thanks!"

And Orso, spurring his horse, rode rapidly in the direction to which the
little girl had pointed.

His first impulse had been one of blind fury, and he had told himself
that fortune was offering him an excellent opportunity of punishing the
coward who had avenged the blow he had received by mutilating a horse.
But as he moved onward the thought of his promise to the prefect, and,
above all, his fear of missing Miss Nevil's visit, altered his feelings,
and made him almost wish he might not come upon Orlanduccio. Soon,
however, the memory of his father, the indignity offered to his own
horse, and the threats of the Barricini, stirred his rage afresh, and
incited him to seek his foe, and to provoke and force him to a fight.
Thus tossed by conflicting feelings, he continued his progress, though
now he carefully scrutinized every thicket and hedge, and sometimes even
pulled up his horse to listen to the vague sounds to be heard in any
open country. Ten minutes after he had left little Chilina (it was then
about nine o'clock in the morning) he found himself on the edge of an
exceedingly steep declivity. The road, or rather the very slight path,
which he was following, ran through a _maquis_ that had been lately
burned. The ground was covered with whitish ashes, and here and there
some shrubs, and a few big trees, blackened by the flames, and entirely
stripped of their leaves, still stood erect--though life had long since
departed out of them. The sight of a burned _maquis_ is enough to make a
man fancy he has been transported into midwinter in some northern clime,
and the contrast between the barrenness of the ground over which the
flames have passed, with the luxuriant vegetation round about it,
heightens this appearance of sadness and desolation. But at that moment
the only thing that struck Orso in this particular landscape was one
point--an important one, it is true, in his present circumstances. The
bareness of the ground rendered any kind of ambush impossible, and the
man who has reason to fear that at any moment he may see a gun-barrel
thrust out of a thicket straight at his own chest, looks on a stretch
of smooth ground, with nothing on it to intercept his view, as a kind
of oasis. After this burned _maquis_ came a number of cultivated fields,
inclosed, according to the fashion of that country, with breast-high
walls, built of dry stones. The path ran between these fields,
producing, from a distance, the e