ed homeward. Boys run at their heels, and spur them on with
sticks and stones. The women lag behind talking--their white head-gear
and gold ear-rings catching the low sunshine that strikes through
rents of parting mountains. Every man takes off his hat to the
marchesa; every woman wishes her good-day.

It is only the boys who do not fear her. They have no caps to raise;
when the carriage has passed, they leave the donkeys and hang on
behind like a swarm of bees. The driver is quite aware of this, and
his long whip, which he has cracked at intervals all the way from
Lucca--would reach the grinning, white-toothed little vagabonds well;
but he--the driver--grins too, and spares them.

Together they all mount the zigzag mountain-pass, that turns short off
from the right bank of the valley of the Serchio, toward Corellia. The
peasants sing choruses as they trudge upward, taking short cuts among
the trees at the angles of the zigzag. The evening lights come and go
among the chestnut-trees and on the soft, short grass. Here a fierce
flick of sunshine shoots across the road; there deep gloom darkens an
angle into which the coach plunges, the peasants, grouped on the top
of a bank overhead, standing out darkly in the yellow glow.

It is a lonely pass in the very bosom of the Apennines, midway between
Lucca and Modena. In winter the road is clogged with snow; nothing can
pass. Now, there is no sound but the singing of water-falls, and the
trickle of water-courses, the chirrup of the _cicala_, not yet gone
to its rest--and the murmur of the hot breezes rustling in the distant
forest.

No sound--save when sudden thunder-pelts wake awful echoes among the
great brotherhood of mountain-tops--when torrents burst forth, pouring
downward, flooding the narrow garden ledges, and tearing away the patches
of corn and vineyard, the people's food. Before--behind--around--arise
peaks of purple Apennines, cresting upward into the blue sky--an earthen
sea dashed into sudden breakers, then struck motionless. In front, in
solitary state, rises the lofty summit of La Pagna, casting off its giant
mountain-fellows right and left, which fade away into a golden haze toward
Modena.

High up overhead, crowning a precipitous rock, stands Corellia, a
knot of browned, sun-baked houses, flat-roofed, open-galleried,
many-storied, nestling round a ruined castle, athwart whose rents the
ardent sunshine darts. This ruined castle and the tower of an ancient