ut for him,
one of the herdsmen went out to put the bridle and saddle on the black
horse. Orso and his sister followed close on his heels and entered the
field. The man had caught the horse, but he had dropped both saddle
and bridle, and seemed quite paralyzed with horror, while the horse,
remembering the wound it had received during the night, and trembling
for its other ear, was rearing, kicking, and neighing like twenty
fiends.

"Now then! Make haste!" shouted Orso.

"Ho, Ors' Anton'! Ho, Ors' Anton'!" yelled the herdsman. "Holy Madonna!"
and he poured out a string of imprecations, numberless, endless, and
most of them quite untranslatable.

"What can be the matter?" inquired Colomba. They all drew near to the
horse, and at the sight of the creature's bleeding head and split ear
there was a general outcry of surprise and indignation. My readers must
know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy's horse is at once a
vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. "Nothing but a bullet-wound
can expiate such a crime."

Though Orso, having lived so long on the mainland, was not so sensitive
as other Corsicans to the enormity of the insult, still, if any
supporter of the Barricini had appeared in his sight at that moment, he
would probably have taken vengeance on him for the outrage he ascribed
to his enemies.

"The cowardly wretches!" he cried. "To avenge themselves on a poor
brute, when they dare not meet me face to face!"

"What are we waiting for?" exclaimed Colomba vehemently. "They come
here and brave us! They mutilate our horses! and we are not to make any
response? Are you men?"

"Vengeance!" shouted the herdsmen. "Let us lead the horse through the
village, and attack their house!"

"There's a thatched barn that touches their Tower," said old Polo
Griffo; "I'd set fire to it in a trice."

Another man wanted to fetch the ladders out of the church steeple. A
third proposed they should break in the doors of the house with a heavy
beam intended for some house in course of building, which had been left
lying in the square. Amid all the angry voices Colomba was heard telling
her satellites that before they went to work she would give each man of
them a large glass of anisette.

Unluckily, or rather luckily, the impression she had expected to produce
by her own cruel treatment of the poor horse was largely lost on Orso.
He felt no doubt that the savage mutilation was due to one of his foes,
and he specia