at the further extremity of a narrow pass, through which only four men could pass abreast.  He made such haste that he marched four leagues in two hours, and at daybreak found himself at the entrance of the pass, which, however, seemed so peculiarly well adapted for an ambuscade, that he halted his battalion, and sent on twenty men to reconnoitre.  In a quarter of an hour the twenty men returned.  They had not met a single living thing.  The colonel hesitated no longer, and entered the defile; but, on reaching a spot about halfway through it, where the road widened out into a sort of platform surrounded by high rocks and steep precipices, a shout was suddenly heard, proceeding apparently from the clouds, and the poor colonel looking up, saw the summits of the rocks covered with brigands, who levelled their rifles at him and his soldiers.  Nevertheless, he began forming up his men as well as the nature of the ground would permit, when Vardarelli himself appeared upon a projecting crag.  ’Down with your arms, or you are dead men!’ he shouted in a voice of thunder.  The bandits repeated his summons, and the echoes repeated their voices, so that the troops, who had not made the same vow as their colonel, and who thought themselves surrounded by greatly superior numbers, cried out for quarter, in spite of the entreaties and menaces of their unfortunate commander.  Then Vardarelli, without leaving his position, ordered them to pile their arms, and march to two different places which he pointed out to them.  They obeyed; and Vardarelli, leaving twenty of his men in their ambush, came down with the remainder, who immediately proceeded to render the Neapolitan muskets useless (for the moment at least) by the same process which Gulliver employed to extinguish the conflagration of the palace at Lilliput.

“The news of this affair put the king in very bad humour for the first twenty-four hours; after which time, however, the love of a joke overcoming his anger, he laughed heartily, and told the story to every one he saw; and as there are always lots of listeners when a king narrates, three years elapsed before the poor colonel ventured to show his face at Naples and encounter the ridicule of the court.”

The general commanding in Calabria takes the matter rather more seriously, and vows the destruction of the banditti.  By offers of large pay and privileges, they are induced to enter the Neapolitan service, and prove highly efficient as a troop of gendarmes.  But the general cannot forget his old grudge against them; although, for lack of an opportunity, and on account of the desperate character of the men, he is obliged to defer his revenge for some time.  At last he succeeds in having their leaders assassinated, and by pretending great indignation, and imprisoning the perpetrators of the deed, he lulls the suspicions of the remaining bandits, who elect new officers, and on an appointed day, proceed to the town of Foggia to have their election confirmed.  Only eight of them, apprehensive of treachery, refuse to accompany their comrades.  The remaining thirty-one, and a woman who would not leave her husband, obey the general’s summons.