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BIANCA AND BEPPO

Branca and Beppo were two little Italian children.
Their father was a Duke, and they lived years and years
ago when many of the Dukes of Italy were at war with one
another. Young as they were, Bianca and Beppo were
used to the sight of grim cavalcades of armed men and
mail-clad warriors.

It was a beautiful castle, adorned with fine pictures,
tapestries, and statues. Gay flowers bloomed at many a
window ; and the colors on the walls and floors were so
cunningly mingled that’ they were known to be there
only by a sense of brightness that filled the great rooms.
There were singing birds, too, that sang just as our birds
sing to-day. But pictures, or flowers, or birds, were not
half so bright, blooming, and merry as Beppo and Bianca.
Their father often said that the very armor in his halls
tingled with their childish laughter.

One day their mother, with an armed escort composed
of the most trusty of the duke’s retainers, went away on a
visit to her father, a fierce old Baron, whose castle was
many miles distant in the heart of the Apennines. That

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