his own gun. O cavalier, if you can help us, take her
away from Corsica!"

He cast up both hands and ran from me.

CHAPTER XX.

I LEARN OF LIBERTY, AND AM RESTORED TO IT.

"A! Fredome is a noble thing:
Fredome mayse man to haif liking."
BARBOUR, _The Bruce_.

"Non enim propter gloriam divitas aut honores pugnanus,
sed propter libertatem solummodo, quam nemo bonus nisi cum vita
amittit.--"
_Lit. Comit. et Baron_. Scotoe ad Pap. A.D. 1320
(quoted by BOSWELL).

"When corn ripeth in every steade
Mury it is in feld and hyde;
Sinne hit is and shame to chyde.
Knyghtis wolleth on huntyng ride,
The deor galopith by wodis side,
He that can his tyme abyde,
At his wille him schal betyde."
_Alisaunder_.

More than this Marc'antonio would not tell me, though I laid many
traps for more during the long weeks my bones were healing.
But although he denied me his confidence in this matter, he told me
much of this Corsica I had so childishly invaded, and a great deal to
make me blush for my random ignorance; of the people, their untiring
feud with Genoa, their insufferable wrongs, their succession of
heroic leaders. He did not speak of their passion for liberty, as a
man will not of what is holiest in his love. He had no need.
It spoke for itself in the ring of his voice, in the glooms and
lights of his eyes, as we lay on either side of our wood fire; and I
listened, till the embers died down, to the deeds of Jean Paul de
Leca, of Giudice della Rocca, of Bel Messer, of Sampiero di Ornano,
of the great Gaffori and other chiefs, all famous in their day, each
in his turn assassinated by Genoese gold. I heard of Venaco, where
the ghost of Bel Messer yet wanders, with the ghosts of his wife and
seven children drowned by the Genoese in the little lake of the Seven
Bowls. I heard of the twenty-one shepherds of Bastelica who marched
down from their mountains, and routed eight hundred Greeks and
Genoese of the garrison of Ajaccio; how at length they were
intercepted and slain between the river and the marshes--all but one
youth, who, stretched among his comrades and feigning death, was
taken and led to execution through the streets of the town, carrying
six heads, and each a kinsman's. I heard how Gaffori besieged his
own house; how the Ge