"On, on!" cried Francesca; "O, the storm will be a terrible one: feel you not the very blast of the sirrocco? Alas! we may die among the mountains. Yonder is the residence of Guelfo the Buonapartist—ah! the subtle knave! If we trust ourselves under his roof, say not a word of Luigi, and mention not our names. Ah! if he should recognise us: you remember that terrible night with the conciarotti and the mob of Palermo." They pushed forward at a gallop, and I followed; after leaving orders with old Signor Gismondo, who—as I ought to have mentioned before—was captain of the Free Company, to continue his route double-quick to Amato, where we would rejoin him by daybreak next day. Gismondo was now grave, reserved, and melancholy in the extreme: but I was much pleased at renewing my acquaintance with him. Poor man! it was fated to be of short duration. We had scarcely separated before the lightning gleamed between the splintered rocks of the pass; the air became sulphurous, close, and dense; in five minutes it was dark; we saw the luminous glow-worms sparkling amid the dewy grass beneath the shady foliage, while ever and anon the red lightning shot from peak to peak, illuminating the scenery with its lurid glare. After scrambling up a steep ascent, the face of which was scarped and defended by four pieces of _French_ cannon, we reached the gate of this Neapolitan lord; whom I had no wish to meet again, as his bad political bias had gained him an unfavourable name in Calabria. Numerous towers and curtain walls of red stone surrounded the building; few windows were visible outwardly, and those were far from the ground and well barred with time-worn stancheons. Passing through a gate surmounted by a wolf’s head cabossed on a shield, and surrounded by the collar of shells, with the crescent and ship of the Knights’ Argonauts of San Nicolo, we dismounted in the courtyard. "Alas! for poor Gismondo and his soldiers!" exclaimed Francesca, as the gates were closed; and the descending storm burst forth in all its fury. *CHAPTER IV.* *CASTELGUELFO—THE WOLF OF AMATO.* By the barone, a short and meagre little man of a most forbidding aspect, we were received with all due honour and courtesy, and without being recognised; but his residence was so full of armed men, that it could scarcely afford us accommodation, ample though its towers and corridors seemed to be.