t one of the roads which
the traveller was to follow.--"That is your road, excellency, and now
you cannot again mistake."--'And here is your recompense,' said the
traveller, offering the young herdsman some small pieces of money.

"'Thank you,' said Luigi, drawing back his hand; 'I render a service, I
do not sell it.'--'Well,' replied the traveller, who seemed used to this
difference between the servility of a man of the cities and the pride
of the mountaineer, 'if you refuse wages, you will, perhaps, accept a
gift.'--'Ah, yes, that is another thing.'--'Then,' said the traveller,
'take these two Venetian sequins and give them to your bride, to make
herself a pair of earrings.'

"'And then do you take this poniard,' said the young herdsman; 'you will
not find one better carved between Albano and Civita-Castellana.'

"'I accept it,' answered the traveller, 'but then the obligation will
be on my side, for this poniard is worth more than two sequins.'--'For a
dealer perhaps; but for me, who engraved it myself, it is hardly worth a
piastre.'

"'What is your name?' inquired the traveller.--'Luigi Vampa,' replied
the shepherd, with the same air as he would have replied, Alexander,
King of Macedon.--'And yours?'--'I,' said the traveller, 'am called
Sinbad the Sailor.'" Franz d'Epinay started with surprise.

"Sinbad the Sailor." he said.

"Yes," replied the narrator; "that was the name which the traveller gave
to Vampa as his own."

"Well, and what may you have to say against this name?" inquired Albert;
"it is a very pretty name, and the adventures of the gentleman of that
name amused me very much in my youth, I must confess."--Franz said no
more. The name of Sinbad the Sailor, as may well be supposed, awakened
in him a world of recollections, as had the name of the Count of Monte
Cristo on the previous evening.

"Proceed!" said he to the host.

"Vampa put the two sequins haughtily into his pocket, and slowly
returned by the way he had gone. As he came within two or three hundred
paces of the grotto, he thought he heard a cry. He listened to know
whence this sound could proceed. A moment afterwards he thought he heard
his own name pronounced distinctly. The cry proceeded from the grotto.
He bounded like a chamois, cocking his carbine as he went, and in a
moment reached the summit of a hill opposite to that on which he had
perceived the traveller. Three cries for help came more distinctly to
his ear. He cast his eyes