--only no
one must learn that he was a runaway!

A fat and black-eyed housewife with arms akimbo stood in one of the
doors, and as Natale came up to her on limping feet, she eyed him with
interest from the stone of the doorstep.

“Will you give me a little piece of bread, signora? See, I have money,”
said Natale, showing her a handful of Mr. Grantly’s copper coins in his
open palm.

“A bit of bread you shall have, to be sure, and your _soldi_ you shall
keep, little one,” the good-natured creature promptly answered, and
while the children left their play and gathered about Natale, with
friendly eyes, their mother disappeared into the very small and dusky
shop behind.

“There, sit down and eat,” she said, returning with a hunk of bread and
a generous lump of cheese on a coarse plate in her hand.

As Natale received the plate and moved rather lamely toward the
dripping fountain in the shade, the children ran ahead, and one filled
a rusty tin cup with the cold water and had it ready for Natale by the
time he reached the mossy brink of the fountain.

These little ones of the road, wild and rude enough in their play, were
well used to offering the “cup of cold water” to the passing wayfarer,
and Natale’s thirsty throat gulped the draught gratefully.

There was something about the child which arrested the attention of the
woman more than the ordinary passer-by often did, and she also stood
watching Natale breakfast hungrily.

He was shy and downcast, fearing difficult questions, and as soon as
the last crumb of bread and cheese had disappeared he got to his feet,
setting the empty plate on the margin of the fountain.

“Thank you, signora, and good-by,” he said, and was off.

“No, but wait!” she cried, laying her hand on his shrinking shoulder.
“You have eaten my bread; now answer my questions. What is your name,
_picino_,[7] and where are you going?”

[Footnote 7: Little boy.]

“Down the road,” was the shyly spoken answer to the last question, with
a quiet waiving of the first. “Please let me go, signora. It is already
late, and I must hasten.”

“Well, go!” she exclaimed then, “and a good journey to you!” But she
stood watching him trudge briskly away from her until another curve in
the zigzag road hid him from her sight.

“Some stranger’s child!” she muttered to herself, going back to the
doorstep. “I have never seen him pass here before, and few there be
who pass by without the knowledge of Chiara. Well, I am glad he has
his _soldi_ safe in his pocket. May the saints protect and feed my own
children when they go a-wandering! You, Beppo! keep your head out of
the dust of the road!”

“Mamá, mamá, Beppino is making _capitomboli_, such as the boy who was
here just now made in the circus at Cutigliano, on the day we went with
our father to the big tent! Do you not remember?” cried an admiring
small sister of Beppo. “See, our Beppo does them even better than the
other boy, mamá!”

The woman gave a little start of recollection, and then dismissed the
idea which had occurred to her, as impossible--fortunately, perhaps,
for Natale.

“Silly girl! The circus people went down the road a week ago to the
Bagni, do _you_ not remember? How should the boy be seven days behind?
No more _capitomboli_, I say, Beppo _mio_, in all this dust!”

[Illustration: “Capitomboli, such as the boy who was here just now made
in the circus at Cutigliano.” _Page 142._]

In a carriage, with two good horses and a fine cracking whip behind
them, one may drive from Cutigliano down to the Baths of Lucca in the
first half of a summer’s day. On two tired slim little legs, one
would need much more time to accomplish the journey. Also when one has
been for six days imprisoned within stone walls, one does not hurry--if
fairly out of danger--along beauteous and fresh-smelling paths of
freedom.

Every hour or so after leaving the woman and children at the fountain,
Natale stopped for a rest along the way. Sometimes he sat down
on a heap of mending stones by the wayside, in company with some
stone-breaker hammering away in the shade of his sun screen, a rude
lattice of chestnut boughs propped behind the heap of stones.

The monotonous clink of the hammer breaking the sharp-edged stones was
usually stayed as the lonely worker turned to chat with the large-eyed
child hovering near. Only once or twice was Natale’s cheerful “_Buon’
giorno!_”[8] returned by an unwelcoming growl or by sour silence.
In such cases, the dawdling feet made all haste to pass and seek a
resting-place in the shade of some breeze-rustled chestnut tree quite
out of sight of the cross stone-breaker.

[Footnote 8: Good morning.]

The second night was passed as the first had been, out of doors,
after a supper of hot rice paid for at an _osteria_,[9] a short way
back along the road. Natale might have slept, as well, at the little
inn, but he was too unused to roofs to dream of proposing it, and the
absent-minded old landlord had not seemed to be thinking of anything
but puffing away at his pipe, as Natale slipped past him and out of the
dingy passage-way, after paying for his food.

[Footnote 9: Inn.]

