has enemies.




CHAPTER III.


A BY-PATH.

"L'intrigue c'est tromper son homme; L'habilete c'est faire qu'il se
trompe lui-meme."


For an idle-minded man, Colonel Gilbert was early astir the next morning,
and rode out of the town soon after sunrise, following the Vescovato
road, and chatting pleasantly enough with the workers already on foot and
in saddle on their way to the great plain of Biguglia, where men may
labour all day, though, if they spend so much as one night there, must
surely die. For the eastern coast of Corsica consists of a series of
level plains where malarial fever is as rife as in any African swamp, and
the traveller may ride through a fertile land where eucalyptus and palm
grow amid the vineyards, and yet no human being may live after sunset.
The labourer goes forth to his work in the morning accompanied by his
dog, carrying the ubiquitous double-barrelled gun at full cock, and
returns in the evening to his mountain village, where, at all events, he
may breathe God's air without fear.

The colonel turned to the right a few miles out, following the road which
leads straight to that mountain wall which divides all Corsica into the