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232 without a guide, as no one to speak of lives at Ciiieto, had I not ignominiously called after him to stop, apologised, and abjectly capitulated. Our treaty concluded and my pardon granted, I sprang up alongside him on the box and off we went, jumping along over ruts and small rocks which adorned the high-road at jjleasant and unexpected intervals, and greatly added to the interest of the drive. Nothing could equal the beauty of the scene which meets your eyes on this journey, at least so it seemed to me ; but I must admit that I was singularly fortunate in arriving on the night of the new moon : and, as she coyly '.?«i- ';.j;At:;.;-: ^v climbed the heavens, pale and virginal among the bi'ightly burning- planets, and as millions of fireflies flashed and died and flashed again among the olives, as though they were the spray falling from a fir- mament that appeared literally splashed with stars, it seemed as if I were arrived into the delectable country for which lovers sigh and of which poets dream. Even the practical and inquisitive conversation of my worldly-minded charioteer, which was indeed ' of the earth earthy,' could hardly draw down my mind from the contemplation of this beatific vision, until, abruptly pulling up, after a leap of more than usual altitude over some more jagged than the average boulder, at a little bridge, he showed me where our roads parted, and where a whitely gleaming path led up to a little village peeping out among the hill-tops, which he told me was Anticoli-C^orrado. So with his ' buoii viaggio,' rendered the more hearty by the receipt of what I afterwards discovered to be his triple fare, off I started up the mountain road, my little portmanteau in my hand. It was nearly ten o'clock, and not a sound was to be heard but the shiver of the olive leaves as the light night breeze passed through them. Up, and always up, getting, it seemed, but very little nearer by the winding moun- tain road to my village, ' set,' fortunately, ' on an hill,' and so not 'to be hid.' I had been walking for about T»*t Gej.}H,;M, i^oST-tiFFWifc - twenty minutes, when I became suddenly aware of a swinging light that was approaching me. A minute later, and it was, immediately in front of me, flashed into my face by a wild-looking figure, who, with the most luireasonable laughter, danced about me, and tried to seize my baggage. Firmly I resisted, my British bull-dog instinct making me stick to it, while the man, — whether partly maniac or wholly bandit, my ignorance of his abominable dialect, and my unfamiliarity with the extent and significance of his gestures, made it difficult for me to discover, — continuing to dance around me, and dash at my portmanteau in my unwary moments, at last endeavoured to em- bi-ace me, telling me he knew all about me — my ' people,' my hopes, my fortunes, and my aims — that he knew quite well that I was coming to Anticoli, and that really I must not be allowed anj' longer to cari-y my portmanteau. 1 was about to reply that the inconvenience of its weight was as naught when compared with the anxiety I should feel if I saw it borne off on his uncouth shoulders, when sud- denly it occurred to me that there might be method in his madness. So I asked him, as he appeared to be so particularly omniscient, to tell me the name of the man at whose house I was to lodge. With leaps and roars of laughter and many claps on the shoulder the man at last told me that it was Michele Amato that was expecting me — that he himself was by way of being, in his intervals of performing postal duties,

a sort of servant of my host, and that he had been sent by him on the chance of meeting me, as Signor Amato had thought it possible that I might arrive that night. Here, then, was the jorosaic end of this adventure — my bold highwayman an honest servant, anxious to perform his duty — my wild maniac only an ordinary specimen of an Italian peasant. The Italian peasant is gifted — as negroes are — with a power of seeing in the most ordinary events something to overpower him, with good-