A long-bodied two-wheeled cart stood outside the inn door, its shafts’
ends resting on the ground, its rear high in air, and Natale, with an
instinct for sleeping above wheels, had decided to return to the cart
for a night’s lodging place when the world should be dark again. But
sleep overtook him as he lay waiting at the foot of a tree to which
he had scrambled from the road below, and when he roused, dawn was
staining the pale sky with rose color.

The next day promised to pass as the first had done,--with slipping
shyly past occasional houses of entertainment along the way, with
lingerings to stare into the mysterious depths of some noisy mill in
league with the tumbling river, and with long, monotonous trampings,
between times, along the smooth road, bordered always by the mountains
and the river. As the road neared the valley, it crossed dashing
streams hurrying to join their waters to the broader water of the
river, and so solid was the stone masonry of the arches that one would
never have known that he was crossing a bridge but for the sparkle and
the laughter of the foaming water as it dashed under the road and out
again.

Many times Natale, himself a small dark speck on the endless white
road, looked up the long mountain slopes, green in the sunlight, purple
in the shadow, and glimpsed high above him on the giddy heights the
climbing roofs of some hoary old mountain town, away out of hearing of
the busy river, out of reach of traveling circus wagons, and which,

  “Like an eagle’s nest hangs on the crest
  Of purple Apennine.”

It was past noon of the second day when Natale entered a village
on a level with the highway. Here the road suddenly changed into a
stone-paved street, running between high houses and echoing with the
tramp of wooden-soled shoes and the patter of donkeys’ hoofs.

He stopped at the door of a sour-smelling wine shop where sat a man on
a stool outside the door. To him the little boy put his question as
to whether this town might perhaps be very near to the Bagni di Lucca.
This man wore a red fez on his bushy, black head, and down his long,
black beard trickled drops from the wine cup at his lips. The fellow
did not stop his drinking long enough to reply in so many words to the
question, but a decided shaking of his head and the pointing of a long,
dirty finger onward sufficiently enlightened Natale, and he kept slowly
on his way.

In passing a small baker’s shop, he stopped and bought a great ring of
sweetish bread, and then slipping his arm through this, he went more
cheerily onward. There were still many _soldi_ left in his pocket, and
surely this beautiful ring of bread would last until the Bagni di Lucca
should come in sight, with, of course, the dear yellow tent set in its
midst!

One of the last houses he passed as he left the town was entered
through a garden by a huge wooden door opening upon the cobblestones
of the street. This door stood ajar, and Natale stayed his steps for a
moment to gaze through the aperture down a charming vista of trellised
vines supported on crumbling white columns of masonry. Green and
gold lights played over the rough paving-stones of the cloister-like
colonnade through the latticework above. Halfway down this corridor,
two or three girls romped and sang together, their scarlet kerchiefs
and the rich blues of their skirts making dashes of vivid color in the
shade where they lounged. Pale jewels of grapes, already growing pink
and amethystine, crowded the vines with promise of luscious sweetness
when their full time should come.

The girls peered back at the travel-worn lad peering in at them, but
when the largest of them called mockingly to him, “Enter, signore!”
Natale ran away down the street and again out upon the road. The girls
had made him think of Arduina and Olga and little Maria, and away down
at the end of the corridor he had caught a glimpse of a gray-haired
woman sitting on a flight of broken stone steps, with an infant on her
lap. His heart swelled with homesickness. If only he might see Nonna
once again! How long was the monotonous road to Bagni di Lucca!

The day, however, was not to close without an exciting and important
event.




CHAPTER XI

FLUTTERING A LITTLE FARTHER


NATALE sat down in his leisurely fashion on the low wall bounding the
road just beyond the town and began daintily nibbling around the crisp,
sugared edges of his bread ring. It was mid-afternoon, and while his
jaws worked steadily, his wide bright eyes watched with interest two
bicyclists toiling up the hill and trundling their wheels alongside. As
they passed him by without a glance, their faces red and perspiring,
and their shoes whitened with the light dust, the boy’s eyes still
followed them and lighted upon a queer figure coming from the town he
had just quitted. It was the red-capped, swarthy-faced man of the
wine-shop door, and now his shoulders were bent under a pack slung on
his back, and his legs were bowed as he limped along, and he wore an
old overcoat much too long, which had seen better days upon another’s
shoulders.

The wheelmen paid no attention to this fellow, as he stopped on meeting
them and perhaps offered them a sight of his wares hidden in the pack,
so the peddler presently came up with Natale, grumbling sourly.

“These foreigners without manners!” he growled, planting himself in
front of the little boy’s swinging legs. “Ah! you are the boy who goes
to the Bagni. Come, I also go thither. We shall be companions merry
enough!”

