eed;
And strong his arm and fast his seat
That bears frae me the meed . . ."

But, in fact, it was not until the third morning of our journey that
Marc'antonio (who, like every Corsican, abhorred walking) was able to
purchase us a steed apiece in the shape of two lean and shaggy hill
ponies. They belonged to a decayed gentleman--of the best blood in
the island, as he assured me--whom poverty had driven with his family
to inhabit a shepherd's hut above the Restorica on the flank of Monte
Rotondo where it looks towards Corte. We had slept the night under
his roof, and I remember that I was awakened next morning on my bed
of dry fern by the small chatter of the children, themselves awaking
one by one as the daylight broke. After breakfast our host led us
down to the pasture where the ponies were tethered; and when he and
Marc'antonio had haggled for twenty minutes, and I was in the act of
mounting, three of the children, aged from five downwards, came
toddling with bunches of a blue flower unknown to me, but much like a
gentian, which they had gathered on the edge of the tumbling
Restorica, some way up-stream. I took my bunch and pinned it on my
hat as I rode, hailing the omen--

"For you alone I ride the ring,
For you I wear the blue . . ."

And--how went the chorus?

"Then tell me how to woo thee, love;
O tell me how to woo thee;
For thy dear sake nae care I'll take--"

The only care taken by Marc'antonio was to follow the bridle-tracks
winding among the foothills, and give a wide berth to the highroad
running north and south through Corte, especially to the bridges
crossing the Golo River, at each of which, he assured me, we should
find a guard posted of Paoli's militia. Luckily, he knew all the
fords, and in the hill-villages off the road the inhabitants showed
no suspicion of us, but took it for granted that we were the good
Paolists we passed for. Marc'antonio answered all their guileless
questions by giving out that we were two roving commissioners
travelling northward to delimit certain _pievi_ in the Nebbio, at the
foot of Cape Corso--an explanation which secured for us the best of
victuals as well as the highest respect.

For awhile our course, bending roughly parallel with the Golo, led us
almost due east, and at length brought us out upon the flat shore of
the Tuscan Sea. Here the mountains, which had confined us to the
river valley, run northward wit