mountain scenery and bits of blue Mediterranean, with
bronzed fishermen, peasants in goat-skins and
brown serge, square-capped women with pitchers,
nets, olives, vineyards, rocks, and red caps, I
drew from time to time, and these sold freely.
My chief patrons were the foreign visitors to
Sorrento and Castelamare, who were glad to carry
home with them some memento of the rich
scenery of the Neapolitan coast. I worked when
I was hungry, earned enough to pay for beef and
maccaroni, and lived altogether in an improvident
hand to mouth fashion, like an educated lazzarone.
All this time I was very far from happy.
There was not a much heavier heart in the
kingdom of Naples than that of Hugh Edwards
—British subject and artist, as his passport
described him—when he sauntered out of the
little inn at Portici one autumn evening.

The sun was going down; one could see the
scarlet light flaring and blazing through the green
boughs of the rustling chesnut-trees, but there
was plenty of light as yet, and the prospect was
a pleasant one, even to jaundiced eyes like mine.
Portici and its painted houses were soon left
behind, and I struck off by one of the many
paths that lead into the hills.

Presently I stopped, and looked around me
from a small eminence that commanded a view
of the surrounding country. There was one
object that especially caught my eye, the
new railroad, then in process of construction,
and which was being carried out, like most
of the iron ways of Europe, by English skill
and English capital. As I looked, I saw a
cutting far beneath me, in which a gang of
labourers were still at work. The low rays of
the sun flashed on their variously clad forms,
their heads topped by the red Naples cap, or
bound, turban-like, with a coloured handkerchief,
and the picks and spades that were tearing a
way through the volcanic soil. I stood afar off,
and watched them; but not from any sympathy
with their toil or its ultimate objects. On the
contrary, as I looked, I felt my lip curl, and my
brow darken, for the spectacle suggested
unpleasant thoughts. The contractor who had
undertaken that section of the new line was no
other than Lucy's odious elder brother, that
very George Graham who had had the chief
share in breaking off the half engagement
between his orphaned sister and myself. A clever,
plausible man, who had succeeded, and who, like
all the successful in this world, treated failure as
a crime.

I had never met this prosperous relative of
Lucy's, nor did I desire to meet him. His
opinion of myself had been formed from the
report of mutual acquaintances, from the
conversation of Lucy and her aunt, and from a
brief correspondence that had begun and ended
in anger. To meet George Graham was more
than I had bargained for, and I quickly made
up my mind to quit Portici.

A strange whim had urged me to visit this
little town, and that whim had been
disappointed. While last at Salerno, an American
traveller had given me an animated description
of some adventures among the banditti, and had
told me a number of anecdotes of the most
celebrated brigand chiefs of the day, Saltocco,
Capo Rosso, Malinghetti, and another freebooter,
whose nickname of L'Agnello, or " the Lamb,"
ironically expressed his peculiarly ferocious
disposition. My informant was a doctor, and to
this circumstance he had owed his immunity
from any ill usage while in the hands of his
dangerous hosts; many of whom were at the time
suffering from marsh fever, and among them their
leader, Saltocco. The American had been lucky
enough, having a medicine-chest among his
luggage, to cure the greater part of these
invalids; and, in return for his medical services,
they had set him free, uninjured and
uuransomed, retaining, however, his gold watch
and chain, which the chief promised to wear as a
keepsake. The account Dr. Hucks gave of the
wild bivouacs, high up in the thin clear air of the
mountain solitudes, of the Salvator Rosa groups
around the fires, the dances, the village merry-
makings, in which the brigands took a part
as welcome guests, had piqued my curiosity.
My desire was to obtain, if I could, a safe-
conduct to inspect the camp of these marauders.
For the idea of painting a great picture, and
growing famous at a single effort, haunted my
fancy yet, as a similar idea does that of many
and many an idle man. Who knew whether some
quaintly savage scene amid the hills might not
suggest matter for a work that should even yet
retrieve my blighted fortunes?

Most complete, however, had been the failure
of these romantic notions. I found the good
people of Portici by no means desirous to admit
the existence of any brigands in their vicinity.
All stories of outrage and plunder were gross
exaggerations. A petty theft might now and
then take place; but, beyond the pillage of a
henroost or a vineyard, no transgression was
authentic. In fact, I suspect the Bourbon
government at Naples, anxious to avert the
troublesome advice of foreign powers, had issued
orders that the banditti, if they could not be
exterminated, should be ignored.

"I beg your pardon, but I conclude that your
name is Edwards, and that you are staying at the
Albergo d'Inghilterra—is it not so?" said a voice
in English, at my elbow. I turned and confronted
the speaker, who had approached me,
lost as I was in reverie, without my hearing his
step. He was a strongly-built man of middle
height, with a sunburnt face and quick blue eyes,
that roved hither and thither, and seemed in an
instant to take the measure of any object or
person. His hair was getting grey, but probably
more from toil and exposure to weather than
from age, since he did not appear my senior by
more than eight or nine years. His attire, of
dark-coloured Tweed, was neat and plain, and
by the compasses and ivory rule that projected
from the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat, I