Natale had no fancy for joining company with this man who frowned with
his black brows and grinned, in turn, with big white teeth gleaming in
his hairy face, but neither had he the courage to demur. Therefore,
he slipped down unwillingly from his perch and trotted along at the
peddler’s side.

Fortunately, the man asked no questions and spoke little, and before
evening, his steady tramp had led Natale over more miles than the whole
previous day had carried him. Little cared this strange, silent fellow
for leaning over walls to gaze at the foaming water singing over the
rocks, or for idly resting on a bridge to watch the white cloud-ships
crossing the azure sea overhead, as the white sails of the orange boats
ply the blue waves between Sicily and the Italian coast, and to dream
of future glory as an acrobat of renown!

The sun had again sunk behind the rounded summits in the west, when the
peddler at last stood still and grinned down upon the panting child.

“One easily sees that you are no traveler,” he said in his hoarse,
unpleasant voice. “Now we will sit down here by the roadside and make
our beds for the night. Did you mention supper? The bracelet you wear
on your arm will suffice for us both, if we divide it according to the
size of our stomachs. _Ecco!_” And Natale’s precious ring of sweetened
bread was rudely snatched from his arm.

Naturally, Natale was most indignant at being treated in this manner by
so perfect a stranger, and he did not hesitate to remonstrate.

“But the bread is mine, signore! I bought it with my own _soldi_ in
the town,” he cried, clutching at the beautiful ring of bread, already
being broken in two by the peddler’s dirty fingers.

“_Soldi!_” echoed the man; “and where are your precious _soldi_?”

“At the shop where I bought the bread, of course,” was the shrewd
reply, and not a coin remaining in Natale’s pocket jostled against its
neighbor now. They kept as quiet as if they knew that long, eager
fingers were ready to pounce upon them.

Then a change came over the peddler’s manner, and he showed his
unpleasant-looking teeth in a broad smile. Perhaps he was planning a
look into those little pockets by and by, who knows?

“What a clever boy you are!” he cried. “Well, as you are also such a
hungry little beast, take back your bread, and for a relish I shall
give you a smell of my own supper. See!”

So speaking, he drew a roll of sausage from a pocket of his long coat.
The sausage was wrapped in a soiled handkerchief, and there was a
hunk of black bread with it. A knife with a curious curved handle and
long, shining blade was next produced, and the peddler went to work,
alternately whacking off bits of the highly seasoned meat and the hard
bread, and devouring them with crunching teeth and smacking lips.

Natale gnawed industriously at his own bread without even thinking of
offering to barter a portion of it for a taste of the savory sausage.
There was a kind of fascination in watching the ugly fellow eat, and
the wondering brown eyes were fixed upon the peddler’s surly face.

It was now the close of a warm afternoon. A light haze wrapped the
more distant mountains in misty blue, a chirring of insects stirred
the silence about the travelers, and now and then a carriage or cart
whisked downward, or toiled upward, along the road, accompanied by the
jingle of harness bells and the whooping cries of the drivers. A fog of
white dust rose behind every passing vehicle, and the chestnut leaves
overhead, long unwashed by rain, hung grimy and listless in the heavy
air.

As the peddler supped, large drops of sweat gathered on his long, red
nose and dripped down his black beard, while his face grew flushed
and more scowling than ever. Presently, with an angry movement which
startled Natale half out of his wits, he dropped the sausage and knife
to the ground and tore off his coat.

“Poor men have no choice!” he muttered. “Bare shoulders in winter, the
cast-off winter coat of an Englishman in summer!”

The soiled and tattered old coat was tossed aside, falling
uncomfortably close to Natale’s feet, but he did not dare to push it
away with disdainful touch. The peddler’s meal now came to an end, the
remains of the sausage were gathered up with the cruel-looking knife
and laid aside with the handkerchief, after which the peddler, with
a satisfied grunt, sprawled himself on his side--to sleep, as Natale
devoutly hoped.

But not quite yet was the man ready for sleep. Reaching for his pack,
with a lazy movement from where he lay, he unstrapped it and drew from
among the coarse laces and horn buttons inside a flat bottle, which
he uncorked and turned up to his lips. As the liquor gurgled down his
throat and its strong odor tainted the air, Natale let his eyes fall to
the uncomely garment lying within touch of his fingers.

Then the boy’s heart leaped into his throat, and it seemed as if he
would suffocate where he sat. He dared not move, and bravely he looked
away from the thing which lay within such easy reach of his longing
hands, half-in, half-out of the fellow’s old coat pocket.

If only the peddling thief would go off into a drunken sleep!

