day since the Saturday
before last, when old Stephanu Ceccaldi swindled me out of that very horse
from which you have alighted: and it fills me with wonder to see him
here."

"My tale will not lessen your wonder," said I, "when you learn how I came
by him. But as touching this Stephanu Ceccaldi?"

"As we hear, they were to have buried him last night at moonrise: for a
week had not passed before my knife found him--the knife of me,
Marcantonio Dezio. All night the _voceri_ of the Ceccalde's women-folk
have been sounding across the hills."

"Agreeable sir, I have later news of him. The Ceccalde (let us doubt not)
did their best. They mounted him upon Nello here, the innocent cause of
their affliction. They waked him with dirges which--now you come to
mention them--were melancholy enough to drive a cat to suicide.
They tied him upright, and rode him forth to the burial. But it would
seem that Nello, here, is a true son of your clan: he cannot bear a
Ceccaldi on top of him. For I met him scouring the hills with the corpse
on his back, having given leg-bail to all his escort."

The Corsican has a heart, if you only know where to find it. Forgetting
his dread of an ambush, or disregarding it in the violence of his emotion,
Marcantonio flung wide the door, stepped forth, and casting both arms
about the horse's neck and mane, caressed him passionately and even with
tears.

"O Nello! O brave spirit! O true son of the Dezii!"

He called forth his family, and they came trooping through the doorway--an
old man, two old women, a middle-aged matron whom I took for Marcantonio's
wife, three stalwart girls, a stunted lad of about fourteen and four
smaller and very dirty children. Their movements were dignified--even an
infant Corsican rarely forgets his gravity--but they surrounded Nello one
and all, and embraced him, and fed him on lumps of sugar. (Sugar, I may
say, is a luxury in Corsica, and scarce at that.) They wept upon his mane
and called him their little hero. They shook their fists towards that
quarter, across the valley, in which I supposed the Ceccalde to reside.
They chanted a song over the little beast while he munched his sugar with
an air of conscious worth. And in short I imagined myself to be wholly
forgotten in their delight at recovering him, until Marcantonio swung
round suddenly and asked me to name a price for him.

"Eh?" said I. "What--for Nello? Surely, after what has happened, you can
har