tter, and this letter, he believed, at any rate, had brought about
his father's death. He felt it was impossible to prosecute them for the
forgery. Now and then, when the prejudices or the instincts of his
race assailed him, and suggested an easy vengeance--a shot fired at the
corner of some path--the thought of his brother-officers, of Parisian
drawing-rooms, and above all, of Miss Nevil, made him shrink from them
in horror. Then his mind dwelt on his sister's reproaches, and all
the Corsican within him justified her appeal, and even intensified its
bitterness. One hope alone remained to him, in this battle between his
conscience and his prejudices--the hope that, on some pretext or other,
he might pick a quarrel with one of the lawyer's sons, and fight a duel
with him. The idea of killing the young man, either by a bullet or a
sword-thrust reconciled his French and Corsican ideas. This expedient
adopted, he began to meditate means for its execution, and was feeling
relieved already of a heavy burden, when other and gentler thoughts
contributed still further to calm his feverish agitation. Cicero, in his
despair at the death of his daughter Tullia, forgot his sorrow when
he mused over all the fine things he might say about it. Mr. Shandy
consoled himself by discourses of the same nature for the loss of his
son. Orso cooled his blood by thinking that he would depict his state of
mind to Miss Nevil, and that such a picture could not fail to interest
that fair lady deeply.

He was drawing near the village, from which he had unconsciously
travelled a considerable distance, when he heard the voice of a little
girl, who probably believed herself to be quite alone, singing in a
path that ran along the edge of the _maquis_. It was one of those slow,
monotonous airs consecrated to funeral dirges, and the child was singing
the words:

"And when my son shall see again the dwelling of his father,
Give him that murdered father's cross; show him my shirt blood-
spattered."

"What's that you're singing, child?" said Orso, in an angry voice, as he
suddenly appeared before her.

"Is that you, Ors' Anton'?" exclaimed the child, rather startled. "It is
Signorina Colomba's song."

"I forbid you to sing it!" said Orso, in a threatening voice.

The child kept turning her head this way and that, as though looking
about for a way of escape, and she would certainly have run off had she
not been held back by the necessity