For there, close by, lay Giovanni’s old pocketbook of stamped Spanish
leather, stained and battered, as Natale had always known it!

Who could tell whether any money still remained in it? There was
nothing to do but wait till the man should go to sleep, and then,
stealthily drawing the pocketbook away from the overcoat, speed down
the road to a safe distance and find out all about it.

He had not long to wait before the peddler returned the bottle to
the pack, and then, disposing himself on the ground, sank into an
open-mouthed slumber.

Only when quite sure that the sleep was real did Natale steal away on
noiseless feet, prize in hand, across the shallow ditch bordering the
road, and onward to the shelter of a ruined shed quite out of sight of
their resting-place. Putting the shed between him and the road, Natale
unstrapped the pocketbook with trembling eagerness.

There lay the notes into which Giovanni had from time to time changed
the cumbersome copper soldi of their earnings! There were the dingy
blue five-franc notes, with many one and two-franc notes of a most
uncompromising dirt color!

The boy dared not take time to count them all. The fierce ogre asleep
under the tree might rouse at any moment and find the pocketbook gone.
Away, away, he must fly, on and on toward the Bagni di Lucca, even
though evening was at hand, and a gray blanket of cloud threatened
to hide the coming stars. So the little feet twinkled away through
the dust, Natale’s heart now heavy with the dread of what was behind,
now light with the joy of what might be ahead. As the warm dusk fell,
it seemed safe to walk again, although every sound from behind made
Natale’s heart seem to leap into his throat. Indeed, it seemed pretty
much to stay in his throat, until, by and by, he came upon some one who
was to give him most welcome news.

He had traveled half a mile farther, and still it was not yet dark when
he sighted a cluster of houses ahead and heard cheerful human voices.
Coming up to the first house, he found a pretty, plump young mother on
her doorstep, cuddling a nursling on her breast. From across the road
and about the house came busy sounds of sheep and cows being housed for
the night in their thatched pens, and nobody seemed at leisure except
the laughing woman with the crowing baby in her arms.

On plying the woman with his usual question, Natale learned that
the end of his pilgrimage was indeed “just down the road a little
distance”, although, on such short legs as his, the woman added
thoughtfully, it might take two hours more of brisk walking to reach
even the big circus tent, standing on the outskirts of the Bagni all
the past week.

Ah! and was the circus still there?

Of that the woman could not speak certainly, as some passer-by had
mentioned only the day before that but one or two more performances
were to be given before the _circo_ moved on to Lucca. She herself had
wished to go to see the wonderful Antonio Bisbini, also the little Olga
who had no more fear of a great horse’s hoofs than she herself of her
baby’s brown toes. But how was a woman to leave her house and the tired
men folks, to tramp down the hill and up again at night, with a heavy
baby in her arms? Was the little boy hoping to reach the tent in time
for the night’s exhibition?

Natale’s heart had thrilled at the mention of Antonio’s magic name,
and his spine straightened and his head was lifted with the pride of
conscious relationship with the hero of the circus. He gave but a
thought now to Olga’s usurpation of his place in the ring. For was
he not returning to his own again, with the stolen pocketbook in the
breast of his blouse? What a welcome there would be for him now!

“Well, good night, _bimbo_, if you will go, and may you enjoy seeing
the riding in the tent!” the woman called to him, looking wistfully
after the little figure plodding away, after a polite return of her
farewell.

Natale’s heart was carefree now, as he limped lamely onward to the tune
of the “Dead March,” humming the air as he went.

The road had been growing more level for some hours as it entered the
valley, and the river flowed more still and deep. The hush of night
gathered under the trees, and the birds and insects went to rest or
noiselessly crept from their haunts about vine and root, intent upon
the business of the hour.

As signs of the famous Baths of Lucca began to appear at certain curves
in the road, Natale became possessed of but one idea. Down the river he
began to see the lights of the town, and he even thought he heard the
notes of band music, which, in truth, were wafted to his ears from the
terrace of the Casino. His head was full of plans of stealing into the
tent, and for at least this last night at Bagni di Lucca, playing his
own part in the dying-horse act. He would not take precious moments now
for practicing a somersault or wheel, as he went along, but it was easy
to rehearse the dialogue over the dying brute--if only his tired, tired
legs could keep the road, and his aching eyes find the old yellow tent
set up somewhere among the trees.

Presently, the gleaming eyes of bicycles began to whiz by, and a
squarely built, many-windowed villa or two rose flush with the road. A
little farther now, and the tent would surely appear, with perhaps Cara
in her red dress at the doorway, and the band playing outside in the
light of the big lamp!

