While crossing a rustic bridge, the parapets on each side of which were garnished with an iron cage, containing a human head in a ghastly state of decay, my ears were shocked, as my eyes had been, by the cries and exclamations of a man in great agony and terror. Quickening the speed of Cartouche from a trot to a gallop, and unbuttoning my holster flaps in readiness for drawing my pistols, I rode towards the place whence these outcries proceeded. In a rocky hollow by the wayside, I beheld a Sicilian struggling desperately with about twenty armed ruffians, whom I had no hesitation in believing to be banditti. They were all handsome and athletic men, in whose appearance there was something at once striking, picturesque, and sufficiently alarming. All wore high, conical, Calabrian hats, encircled by a broad, red riband, that streamed over the right shoulder; jackets and breeches of bright coloured stuffs, ornamented with a profusion of tags, tassels, and knots, and girt round the waist with a scarlet sash of Palmi silk; and leathern gaiters, laced saltire-wise up the legs with red straps: a musket, dagger, and powder-horn completed their equipments. Coal black hair streamed in extravagant profusion over their shoulders; long locks being esteemed in the Calabrias a sign of loyalty to the king and enmity to the French: thus the extent of a man’s patriotism was determined by the length of his hair. But the unfortunate Sicilian in their hands was destitute alike of flowing curls and twisted pig-tail; hence his captors, supposing him unquestionably to be a traitor (or at least not a true subject to King Ferdinand) in having conformed to the fashion of the French, were determined to punish him in the mode which the wild spirits of these lawless provinces adopted towards those who fell into their hands with hair shorn short: the head having become, since the commencement of the war, "the political index by which they judged whether men were Jacobins, Bourbonists," or Buonapartists. The brigands greeted my approach with a shout of welcome, and while I was deliberating how best to interfere and save from their fury the unhappy man, he called upon me piteously for aid; saying that he "was a poor tanner of Palermo—a follower of our camp—and one who knew nothing of the fashions of Calabria!" But I was too late to yield him the least assistance, for the horrible punishment was inflicted the moment I drew bridle: and, in truth, I did not feel very chivalric in his cause, on learning that he was one of the villanous tanners of Palermo—that community of assassins so terrible to all Sicily.