Before the hill of Altopascio is reached, the traveller must accomplish a lonely stretch of road, which runs for some three miles through a ragged wood.  This place bears a bad name; it is debatable land, as we say, between the Republic of Lucca and the Grand Duchy, and a well-known haunt for footpads, highwaymen, outlaws, and other kinds of cut-throat.  So, at least, my servant said when, stopping the carriage, I got out and proposed to walk through the wood by a direct path and meet my conveyance at the top of the pass.  He begged me very earnestly to do nothing of the kind.  “The road is the only tolerable way for your lordship,” he assured me; and then, with a start, he added, “Hark, sir, hark!  As I live by bread, we are pursued even now.”  I listened, and could hear a long way off the regular pounding of a horse.

However, I paid no more attention to that than to see to the priming of my pistols.  I had been near death too often of late to stand on any ceremony with it; and there are times in life when one can see beyond it.  I had a certainty that I should not die until I had found Virginia.  Therefore I dismissed the carriage and walked on.  Now and again, as I entered more deeply into the thicket, I caught the sound of hoofs; but I soon grew to disregard them and presently forgot their menace altogether.

This wood, of holm-oak, holly and beech for the most part, rises and dips twice before it climbs the final ascent to the crown above Altopascio.  A cart-track runs through it, deeply rutted and always miry, on either hand of which glades are revealed of great beauty.  Here, if the trees are remote, the grass grows lush and green.  Hereabouts are the flowers, tall and plenty—­foxgloves and mullein, such as we have at home, and loosestrife (lysimachia), both the yellow and the purple.  The sun shone brilliantly between the leaves, the air was sweetly tempered, the wood was empty.  I felt exalted, as I always do when I am alone.  I was hopeful; I was still young.  God, methought, was about to bless me abundantly, after making stern trial of me.  My secret thought ran rhythmically in my head.  I walked briskly up the first slope, surmounted it, and stood looking down upon a scene more charming than that which I was about to leave—­a deeper, greener glade, with a clearing in the midst, and a rude gipsy tent and a little fire, and two persons beside it.  As I stood looking I heard the crackling of the brushwood and dead twigs behind me.  The horseman, whoever he was, had entered the wood and was following the track.

But the encampment below me engrossed all my eyes.  In that windless hollow a thin spire of smoke rose blue towards the blue.  An iron pot was suspended on three poles; the smoke hugged it closely, united above it, and rose in a column.  The couple, a young man and woman, sat still, watching it.  Their meal was ended, I judged, and they were summoning resolution for the road.  The woman, with a pretty,