'You are afraid of the place?' said his tempters, who were all the more eager to see it. 'Well, money can buy courage as well as it can buy bread, or a pretence of it at any rate. Come, little man, and if you show us a true Etruscan tomb you shall have two scudi. There!'
Zirlo's hands fell to his side.
He gave a little gasp, as though yielding up in sheer desperation his soul to the evil spirit.
'I will take you,' he muttered between his little pearly teeth, and then he grew very cold, as cold as though it were midwinter; and he looked scared over his shoulder, fearful of seeing the friend he was about to betray.
'That is well,' said his unconscious corrupters, and they sent the little figure on before them across the brown solitudes of the autumnal moor.
Zefferino walked as if he were dizzy and faint, and for a moment the blue belt of the sky spun round him in circles.
He heard the strangers talking one to another in a strange tongue, and he heard all those words as though they were spoken in a dream, and his heart kept beating against
