subjects. You forget, too, that it was in consequence of your
complaints he sent to the cruel Rabbata to control us--Rabbata whom we
slew in our wrath, for we are freemen and brook no tyranny. If we are
poor individually, it is because we yield up our booty into the hands
of our woivodes, to be used for the common good of seven hundred
families. No, Signor! if the republic has to complain of us, let her
remember the provocations received at her hands, the persecutions
which converted a band of heroes into a pirate horde, and which
changed our holy zeal against the enemies of the Cross into
remorseless hatred of all mankind. As to the forged seals and
signatures you talk of, and the deceptions practised on the Turks, if
such there were, they were the self-willed act of our woivodes, and in
no way instigated by Austria."

"Thou liest, Dansowich!" said the Proveditore sternly. "Did you not
proclaim and swear in the public market-place of the Austrian town of
Segna, that you were the friends and allies of Venice? This you would
never have dared to do, but with the approval and connivance of the
archducal government."

The eyes of the pirate sparkled with a strange and significant gleam
as the Proveditore recalled the circumstance to his recollection.

"Know ye not," said he with a grim smile, "whom ye have to thank for
that good office? 'Twas Dansowich himself, who thereby but half
fulfilled his vow of vengeance against the republic. And when did it
occur?" he continued with rising fury. "Was it not shortly after the
day in which that heartless villain, the Proveditore Marcello,
captured the woivode's wife, and hung her, unoffending and
defenceless, unshriven and unabsolved, upon a tree on the Dalmatian