It was opened cautiously and held a little ajar--just wide enough to give me a glimpse of a black-bearded face.

"Who are you?" a voice demanded in harsh Corsican.

"A friend," I answered, "and unarmed: and see, I have brought you back your horse!"

The man called to someone within the house: then addressed me again.

"Yes, it is indeed Nello. But how come you by him?"

"That is a long story," said I. "Be so good as either to step out or to open and admit me to your hospitality, that we may talk in comfort."

"To the house, O stranger, I have not the slightest intention of admitting you, seeing that the windows are stuffed with mattresses, and there is no light within--no, not so much as would show your face. And even less intention have I of stepping outside, since, without calling you a liar, I greatly suspect you are here to lead me into ambush."

"Oho!" said I, as a light broke on me. "Is this _vendetta?_"

"It is _vendetta_, and has been _vendetta_ any day since the Sat.u.r.day before last, when old Stephanu Ceccaldi swindled me out of that very horse from which you have alighted: and it fills me with wonder to see him here."

"My tale will not lessen your wonder," said I, "when you learn how I came by him. But as touching this Stephanu Ceccaldi?"

"As we hear, they were to have buried him last night at moonrise: for a week had not pa.s.sed before my knife found him--the knife of me, Marcantonio Dezio. All night the _voceri_ of the Ceccalde's women-folk have been sounding across the hills."

"Agreeable sir, I have later news of him. The Ceccalde (let us doubt not) did their best. They mounted him upon Nello here, the innocent cause of their affliction. They waked him with dirges which--now you come to mention them--were melancholy enough to drive a cat to suicide.

They tied him upright, and rode him forth to the burial. But it would seem that Nello, here, is a true son of your clan: he cannot bear a Ceccaldi on top of him. For I met him scouring the hills with the corpse on his back, having given leg-bail to all his escort."

The Corsican has a heart, if you only know where to find it. Forgetting his dread of an ambush, or disregarding it in the violence of his emotion, Marcantonio flung wide the door, stepped forth, and casting both arms about the horse's neck and mane, caressed him pa.s.sionately and even with tears.

"O Nello! O brave spirit! O true son of the Dezii!"

He called forth his family, and they came trooping through the doorway--an old man, two old women, a middle-aged matron whom I took for Marcantonio's wife, three stalwart girls, a stunted lad of about fourteen and four smaller and very dirty children. Their movements were dignified--even an infant Corsican rarely forgets his gravity--but they surrounded Nello one and all, and embraced him, and fed him on lumps of sugar. (Sugar, I may say, is a luxury in Corsica, and scarce at that.) They wept upon his mane and called him their little hero. They shook their fists towards that quarter, across the valley, in which I supposed the Ceccalde to reside.

They chanted a song over the little beast while he munched his sugar with an air of conscious worth. And in short I imagined myself to be wholly forgotten in their delight at recovering him, until Marcantonio swung round suddenly and asked me to name a price for him.

"Eh?" said I. "What--for Nello? Surely, after what has happened, you can hardly bring yourself to part with him?"

"Hardly, indeed. O stranger, it will tear my heart! But where am I to bestow him? The Ceccalde will be here presently; beyond doubt they are already climbing the pa.s.s. And for you also it will be awkward if they catch you here."

I had not thought of this danger. "The valley below will be barred then?"

I asked.

"Undoubtedly."

"I might perhaps stay and lend you some help."

"This is the Dezii's private quarrel," he a.s.sured me with dignity.

"But never fear for us, O stranger. We will give them as good as they bring."

"I am bound for Corte," said I.

"By following the track up to the _bocca_ you will come in sight of the high-road. But you will never reach it without Nello's help, seeing that my private affairs hinder me from accompanying you. Now concerning this horse, he is one in a thousand: you might indeed say that he is worth his weight in gold."

"At all events," said I smiling, "he is a ticklish horse to pay too little for."

"A price is a price," answered Marcantonio gravely. "Old Stephanu Ceccaldi, catching me drunk, thought to pay but half of it, but the residue I took when I was sober. Now, between gentlefolks, what dispute could there be over eighty livres? Eighty livres!--why it is scarce the price of a good mare!"

