Otherwise they will kill him for you." "Do you think any one would try to catch him if I let him run loose ?" asked Ercole, as if in doubt.

"He killed a full-grown wolf before he was two years old, and not long ago he worried a sheepdog of the Campagna as if it had been nothing but a lamb.

Do you think any one would try to catch him ?" "If it fell to me, I should go to confession first," said Paoluccio.
So Ercole left the inn and trudged along the road to Rome with Nino at his heels, without once looking behind him; past the Baldinotti houses and into the Via Appia Nuova, and on into the city through the gate of San Giovanni, where the octroi men stopped him and made him show them what he had in his canvas bag.

When they saw that there was no cheese left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.
He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while, without even speaking to his dog.

It was quiet, for it was long past the hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school, and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate was quite deserted, and very white and hot.
Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good part of the morning.