Laughing stragglers now sauntered here and there, none noticing the
child making his dizzy way among them toward a flare of light on one
side where the trees fell apart. One would have hardly believed it
possible that there was room for even the tent of the Circo Equestre of
Antonio Bisbini and Giovanni Marzuchetti in the space between the long
storehouse of corn and the terraced hillside behind. Yet, not only was
the tent there, spread to its full circle and height, but the brown
wagon also was visible, drawn within its shadow, and now the staring
brown eyes of the little wanderer had found them both.

Yes, there was the dear old tent, with its white patches upon the dull
yellow, showing against the vine-clad hillsides of the Bagni. Also,
there was the smoky lamp fastened to a post, where two ways met and
parted. There was the usual crowd gathered outside about the entrance
where Cara in her red dress and gauzy veil watched over the money bowl,
in wait for some possible late-arriving spectator. The big reflecting
lantern on the table showed the wistful features of the outsiders as
they crowded about the tent.

As Natale crept around the tent, he saw the bare, brown legs of some
trespassing youngster following squirming head and shoulders inside,
under the curtain by way of the ground. In former times, the little
acrobat would have been the first to raise an alarm and assist with
alacrity in the ignominious expulsion of the intruder who wanted to see
the show, and yet keep his _soldi_ in his pocket, if such were there.
But the sight of the enterprising offender made little impression on
Natale’s mind now, as he stepped past the struggling legs, for, the
hour being much later than he thought, the band inside just then struck
up the familiar schottisch, and Natale knew that Il Duca was even
now treading the ring in a dignified dance, led by Giovanni himself.
His heart gave a suffocating throb, and his cheeks burned. Then he
shivered with cold, and his weary legs faltered before the daring deed
about to be perpetrated.

There was plenty of time, even yet, and he would do it even if Giovanni
should strike him to the ground with his cracking whip, which had never
yet, however, been raised against him with more than threatening intent.

He stopped to listen a moment longer to the music before entering. Yes,
there it was, the schottisch, accompanied by the beat of the clever
hoofs. Then, as he knew the moment was at hand for Il Duca to drop
dying in the ring, Natale crept swiftly in among the players gathered
as usual in the small tent behind. Olga was there and Arduina, in their
fanciful costumes, and Elvira, his mother, waiting for their “cues.”




CHAPTER XII

AT LAST


THE small, pale apparition of Natale, suddenly projected into their
midst, so startled them all that even Olga forgot to listen for the
thud of Il Duca’s heavy body on the ground and the sound of his groans.
They stared open-mouthed for an instant, and then the apparition
vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

But the strains of the “Dead March” now recalled little Olga to
herself, and she darted from behind the curtain and out into the light
of the oil lamp, only to hear a familiar boyish voice instead of her
own answering shrilly Giovanni’s question, “What are you crying about,
child?”

“Because our horse is dead!”

“But are you sure he is quite dead?” And Giovanni’s voice faltered with
sudden fear, as he gazed at Natale’s small, dusty figure kneeling at
the horse’s head, with Oh! such a world of pleading in his dark eyes
and folded hands.

“Quite dead!” wailed Natale.

“Get up and feel his pulse, boy. If there is any pulse he is _not_
dead!” Giovanni spoke fiercely, but there was no frown upon his face.

And so the farce went on as usual, to the end, while Olga, with pouting
lips, slipped behind the curtain again and joined the others who were,
every one, peeping in to see little Natale do his beloved dying-horse
act.

The little girl had come to enjoy her bit of acting with Giovanni and
Il Duca, for kneeling with folded hands and sobbing breath was a pretty
attitude, always loudly applauded, and she no longer feared that Il
Duca would lift his faithful hoof against her. But now, here was Natale
back again, and his shrill little voice going over the silly replies
to the clown in his own, old way. Well, it would be rather nice, after
all, to have Natale again, and she would not fuss about it as there
were so few things he could really do, while she was learning new feats
already, and would soon be riding Tesoro bareback around the ring.

A perfect storm of applause succeeded the end of the dialogue, when Il
Duca scrambled to his feet, and the tent was filled with cries for a
repetition of the scene. But Giovanni turned swiftly and lifted Natale
to the horse’s back, only in time to prevent the child’s falling to the
ground, as if stunned by the noise of the shouting. Out of the ring
and through the smaller tent to the open air beyond Il Duca pranced
proudly, with Giovanni at his bridle, holding Natale in his place with
his free hand.

Outside, they laid the child down on the warm ground in the dim light,
and Arduina brought a cupful of water and bathed his face, while Olga
stood by, and Antonio and Elvira went back to help Giovanni with his
table-leaping inside.

“He is not dead, is he, Arduina?” Olga asked in a frightened voice.
“Feel his pulse as we do Il Duca’s!”

