upon us, pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty and
stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with the
horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the
peasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the
peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resulted
only in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was brave
and patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure had
courage for herself and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet,
over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering
hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other
fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped
northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept
along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the
soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed.
But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to
bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of
these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been
turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by
a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of
food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, where
those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that by
Paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take
once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.

"A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we
were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had
us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had come
down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the
distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and
preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had fired