to be
frightened by your violence into buying it? Be off, you rogue, or I'll
raise the village and make short work of you. Be off, I say!"

He backed away as he spoke, towards the fireplace, and from the corner
took a stout oaken staff. He was a villain, a thieving rogue. That much
was plain. And it was no less plain that I must submit, and leave my
beast to him, or else perhaps suffer a worse alternative.

Had those four honest peasants still been there, he would not have dared
to have so borne himself. But as it was, without witnesses to say how
the thing had truly happened, if he raised the village against me how
should they believe a man who confessed that he had eaten a dinner for
which he could not pay? It must go very ill with me.

If I tried conclusions with him, I could break him in two
notwithstanding his staff. But there would remain the girl to give the
alarm, and when to dishonesty I should have added violence, my case
would be that of any common bandit.

"Very well," I said. "You are a dirty, thieving rascal, and a vile one
to take advantage of one in my position. I shall return for the mule
another day. Meanwhile consider it in pledge for what I owe you. But see
that you are ready for the reckoning when I present it."

With that, I swung on my heel, strode past the big-eyed girl, out of
that foul kennel into God's sweet air, followed by the ordures of speech
which that knave flung after me.

I turned up the street, setting my face towards the mountains, and
trudged amain.

Soon I was out of the village and ascending the steep road towards the
Pass of Cisa that leads over the Apennines to Pontremoli. This way had
Hannibal come when he penetrated into Etruria some two thousand years
ago. I quitted the road and took to bridle-paths under the shoulder
of the mighty Mount Prinzera. Thus I pushed on and upward through
grey-green of olive and deep enamelled green of fig-trees, and came at
last into a narrow gorge between two great mountains, a place of ferns
and moisture where all was shadow and the air felt chill.

Above me the mountains towered to the blue heavens, their flanks of a
green that was in places turned to golden, where Autumn's fingers had
already touched those heights, in places gashed with grey and purple
wounds, where the bare rock thrust through.

I went on aimlessly, and came presently upon a little fir thicket,
through which I pushed towards a sound of tumbling waters. I stood at
l