hile the dawn, breaking above the roofed pines, filtered
down to us and filled the spaces between their trunks with a brownish
haze. By-and-by, when the slope grew easier and flattened itself out
to form the bottom of the basin, these pines gave place to a chestnut
wood, and the carpet of slippery needles to a tangled undergrowth
taller than a very tall man: and here, in a clearing beside the
track, we came on a small hut with a ruinous palisade beside it,
fencing off a pen or courtyard of good size--some forty feet square,
maybe.

The Princess halted, and I halted a few paces from her, studying the
hut. It was built of pine-logs sawn lengthwise in half and set
together with their untrimmed bark turned outwards: but the most of
their bark had peeled away with age. It had two square holes for
windows, and a doorway, but no door. Its shingle roof had buckled
this way and that with the rains, and had taken on a tinge of grey
which the dawn touched to softest silver. Lines of more brilliant
silver criss-crossed it, and these were the tracks of snails.

"O King of Corsica"--she turned to me--"behold your palace!"

Her eyes were watching me, but in what expectation I could not tell.
I stepped carelessly to the doorway and took a glance around the
interior.

"It might be worse; and I thank you, Princess."

"Ajo, Marc'antonio! Since the stranger approves of it so far, go
carry his friend within."

"Your pardon, Princess," I interposed; "the place is something too
dirty to house a sick man, and until it be cleaned my friend will do
better in the fresh air."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your subjects, O King, have left it in
this mess, and they will help you very little to improve it."

I walked over to the palisade and looked across it upon an unsightly
area foul with dried dung and the trampling of pigs. For weeks, if
not months, it must have lain uninhabited, but it smelt potently even
yet.

"My subjects, Princess?"

"With Giuse lying sick, the hogs roam without a keeper: and my people
have chosen you in his room." She paused, and I felt, rather than
saw, that both the men were eyeing me intently. I guessed then that
she was putting on me a meditated insult; to the Corsican mind,
doubtless a deep one.

"So I am to keep your hogs, Princess?" said I, with a deliberate air.
"Well, I am your hostage."

"I am breaking no faith, Englishman."

"As to that, please observe that I am not accusing you. I but