been a boatman at Palermo, and was very proud
of the five or six English words that he had
picked up when plying among the foreign shipping—
"the Lamb was out of temper yesterday,
for three of his traps have caught no mice.
There was the Cardinal, for whom nine of us
watched for a week on the Sorrento road, a prince
of the Church, whose ransom would have made
us all as rich as Jews, to say nothing of the
absolution he could have given us while we had him
fast. Well, he slipped through our fingers, and
so did the Notary of Salerno, old Signor Tazzi,
who is wealthy enough to eat off gold and drink
lacrima every day if he were not a skinflint, and
so did the milordo of the green carriage. The
Lamb is not often so hasty as you found him, but
he is a man of his word, and, per Demonio, you
had better recal yourself to the memory of such of
your friends as have the plumpest purses and the
softest hearts."

Excellent counsel, no doubt, but, like much
other advice of the same sort, easier given than
followed. There was no one to whom I could
turn for help in this sore strait. The sum
demanded was a large one, above two thousand
pounds of English money, and I could as soon
have liquidated the National Debt as have raised
the tithe of it from any resources of my own.
Rich friends were no more plentiful with me
than they generally are with a man who is at
once poor and self-willed, and I had no living
relation who either could or would pay my
ransom. The only hope, and that a desperate one,
seemed to be that of an application to the
British Embassy at Naples, and I knew too much of
routine to expect much from this. Time was
life to me, and most likely, long before a dry
official reply should be returned to my letter, I
should be past all power of diplomatic succour.
Moreover, it was not improbable that my appeal
would be treated as a hoax or an impertinence;
there was " no precedent" for such a solecism as
a correspondence between a prisoner of L'Agnello
and the Envoy of Her Britannic Majesty to the
Court of the Two Sicilies.

In this emergency I bethought me of the
stranger, the English engineer with whom I had
been conversing immediately before my capture
by the brigands. He had professed his desire to
render me a service, should real need of assistance
arise, and I might as well take him at his
word. Of course I was not so absurd as to
dream that a salaried professional man could
furnish the considerable sum that the bandit
leader required as the price of my liberty, but I
thought that if my new acquaintance were
to press my case on the notice of the officials at
the embassy, I should have a better chance of a
hearing. With this idea I penned a short letter,
addressed according to the direction that had
been given me by the mysterious S. D., and a
young brigand undertook to carry this missive to
the nearest lowland village, whence it would be
conveyed to Naples through the customary
channel of the post.

Day after day went by, and my feet were so
far healed, thanks to the ointment and chewed
leaves which old Catarina daily applied to them,
that I could hobble about the camp, which I was
allowed to do pretty freely, for I was by far too
lame to escape over the rugged and stony country
that lay between me and safety. I was not ill
treated; a share of the polenta and meat was
always assigned me, even when, as sometimes
occurred, there was a scarcity of food in the
bivouac, and I was always offered wine and cigars
when I drew near one of the fires around which
the wild groups sat after sunset. I had been
appointed portrait-painter in ordinary to the
band, and ruffian after ruffian jostled and squabbled
with his compeers for the prior right to have
his villanous features transferred to the blank
leaves of my sketch-book. A strange set they
were, so ignorant, so shrewd, so lively in their
hours of good humour, that they were less like
criminals than some savage tribe at war with
society. There were two or three improvisatori
among them, and several who could sing to their
own accompaniment on the guitar, and the mirth
and merrymaking were loud and unrestrained
around the watch-fires at night.

The robbers were by no means isolated from
the sympathies of the rest of the community.
They were on very good terms with most of the
villagers in the mountain glens around them, at
whose feasts and fairs they showed themselves
openly, and from whom they received information
and provisions. Indeed, many of them belonged
to the district, and were akin to the rural
magistrates and the very police who should have
hunted them down, and this, perhaps, explains
the fact that the carabinieri never seemed able
to discover the fastnesses where the marauders
lurked, well known as they were to hundreds of
so-called honest people.

The brigands were not idle. Frequent expeditions
were undertaken with varying success,
but no prisoner was brought up into the hills
during my stay, though more than one carriage
was stopped, and its occupants plundered. On
one occasion only was there any collision with
the gendarmes, and on that the detachment
came back sullen and discomfited, with the loss
of two of their number, who had been wounded
and taken. This misfortune did not tend to make
the Lamb more amiable. He gruffly intimated
to his followers that they must prepare to set
out for another lurking-place, since their unlucky
comrades, in spite of the tremendous oaths by
which the banditti are bound to keep the secret
of their companions' retreat, would probably be
tempted by promises of pardon to reveal all they
knew. And it was just possible that the authorities
would take active measures to destroy the
wasps, when once certain where their nest was
to be found. Under these circumstances, the
Lamb notified to me that he must curtail my
lease of life by two days, and that if in twentyfour
hours my ransom did not arrive, he should
simplify matters by cutting rny throat. Nor