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The colonel fell into the snare, and started immediately to surprise Vardarelli, whom he was assured was in a little village at the further extremity of a narrow pass, through which only four men could pass abreast.
"As to the eight who had refused to come to Foggia, and the two who had escaped, they were hunted down like wild beasts, tracked from cavern to cavern, and from forest to forest. Some were shot, others betrayed by the peasantry, some gave themselves up, so that, before the year was out, all the Vardarelli were dead or prisoners.
"Gaetano Vardarelli was a native of Calabria, and one of the earliest members of the revolutionary society of the Carbonari. When Murat, after for some time favouring that society, began to persecute it, Vardarelli fled to Sicily, and took service under King Ferdinand. He was then twenty-six years of age, possessing the muscles and courage of a lion, the agility of a chamois, the eye of an eagle.
Nevertheless, he began forming up his men as well as the nature of the ground would permit, when Vardarelli himself appeared upon a projecting crag. 'Down with your arms, or you are dead men! he shouted in a voice of thunder.
A certain colonel, whose name I forget, and who had heard this vow, pledged himself, if a battalion were put under his command, to bring in Vardarelli, his two brothers, and the sixty men composing his troop, bound hand and foot, and to place them in the dungeons of the Vicaria.
"Proceeding according to the old formula observed by banditti chiefs both in Calabria and in melodramas, Vardarelli proclaimed himself redresser general of wrongs and grievances, and acted up to his profession by robbing the rich and assisting the poor.
Then Vardarelli, without leaving his position, ordered them to pile their arms, and march to two different places which he pointed out to them.
One day the Prince of Leperano, Colonel Calcedonio, Major Delponte, with a dozen other officers, and a score of attendants, were hunting in a forest a few leagues from Bari, when the cry of 'Vardarelli! was suddenly heard.
The woman owed her life to a similar piece of daring, effected, however, on another point of the enemy's line. She broke through, and galloped off, after having discharged both her pistols with fatal effect. "The attention of all was now turned to the remaining twenty Vardarelli, who had taken refuge in the ruined castle.
The offer was too good to be refused; the minister of war put five hundred men at the disposal of the colonel, who started with them at once in pursuit of the outlaw. The latter was soon informed by his spies of this fresh expedition, and he also made a vow, to the effect that he would cure his pursuer, once and for all, of any disposition to interfere with the Vardarelli.
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