“Hurry and call Nonna!” the older girl urged nervously. “We shall have
to go in, the very next thing after this, and Nonna will know what to
do.”

So when Natale next opened his eyes, the light of a sputtering candle
showed him the gray head of dear Nonna bent over him. He lay on a small
mattress in a corner, and the smoke-stained ceiling of the house-wagon
shut out the sky.

“_Ecco!_ he opens his eyes, my _bimbo_! my Natalino! _Carino_,[10] what
does it all mean? Tell Nonna how you have come back to the _circo_!”

[Footnote 10: Darling.]

But at first Natale only lifted one hand to stroke the dear, wrinkled
face of Nonna, in smiling content. After a little, he laid his hand on
the breast of his blouse and begged to be allowed to go to Giovanni.

“He will not scold me for coming back when he sees what I have brought
with me,” he urged.

But Nonna reminded him that the tent was still crowded with
spectators,--did he not hear the music close by, and the laughter
of the people, as the clown and Antonio and Arduina did the funny
pantomime?

Natale lay back listening, with a happy smile on his lips, while Nonna
went to blow up the coals of a small fire on the ground outside, and
to hurry the broth that Natale might have nourishment. She could not
prevail upon the boy to confide to her what he was so anxious to tell
his stepfather, and she left him alone, too glad to have him returned
to them, to grumble over his reticence.

Of all the children, Natale most sweetly recalled her own son’s
childhood, and Antonio’s boyish affection for her, his cheeriness and
obedience, had seemed to live again in Natale, although he was Elvira’s
son, and no grandson, at all, of her own.

The little ones, Tito, Maria, Gigi and the rest, were asleep in their
corners, and Nonna had been sitting at rest in the wagon door when
Olga had rushed up with the news that Natale had arrived and lay
dying, perhaps, on the ground outside the tent. It was Nonna’s strong
arms that had borne him away to the house-wagon, and Nonna’s vigorous
rubbings and applications of cold water that had brought him out of
the half-swoon of exhaustion. So Nonna was content with her work, and
would not press Natalino’s secret from him.

By the time the performance was over, and the merry-makers had streamed
out whistling, chatting and laughing together, and had gone their ways
homeward, Natale, fed and rested, was sitting up bright-eyed and eager
to announce his news.

It was stuffy and hot in the wagon, and Giovanni went to fetch the
boy outside, the moment the tent had emptied and the players were at
leisure. Olga had not even taken time to change the yellow satin blouse
and pink tights for her usual faded cotton frock. As for Antonio, he
had only slipped his feet into a pair of loose slippers, so the great
acrobat stood before Natale in all the glory of his spangled black
velvet and shapely, pink-clad limbs.

As the night was dark, one of the lamps was brought from the tent, and
a wild, gypsy-like scene its rays revealed under the trees about the
steps of the house-wagon. Elvira, in an access of motherly tenderness,
gathered Natale to her red satin bosom, and called him by all the
musical pet names belonging to the boys and girls of Italy, while
the musicians peeped over the shoulders of the actors and wondered
how little Natale had ever found his way on foot all the way from
Cutigliano to the Bagni.

“The tramping will have limbered up his legs!” one whispered to another.

“Stiffened them, rather!” was the reply, and then everybody stopped
talking and only gazed the harder as Natale put his hand within the
breast of his blouse and drew out the old leather pocketbook.

“There, Giovanni!” he said simply, reaching the book toward his
stepfather. “The ugly, black peddler with the red cap like our Leo’s
stole the money, and while he slept on his back, by the road, I stole
it from him, and then--Oh, how fast I ran and ran that he might not
catch me and kill me with his long, sharp knife!”

Giovanni, speechless with astonishment and joy, solemnly received and
kissed and opened the pocketbook, and then spread out the notes, one by
one, on his knee, while the rest crowded around, counting them aloud.

What if all should not be there? Natale’s eyes shone feverishly as he
leaned forward from his mother’s knee, his gaze alternately upon the
clown’s face, and the long, lithe fingers handling the money.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five,
forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy,
seventy-five, eighty, eighty-two, eighty-four, eighty-six,
eighty-eight, ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three,
ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight,
ninety-nine, _one hundred_!

Natale’s head dropped back against the red satin shoulder of his
mother, and his large eyes gazed wistfully into Giovanni’s face.

Would they let him stay now that he had come all the weary way “after
the wagon”, bringing them the lost money? Their welcome had been
encouraging; would they let him remain, or must he be sent back to
Cutigliano, to the priest, to Sora Grazia, to school, to imprisonment
in a house without wheels, and without Nonna?

