rgeons in Corsica there might be none, as he assured
me, or none capable of probing an ordinary bullet wound. But in
youth he had learnt the art of bone-setting, and practised it upon
the sheep which slipped and broke themselves in the gorge of the
Taravo; and his care of me was a masterpiece, to be boasted over to
his dying day. "The smallest limp, at the outside!" he promised me;
he would not answer entirely for the left leg, that thrice-teasing,
thrice-accursed fracture. Another ten days, and we might be sure; he
could not allow me to set foot to ground under ten days. But while
he carried me he whistled a lively air, and broke off to promise me
good shooting before a month was out--shooting of blackbirds, of deer
perhaps, perhaps even of a _mufro_. Here the whistling grew _largo
espressivo_.

And I? I drew the upland air into my lungs, and the scent of the
recovered _macchia_ through my nostrils, and inhaled it as a man
inhales tobacco-smoke, and could have whooped for joy. Not by
one-fifth was the scent so intense as I have since smelt it in
spring, when all Corsica breaks into flower; yet intense enough and
exhilarating after the dank odours of the valley. But the colours!
On a sudden the _macchia_ had burst into fruit--carmine berries of
the sarsaparilla, upon which a few late flowerets yet drooped, duller
berries of the lentisk, olive-like berries of the phillyria, velvet
purple berries of the myrtle, and (putting all to shade) yellow and
scarlet fruit of the arbutus, clustering like fairy oranges, here and
there so thickly that the whole thicket was afire and aflame, enough
to have deceived Moses! God, how good to see it and be alive!

Marc'antonio bore me up through the swimming air and laid me in the
shadow of the cave--_her_ cave. It was empty as she had left it, and
my back pressed the very bed of fern on which she had lain. The fern
was dry now, after long winnowing by the wind that found its way into
every crevice of this mountain summit.

How could I choose but think of her? Thinking of her, how could I
choose but weary myself in vain speculation, by a hundred guesses
attempting to force my way past the edge of the mystery, the sinister
shadow which wrapped her round, and penetrate to the heart of it?
I recalled her beauty, childlike yet sullen; her eyes, so forthright
at times and transparently innocent, yet at times so swiftly clouded
with suspicion, not merely shy, but shy with terror,