a composite structure enough, consisting of an
ancient Norman tower and a whole world of
outlying fortifications. French, English, and
Neapolitans have strengthened and extended
the walls from time to time, till much of the old
town, and even the cathedral, has come to be
enclosed within their rambling precincts. In
the year eighteen hundred and sixty, this castle
of Melazzo mounted forty guns of heavy calibre;
so that the fanciful spectator, if he had begun
by comparing the promontory to a sea monster,
might well have pursued his comparison a step
further, by likening the castle to its head, and
the bristling bastions to its dangerous jaws.

On the flat below, looking westward towards
Termini, and eastward towards Messina, with
its pier, its promenade, and those indispensable
gates, without which no Italian town could possibly
be deemed complete, stands modern Melazzo
—a substantial, welt-built place, washed on both
sides by the sea. Immediately beyond the town
gates, reaching up to the spurs of the inland
mountains which here approach the shore, opens
out a broad angle of level country, some six
miles in width by three in depth. It is traversed
by a few roads, and dotted over with three or
four tiny hamlets. Here and there, a detached
farm-house, or neglected villa, lifts its flat roof
above the vineyards and olive groves which
cover every foot of available ground between
the mountains and the sea. Divided by broad
belts of cane-brake, and intersected by ditches
and water-courses, these plantations alone form
a wide outlying series of natural defences.

Such is the topography of Melazzo, where
Garibaldi fought the hardest and best-contested
battle of his famous Neapolitan campaign.

Having anchored the little Albula in a narrow
creek well out of sight and reach of the Neapolitan
guns, Saxon and Castletowers shouldered
their rifles and made their way to Meri, a village
about a couple of miles inland, built up against
the slopes of the mountains, and cut off from
the plain by a broad water-course with a high
stone wall on either side. It was in this village
that General Medici had taken up his position
while awaiting reinforcements from Palermo;
and here the new comers found assembled the
main body of the Garibaldian army.

The City of Aberdeen had arrived some hours
before the Albula, and flooded the place with
red-shirts. There were horses and mules feeding
on trusses of hay thrown down in the middle
of the narrow street; groups of volunteers
cleaning their rifles, eating, drinking, smoking,
and sleeping; others hastily piling up a barricade
at the further end of the village; and some
hard at work with mattresses and sand-bags
strengthening the upper rooms of those houses
that looked towards Melazzo. A strange medley
of languages met the ear in every direction.
Here stood a knot of Hungarians, there a group
of French, a little further on a company of raw
German recruits undergoing a very necessary
course of drill. All was life, movement, expectation.
The little hamlet rang with the tramp
of men and the rattle of arms, and the very air
seemed astir with the promise of war.

Arrived in the midst of this busy scene, the
friends came to a halt, and consulted as to what
they should do next. At the same moment a
couple of officers in the English military undress
came by, laden with provisions. They carried
between them a huge stone bottle in a wicker
coat with handles—one of those ill-formed,
plethoric, modern amphoræ, holding about six.
gallons, in which the Italian wine-seller delights
to store his thin vintages of Trani and Scylla—
and besides this divided burden, one was laden
with black bread, and the other with a couple
of live hens tied up in a pocket-handkerchief.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the owner of the
hens, " Castletowers and Trefalden!"

It was Major Vaughan.

They shook hands cordially, and he invited
them to accompany him to his quarters.

"I am capitally lodged," he said, " at the top
of a house down yonder. We have been foraging,
you see, and can give you a splendid supper.
You can pluck a fowl, I suppose, upon occasion?"

"I will do my best," laughed the Earl;
"but I fear your poultry is no longer in the
bloom of youth."

"If for ten days you had eaten nothing but
green figs, with an occasional scrap of black
bread or sea-biscuit, you would be superior to
all such prejudices," replied the dragoon.
"Now it is my opinion that age cannot wither
the oldest hen that ever laid an egg. Do you
see that man on the roof of yonder high house
behind the vineyard? That is Garibaldi. He
has been up there all day, surveying the
ground. We shall have some real work to do
to-morrow."

"Then you think there will be a battle
tomorrow!" said Saxon, eagerly.

"No doubt of it—and Bosco is about the
only good general the Neapolitans have. He is
a thorough soldier, and his troops are all picked
men, well up to fighting."

"If you command a corps, I hope you will
take us in," said the Earl.

"I do not command a corps—I am on the
staff; that is to say, I do anything that is useful,
and am not particular. This morning I was a
drill-sergeant—yesterday, when Bosco tried to
dislodge our outposts at Corriola, I took a turn
at the guns. To-morrow, perhaps, if we get in.
among that confounded cane-brake down yonder,
I may take an axe, and do a little pioneering.
We are soldiers-of-all-work here, as you will
soon find out for yourselves."

"At all events you must give us something
to do."

The dragoon shrugged his shoulders. " You
will find plenty to do," said lie, " when the time
comes. It is too late now to enrol you in any
special regiment for to-morrow's work. But we
will talk of this after supper. In the mean
while, here are my quarters."

So they followed him, and helped not only to
pluck, but to cook the hens, and afterwards to
eat them; though the last was, perhaps, the
most difficult task of the three; and after
supper, having seen General Cosenz inspect a