Well, bating the question of his right to sell the horse, eighty livres was a.s.suredly cheap: and after a moment's calculation I resolved to close with him and accept the risk rather than by higgling over a point of honesty, which after all concerned his conscience rather than mine, to incur the more unpleasant one of a Ceccaldi bullet. I searched in my wallet and paid the money, while the Dezii with many sobs, mixed a half-pint of wine in a mash and offered this last tribute to the vindicator of their family honour.

So when Nello had fed and I had drunk a cup to their very long life, I mounted and jogged away up the pa.s.s. Once or twice I reined up on the ascent for a look back at the plateau. And always the Dezii stood there, straining their eyes after Nello and waving farewells.

On the far side of the ridge my ears were saluted by sounds of irregular musketry in the vale behind; and I knew that the second stage in the Dezio-Ceccaldi _vendetta_ had opened with vigour.

Three days later I had audience with the great Paoli in his rooms in the Convent of Marosaglia. He listened to my message with patience and to the narrative of my adventures with unfeigned interest. At the end he said--

"I think you had best quit Corsica with the least possible delay.

And, if I may advise you further, you will follow the road northwards to Bastia, avoiding all short cuts. In any case, avoid the Niolo.

I happen to know something of the Ceccalde, and their temper; and, believe me, I am counselling you for the best."

MY LADY'S COACH.

_From the Military Memoir of Capt. J. de Courcy, late of the North Wilts Regiment_.

There were four of us on top of the coach that night--the driver, the guard, the corporal and I--all well m.u.f.fled up and swathed about the throat against the northwest wind; and we carried but one inside pa.s.senger, though he snored enough for six. You could hear him above the c.h.i.n.k of the swingle-bars and the drumming of our horses' hoofs on the miry road. What this inside fare was like I had no means of telling; for when the corporal and I overtook the coach at Torpoint Ferry he was already seated, and being served through the door with hot kidney pasty and hot brandy-and-water. He had travelled down from London--so I learned from the coachman by whose side I sat; and as soon as he ceased cursing the roads, the inns, the waiters, the weather and the country generally, his snores began to shake the vehicle under us as with the throes of Etna in labour.

The corporal squatted behind me with his feet on the treasure-chest and his loaded musket across his thighs, and the guard yet farther back on the roof nursing a blunderbuss and chanting to himself the dolefullest tune.

For me I sat drumming my heels, with chin sunk deep within the collar of my greatcoat, one hand in its left hip-pocket and the other thrust through the breast-opening, where my fingers touched the b.u.t.ts of a brace of travelling pistols.

I was senior ensign of my regiment (the North Wilts), and my business was to overtake a couple of waggons that had started some seven or eight hours ahead of us with a consignment of pay-money to be delivered at Falmouth, where two of His Majesty's cruisers lay on the point of sailing for the West Indies. The chest over which I mounted guard had arrived late from London: it was labelled "supplementary," and my responsibilities would end as soon as I transferred it to the lieutenant in charge of the waggons, which never moved above a walking-pace, and always, when conveying treasure, under escort of eight or ten soldiers or marines.

"Russell's Waggons," they were called, and there was no record of their having being attacked.

The country, to which I was a stranger, appeared wild enough, with hedgeless downs rolling up black and unshapely against the night.

But the coachman, who guessed what we carried, a.s.sured me that he had always found the road perfectly safe. I remember asking him how long he had been driving upon it: to which he gave no more direct answer than that he had been born in these parts and knew them better than his Bible.

"And the same you may say of Jim," he added, with a jerk of his whip back towards the guard.

"He has a cheerful taste in tunes," I remarked.

The fellow chuckled. "That's his favourite. 'My Lady's Coach' he calls it, and--come to think of it--I never heard him sing any other."

"It doesn't sound like Tantivey." I strained my ears for the words of the guard's song, and heard--

"The wheels go round without a sound Or tramp or [inaudible] of whip--"

The words next following were either drowned by the wind or m.u.f.fled and smothered in the man's neck-cloths; but by-and-by I caught another line or two--

"Ho! ho! my lady saith, Step in and ride with me: She takes the baby, white as death, And jigs him on her knee.

The wheels go round without a sound--"

This seemed to be the refrain.