"Once or twice I thought I heard voices, and I called at the top of my voice for help, but none came. The stillness at last made me fear that all of you were gone, and that idea made me feel as if I should go mad.

"I mounted several times to the stone lid which imprisoned me in my vault to try and raise it; but it was too hot to bear the touch, and I was compelled to sit down and again resume my employment of watching the daylight, and wondering whether I should be saved.

"But I need not dwell longer upon these feelings, which it is as painful for me to recal as it must be for you to hear.

"Suffice it, that through you my suffering came at last to an end; that your noble efforts were crowned with success; and that instead of being, as I doubt not the poor wretch above me must have been, consumed in agony away, I am here, recovered, and with the kind faces of friends about me."

CHAPTER XXX.

The return-The forest again The waterfall - Lost and found-The catastrophe-A rustic grave-The wild boar— A refractory mule.

THERE was small complaint of discomfort that night, although there was a good deal more room for grumbling than people often use as an excuse for that indulgence.

Their hut a mere wigwam-served the simple purpose of sheltering them from the night-dews, and at early dawn they were all stirring.

Three horses only had been left for the use of Nando and his two companions, one of which was made over to Paul, so that the guards intended travelling upon the old system of alternately getting a lift until they should reach a spot where another animal could be obtained.

Having fortified themselves with the remnant of their stores, they bid adieu to the ruins of Solingozzo, re-covering the vault from which Paul had been taken with a heap of the rubbish, so as to preserve the wine, if possible, from the visits of chance vagrants.

With the intention of shortening the road, they

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at once began descending the rugged face of the mountain on the top of which stood Solingozzo, for a bridle-way that was known to one of the men ran along at the base, and traversed the forest by a different route to that by which they had come.

Whatever might be said in favour of the shortness of the new route, it could lay no claim to a preference on account of its accessibleness.

As Paul leant back in his saddle, he thought it could scarcely have been possible for any horse that ever trod to scramble down a track so precipitous. At times he fancied he must of necessity be hurled over the creature's head, or that both beast and rider must roll over together, and be dashed to death upon the pointed crags below.

The trees presented another danger. The branches grew so low they swept and bruised the faces of the horsemen, and as the eye glanced ahead it fell upon thousands of these tenants of the soil which grew so closely together and had their branches so interwoven, that when some of them decayed and drooped from very age, they could not come flat to the ground, but were received and temporarily upheld by the surrounding branches, stretching out like giant's arms to sustain their old companions. These rotten trunks would, however, at a touch come toppling down, and Nando had a narrow escape of being crushed by a falling pine.

They had been accompanied so far on their road by the sound of dashing water, which became sensibly louder as they got lower down.

"It is a cascade," said Nando, "and if I remember rightly, a tremendous fall in winter. The water is but scant at present, and this weather will soon dry it up altogether."

They turned an angle as he spoke, and came upon a confused heap of rocks, some of them bare, others covered with moss, and many from which drooped long parasitic plants, that a lively imagination could have converted into monstrous heads with coarse flowing hair.

In between the masses, and here and there over them, ran the water, white as milk through being thus tossed from crag to crag, and at this point, gathering its resources in a deep hollow basin, it ran over the edge and fell some fifty feet without a break.

"What is that yonder?" inquired Paul, pointing to the semblance of a heap of clothes upon the opposite side of the stream.

"Where, where?" inquired the others.

"At the top of the crag from which the live oak is springing," answered Paul.

The guard on foot, without waiting for further explanation, had, on catching sight of the object mentioned by the youth, clambered up the rocks beside the brook, assisted by the creepers and projecting branches of the trees, until he arrived opposite the spot where the apparent bundle lay.

After examining it with care for some few seconds, he called out to his friends below that as far as he could discern, it was a human body.

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This intelligence excited an interest in the whole party. They at once alighted from their horses, and fastening them securely to the neighbouring trees, began climbing to the place where the guard had made his discovery.

By the time they had reached the spot, the latter had, at no little danger to himself, leapt across the chasm separating the two banks, and was now standing, with an expression of pity upon his features, leaning over the body, which he had moved for recognition.

Without waiting for inquiry, both Nando and the guard precipitately followed in his track, and Paul, who had managed to get across at a place where a larch had in falling from above made a natural bridge over the water, came up to the group as they were contemplating the remains of the poor man.

His head was crushed in and literally flattened with the blow which it had received. The arms were apparently broken, for though the body had evidently been some hours a corpse, they had none of the rigidity of death. The features were distorted, but still not sufficiently so to prevent recognition; and Paul, as he looked nearer, exclaimed, in an accent of pity,

"It is one of the guards who were with me last night-poor Liri!"

"You are right, Paul," said Nando; "it is Liri. Besides, you see, his clothes and hair are singed, as if he had suffered from the fire!"