It was Antonio Bisbini who brought up the question finally and in a
manner settled it with his slow-spoken words. Everybody had wondered
and rejoiced over the safe return of the pocketbook, with the money
untouched, and Natale had had to tell all about the peddler, and the
risks he had run of rousing the fellow from sleep in making his escape
with the pocketbook.

“He was the man who teased me to buy the beautiful diamond brooch on
the day of San Lorenzo!” cried pretty Arduina, who well remembered
the peddler’s flattering attentions to her in his hope of finding a
purchaser for his paltry glass jewelry.

“And the same who so frightened our Tito outside the church,” Nonna
chimed in indignantly. “And he all the time pretended to be so pious
and anxious to see the saints’ relics in the church! No wonder Tito
cried at the snapping of those dirty, thievish fingers in his little
face. The saints only know how he found the money in Giovanni’s
coat-pocket hung in the tent!”

“Mamá _mia_, do you remember how stiff my legs were when I played at
leaping with the boys at school in Florence?” Antonio, the finished
acrobat, asked thoughtfully, breaking a long straw with his fingers and
looking at nobody. His blond head reached almost to the lowest boughs
of the chestnut tree under which he stood, and the lamplight flared
over his fair face and glittering costume.

Natale sat up to hear the words of this oracle, and even slipped off
the satin lap of Elvira to the ground, in order to be nearer Antonio.

“I remember that you were a studious boy,” Nonna murmured in reply,
with a note of the old bitterness in her voice.

“Natale has done a good work in returning the money to us, Giovanni,”
the acrobat continued. “Why send him back to the foreigners? He was
unhappy, or he would never have come all this distance alone--mere baby
that he is.”

“And the Englishwoman’s money?” Giovanni asked in a businesslike tone.

“What has been used, replace from the pocketbook. It is not much, as we
have taken in so good a sum, here at the Bagni. Leo can ride back with
it to Cutigliano to-morrow morning, and return in time for our last
night here.”

“_Ebbene!_” said Giovanni, and this meaning “All right, with a very
good will,” so it was decided, and then everybody hurried to get into
comfortable old clothes and to eat supper.

Leo was sent to the nearest wine shop for a bottle of good red wine
that the troop might drink to the joy of Natale’s return and the
recovery of the money; also to the just discomfiture of all thieving
peddlers.

Long before the evening came to an end, a tired but most happy little
boy had crept into the shadow and fallen asleep, with his head pillowed
against Nonna’s knee.

“I am glad thou art come back to us, Natalino,” she whispered in the
softest Italian above the tangled brown curls, while the rest sang and
made merry, “and if thy little legs will only grow as straight and as
strong as my Antonio’s, and thy heart remain as faithful to old Nonna,
the saints forgive me if I care very much whether thou be acrobat or
priest!”

       *       *       *       *       *

For some reason known best to himself, but readily guessed by the clown
and the rest of the older members of the circus, the swarthy peddler
was not seen in Bagni di Lucca for many a day after. But Natale did
not lose his dread of encountering the fierce eyes and the cruel knife
until long after the circus troop had taken to the road again.

Nothing in the world could have induced Mrs. Bishop, the English lady
at Cutigliano, to touch the money returned with, what was to her, most
astonishing promptness and honesty through Leo, one of the musicians.

In the first place, the notes were very dirty, much more so, she was
sure, than when she had paid them to the clown a little more than a
week before. Secondly, she would not reclaim money which had been once
devoted to the cause of civilization and of education. If the “little
ingrate” despised his opportunities and had finally returned to his
“wallowing in the mire”, let the money which would have bought him
for decency and for usefulness go with him. Thirdly--but this was not
acknowledged even to Betty--the old lady’s heart had been touched by
the tale Luigi the priest had come to tell her on the morning after
the flight of the birdling. So her heart was not quite so hard as
her words sounded, and she was in truth rather rejoiced, as well as
very much relieved in mind, when Leo had arrived to tell of runaway
Natale’s return to the troop in safety. Therefore, generously, Mrs.
Bishop would not receive the money because it seemed to her no longer
her own; surely Giovanni and Elvira and Nonna had kept their part of
the bargain in giving up the child, while Natale had not even been
consulted in their plan.

The roll of notes was therefore returned by Leo to Giovanni, with the
foreign lady’s instructions that the money was to be spent in providing
meat for broth for the children so long as it should last. There would
still be plenty of cold water always, free as air, for daily baths
along the roads of Italy, and Mrs. Bishop hoped that Sora Grazia’s
ministrations in that line would not soon be forgotten by Natale, who
for one short week had been a scrubbed little lad. (It is safe to say
that they were not!)

