"Now, then," he resumed, laying before me a long muster-roll of Italian names, "here are five hundred brave Calabrians, most of them my own immediate dependants, whom I have authority to raise in arms; but who, without the exertion of that authority, are able and willing to serve Ferdinand of Naples: whom Madonna long preserve! although the said Ferdinand is a fool. But unless your general appoints me their leader, and permits me to nominate my own officers, these fellows may desert _en masse_ to the mountains; for they are unused to the rule of foreigners." "Our general is too well aware of the courtesy requisite on his landing on these shores, to dispute with the Italian nobles, or chiefs of the _Masse_, their right to command their own followers. If they will serve obediently, and fight well—obeying as good soldiers must obey, and enduring as they must endure—Sir John Stuart will require nothing more." My enthusiastic friend grasped my hand. "In our first pitched battle with the enemy," he exclaimed; "place us in front of the line, and we will show il Cavaliére Giovanni Stuardo, that the bold mountaineers of the Apennines are not less hardy or courageous than their ancestors were when Rome was in the zenith of its glory." Puzzled for a moment to recognise the familiar name of the general through the pronunciation of the Visconte, I was deliberating how to reply, when I observed the great gnome-like visage of the hunchback appear at one of the open windows; his fierce twinkling eyes sternly fixed on mine, with the steady glistening gaze of a snake. He levelled a pistol, but it flashed in the pan. My first impulse was to grasp my sabre, my second to spring through the casement, which opened down to the level of the tessellated floor. "What see you, signor?’ exclaimed my astonished host. "That abominable hunchback, Peter of Pisa, Friar Truffle, or whatever you call him." "Impossible!" said the Visconte. "Most improbable, indeed! at such an hour of the morning, and in a place where the cliffs descend sheer downwards to the sea!" "Monsignore, on my honour I saw his ill-omened visage peering between the rose-bushes." Luigi snatched a sword from the wall, and we made tremendous havoc among the full-blown roses, searching so far as we dared to venture along the beetling rocks; but no trace of the eaves-dropper could be discovered. Indeed, the dangerous nature of the place, when I surveyed it, led me to suppose that I _might_ have been mistaken, and that the apparition was an illusion of a heated imagination; for my head was now beginning to swim with the effects of the champagne. Santugo, however, took the precaution of bolting the casements, and drawing the curtains; after which we stretched ourselves once more on the couches to listen for any sound that announced the approach of an intruder. "Ha! what is that?" exclaimed Santugo abruptly, as a dropping or pattering sound was heard on the floor.