"Who has offered a hundred gold Napoleons for you dead or alive: a sum quite sufficient to excite the avarice and cupidity of a Calabrian outlaw." My spirit sank—I made no reply, but cursed the French general in my heart. "Courage, signor," said Baptistello, laying his hand familiarly on my shoulder; "think not so hardly of us: we all love the British soldiers, and would not yield you to Regnier for all the gold in France. We have not forgotten Maida—eh, comrades?" "Viva il Re d’Inghilterra!" answered the band with one voice. (It was the cry of the loyalists as often as "Viva Ferdinando IV.") "You hear the sentiments of my followers," said Varro; "truly, signor, as the Husband of the Signora d’Alfieri, your name is dear to the whole Calabrians; and I believe the wildest rogue in these provinces would not touch a hair of your head. Corpo di Baccho! you must breakfast with us among the mountains: we trust to your honour for not revealing our fastness to our disadvantage—to our own hands for avenging it, if you do. Enough, signor: we know each other." I was in the hands of men with whom it would have been rash to trifle; and, accepting the rough invitation, I accompanied them across the hills. The sun rose above the highest peak of Bova, and poured its fiery lustre into the dark green valleys; gilding the convent vanes and little spires of St. Christiana and Oppido, and exhaling the mist from the black glittering rocks, the sable pines, and verdant slopes of the Apennines. *CHAPTER XX.* *THE BANDIT’S CAVERN.—RECAPTURE AND DELIVERANCE.* Through a long deep gorge, winding between basaltic cliffs, the production of volcanic fire, or formed by some great convulsion which had rent the massive hills, we scrambled along for nearly half a mile; at the end rose a wall of rock, on ascending which, by means of a ladder, I found myself in the den of the banditti. The ladder being drawn up when the last man ascended, all communication with the chasm below was thus cut off. A fire burned brightly in a recess of the cavern, revealing its ghastly rocks and hollow depths, the long stalactites, the crystals, and various sparkling stones which glimmered in the flames as they shot upward through the cranny that served for a chimney. Several females, grouped round it, were engaged in chatting, quarrelling, and cooking; and their picturesque costumes, olive complexions, and graceful figures, were brought forward in strong warm light by the flickering flames: some had still the sad remains of beauty, and their Greco-Italian features still wore the soft Madonna-like expression of the southern provinces: though, alas! their innocence had fled; others were sullen, forbidding, or melancholy, and all were laden with tawdry finery and massive jewels.