I to mine. Farewell!"

That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted
the City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into those
picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull
and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of
prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These
were the only signs of life; not a human being was met,--not a hut was
visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean
which lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road
brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which
are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he came
upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted image
of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart
of a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for
just such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the
demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid
wretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They
set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt
arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon
hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped
spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the
village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard
forms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some
seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for their
squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. They
gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly