.

Now the _macchia_, as I soon discovered, is prettier to look at than to
climb through. I was a fool not to content myself with keeping at a
tolerably safe distance from the road. As it was, with fear at my heels
and a plenty of inexperience to guide me, I crawled through thickets and
blundered over sharply pointed rocks; found myself on the verge of falls
from twenty to thirty feet in depth; twisted my ankles, pushed my head
into cactus, tangled myself in creepers; found and followed goat-tracks
which led into other goat-tracks and ended nowhere; tore my hands with
briers and my shoes on jagged granite; tumbled into beds of fern, sweated,
plucked at arresting thorns, and at the end of twenty minutes discovered
what every Corsican knows from infancy--that to lose one's way in the
_macchia_ is the simplest thing in life.

I had lost mine pretty thoroughly when, happening on what seemed at least
a promising track, I cast my eyes up and saw, on a ridge some two or three
hundred yards ahead and sharply outlined against the blue morning sky, a
horse and rider descending the slope towards me.

The horse I presently discerned to be a light roan of the island breed:
and my first thought was that he seemed overweighted by his rider, who sat
erect--astonishingly erect--with his head cased in a pointed hood and his
body in a long dark cloak which fell from his shoulders to his knees.
Although he rode with saddle and bridle, he apparently used neither
stirrups nor reins, and it was a wonder to see how the man kept his seat
as he did with his legs sticking out rigid as two vine-props and his arms
held stiffly against his sides. I wasted no time, however, in marvelling,
but ran forward as he approached and stretched out my hand to his rein,
panting out, "O, friend, be good enough to guide me out of this tangle!--
for I am a stranger and indeed utterly lost."

And with that all speech froze suddenly within me: and with good excuse--
for I was looking up into the face of a corpse!

His eyes, shaded by the hood he wore, were glazed and wide, his features--
the features of an old man--livid in death. As I blenched before them, I
saw that a stout pole held his body upright, a pole lashed firmly at the
tail of his crupper, and terminating in two forking branches like an
inverted V, against which his legs had been bound with leathern thongs.

And again as I blenched from the horrible face my eyes fell on the horse,
and I saw that