eeches of sad-coloured velvet,
the small cap and leathern leggings, which I afterwards learnt to be
the uniform of patriotic Corsica. But as they deployed upon the
glade--some forty men in all--and halted at sight of us, my eyes fell
upon a priest, who in order of marching had been midmost, or nearly
midmost, of the file, and upon a young man beside him, toward whom
the Princess sprang with a light step and a cry of salutation.

"The blessing of God be upon you, O brother!"

"And upon you, O sister!" He took her kiss and returned it, yet
(as I thought) with less fervour. Across her shoulder his gaze fell
on me, with a kind of peevish wonder, and he drew back a little as if
in the act to question her. But she was beforehand with him for the
moment.

"And how hast thou fared, O Camillo?" she asked, leaning back, with a
hand upon his either shoulder, to look into his eyes.

He disengaged himself sullenly, avoiding her gaze. There could be no
doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to
brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and
its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit
diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature
it, being so like yet so infinitely less noble.

"We have fared ill," he answered, turning his head aside, and added
with sudden petulance, "God's curse upon Pasquale Paoli, and all his
house!"

"He would not receive you?"

"On the contrary, he made us welcome and listened to all we had to
say. When I had done, Father Domenico took up the tale."

"But surely, brother, when you had given him the proofs--when he
heard all--"

"The mischief, sister," he interrupted, stabbing at the ground with
his heel and stealing a sidelong glance at the priest, "the mischief
was, he had already heard too much."

She drew back, white in the face. She, too, flung a look at the
priest, but a more honest one, although in flinging it she shrank
away from him. The priest, a sensual, loose-lipped man, whose mere
aspect invited one to kick him, smiled sideways and downwards with a
deprecating air, and spread out his hands as who should say that here
was no place for a domestic discussion.

I could make no guess at what the youth had meant; but the girl's
face told me that the stroke was cruel, and (as often happens with
the weak) his own cruelty worked him into a passion.

"But who is this man with you?" he demanded, the blood rus