Along with the money, Mrs. Bishop sent a school primer to Natale,
with the admonition that he would at least try to learn to read
while jogging up and down the earth and upsetting his stomach in all
heathenish sports.

But Madame Cioche and Betty rejoiced in open triumph over Natale’s
freedom, to say nothing of the priest Luigi and the wise old gentleman
who had in fact unwittingly opened the cage door for flight.

Sora Grazia was a trifle glum for a day or two at finding her pains
thrown away upon the sulky little protégé of the foreign lady, but as
the month’s pay for his board and lodging had been in advance, and the
nearly new clothes and shoes and cap were now thrown into the bargain
by Mrs. Bishop, to repay her for her extra trouble, she too soon became
content and even pleased with the ending of the rich lady’s scheme.

So the bare front wall of the priest’s house in Cutigliano among the
mountains has, as yet, no prospect of being adorned by a memorial
tablet to a waif of all outdoors who was willing to be a great man in
books and goodness.

And Natale?

Well, Natale is learning, better and better, how to turn his
_capitomboli_ over the dusty circus carpet, and he still feels Il
Duca’s pulse with sorrowful apprehension to the tune of the “Dead March
in Saul”--by night among the oil lamps.

By day, he trudges along hot white roads, under the marvelous blue of
Italy’s sky, with Niero and Bianco for company. Or, he lies on the
ground at Nonna’s side under some spreading tree in the camping-out
times, sometimes spelling out words in a dog-eared primer, oftener
gazing past the tree tops at the cloud-ships sailing overhead, while
Nonna tells of Antonio’s wonderful childhood.

By and by, when Natale grows too large to do the dying-horse act, and
little Tito, or Gigi takes his place, he will be dashing with the
horses around the ring. And then, in the still further and sweeter by
and by, when Antonio’s agile legs will perhaps have begun to stiffen
again, and the straight back to bend forward a little as he walks, who
but Natale will be the shining star of the Circo Equestre, like another
bespangled, pink-clad Antonio, with crisp brown curls and laughing
eyes, and the nimblest, straightest legs in all Italy?




_The story of a little patriotic Cuban girl_

  LITTLE CUBA LIBRE

_By_ JANIE PRICHARD DUGGAN

Illustrated. 282 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net._

In all the big city of Havana there was no more patriotic little girl
than Amada Trueno, daughter of one of the city gardeners. With all her
heart she hated the Spaniards who ruled her beloved island of Cuba.
“Little Cuba Libre” they called her when she stamped her foot and
called the Spaniards enemies and tyrants. When she went to her cousin’s
house in the country, although she played on friendly terms with the
children of a Spanish planter, still her hatred of the oppressors
slumbered. How the Cubans finally revolted, and how little Amada
herself took part in that revolution, even to the extent of bearing
arms, is told in this charming story. “Little Cuba Libre” contains
faithful pictures of Cuban life and Cuban people, and while written
especially for young readers, its fine qualities should also appeal to
older ones. Besides being an interesting story of Cuban girlhood it is
a depiction of the very spirit of patriotism.


LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS

34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON




_Real stories of three famous elephants_

  THE ADVENTURES OF
  MOLLIE, WADDY and TONY

_By_ PAUL WAITT

Illustrated in color by Clara E. Atwood.

75 cents net.

Mollie, Waddy and Tony are three of the most wonderful elephants in the
world. Born in India, they have traveled all over Europe and our own
America, showing their clever tricks to thousands of boys and girls.
They were bought by the children of Boston and are now kept in the
Franklin Park Zoo, where they will remain the rest of their lives.

Mr. Waitt writes of their adventures when they were traveling, and
tells of some tricks they played which their keeper never taught them.
Little Tony is the roguish one, and he is always getting into mischief.
That clever little trunk of his pokes into all sorts of places where it
doesn’t belong, and sometimes it takes Mollie, Waddy and Johann, the
keeper, to make him behave as a proper little elephant should.

 “This is the most bewitching elephant story we ever read. It is
 the story of their travels through many countries. It is as good a
 story for boys and girls as any boys and girls will ever want to
 read.”--_Journal of Education_, Boston.

 “The story of ‘The Adventure of Mollie, Waddy, and Tony’ is one of
 the nicest that little people who like animals can read.”--_New York
 Times._


LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS

34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

On page 4, Tesore has been changed to Tesoro.

On page 71, up-stairs has been changed to upstairs.

Illustrations have been moved to avoid interrupting the flow of
paragraphs.

In text edition of this e-book, footnotes have been moved to
immediately below the paragraph where they occurred.

All other spelling, hyphenation, and non-English dialogue have been
retained.



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