We were soon in the carriage, and leaving Nicastro behind us at the rate of twelve miles an hour. When passing through the porch of the palace, I caught sight of a strange crouching figure looking like a black bundle under the shadow of a column. A deep groan, as the carriage swept past, announced that it was the hunchback, whom I had perhaps reduced to penury. For a moment the contest and the victory were repented; but a few hours afterwards proved to me that he was unworthy of commiseration. *CHAPTER V.* *GASPARE TRUFFI, THE HUNCHBACK.* "Beware! Signor Claude," said the Visconte, as we drove homewards; "you have now made a most deadly enemy in Calabria. Do you know whom you have defeated?" "An itinerant priest, probably," I answered, with a slight tone of pique. "A priest, certainly; but, thank Heaven! we have few such either in Naples or Sicily. Though expelled from the brotherhood of San Baldassare, in Friuli, for some irregularities, (which, in the days of the late inquisitor, Tourloni, could only have been cleansed by fire) Gaspare Truffi still wears the garb of a religious order—generally that of St. Peter of Pisa—that he may the more easily impose upon the peasantry; who stand in no little awe of his harsh voice, misshapen figure, and hideous visage. On the mountains I have seen him in a very different garb: with a poniard in his sash, and the brigand’s long rifle slung across his back. He is said to be in league with the banditti in the wilderness; and, as the confessor of Francatripa, he has obtained considerable sway over them. On more than one occasion, in the encounters between the brigands and the French, he has given undisputable proofs of valour; though clouded by fearful cruelty. You have heard of the wilderness of La Syla? There the mountains rise in vast ridges abruptly from the sea, shooting upward, peak above peak; their sides clothed with gloomy and impenetrable wood, or jagged with masses of volcanic rock, which overhang and threaten the little villages that nestle in the valleys below. Tremendous cascades and perpendicular torrents—broad sheets of water fringed with snow-white foam—leap from cliff to cliff, and thundering down echoing chasms, seek their way, through mountain gorges, to the ocean. Into one of the frightful valleys of that secluded district, a body of French troops, commanded by the Marchese di Monteleone, were artfully drawn by Francatripa, the brigand chief, Gaspare, his lieutenant and confessor, and all their horde; by whom the whole unhappy battalion, to the number of five hundred rank and file, were utterly exterminated. Thick as hail the rifle balls showered down from all sides; and ponderous masses of rock, dislodged by crowbars, were hurled from the cliffs along the line of march of that doomed regiment. Save the marchese and his aide, every man perished; and the place is yet strewn with their bones for miles—a ghastly array