n.
'It must have been the Invincible St. Cyprien!'

"So stepping back and seating himself again upon the doorstep, he
began to argue with the villagers, the woman standing sullen all the
while and holding me by the arm. I could not understand a word, of
course, but later on he told me the heads of his discourse.

"'I began,' he said, 'by expounding to 'em all the doctrine of
cross-revenge, or _vendetta trasversa_, as they call it; and this I
did for two reasons--the first because in an argument there's naught
so persuasive as telling a man something he knows already--the second
because it proved to them, and to me, that I wasn't drunk. For the
doctrine has more twists in it than a conger.

"'Next I taught them that the doctrine was damnable; and that it
robbed Corsica of men who should be fighting the Genoese, on which
errand we were bound.

"'And lastly I proved to them out of the mouths of several wise men
(some of Greece, and others of my own inventing) that a man with
three glasses of their wine in his belly was a man possessed, and
therefore that either nothing had happened, or, if anything had
happened, the fellow to blame must be that devil of a warrior the
Invincible St. Cyprien.

"'Yet (as so often happens) the argument that really persuaded them,
as I believe, was one I never used at all; which was, that the woman
had money and a parcel of land, and albeit no man could pick up
courage to marry her, they did not relish a stranger stepping in and
cutting them out.'

"Be that as it may, gentlemen, in twenty minutes the crowd had come
round to Sir John's way of thinking; and they not only sold us mules
at thirty livres apiece--which Sir John knew to be the fair current
price--but helped us to truss up Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock, each on
his beast, and walked with us back to the cross-roads, singing hymns
about Corsican liberty. Only we left the woman sadly cast down.

"From the cross-roads, where they left us and turned back, our road
led through a great forest of pines. Among these pines hung
thousands of what seemed to be balls of white cotton, but were the
nests of a curious caterpillar; which I only mention because Mr.
Fett, coming to, picked up one of these caterpillars and slipped it
down the nape of Mr. Badcock's neck, whereby the poor man was made
uncomfortable all that day and the next; for the hairs of the insect
turned out to be full of poison. In the end we were forced to strip
him and use