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 with a sharp twist, and turning with them we rode once more with our faces set toward our destination, keeping the tall range on our left hand, and on our right the melancholy sea-marshes where men cannot dwell for the malaria, and where for hour after hour we rode in a silence unbroken save by the plash of fish in the lagoon, or the cry of a heron solitary among the reeds.  This desolation lasted all the way to Biguglia, where we turned aside again among the foothills to avoid the fortress of Bastia and the traffic of the roads about it.  Beyond Bastia we were safe in the