On the day after assuming my command at Scylla, I ordered out the little garrison in heavy marching order, and found it to consist of picked young fellows of my own regiment, 250 file, with five officers. This small party, with the garrisons at Reggio and Crotona, Amanthea and Monteleone, formed the whole force left in Calabria, with orders to defend their several posts to the last extremity. The last four places were held by Italians alone. I found that every means had been taken to render the famous rock, and the stronghold of the race of Ruffo, yet more impregnable. In place of the princely cardinal’s banner, our gaudy union spread its scarlet folds to the wind, the mighty breach—to me the scene of an adventure never, never to be forgotten—was now closed up, and a strong stone bastion, surmounted by six iron twenty-four-pounders, frowned grimly in its stead. We were often visited by Santugo and his bride: he belonged to the Reggio garrison, which was commanded by the Prince of St. Agata. My brother officers were all agreeable men, and the time passed very pleasantly. Bianca’s residence shed quite a halo over the formal barrack and rugged castello, which was enlivened by a continual round of fair visitors from Fiumara, Reggio, and the neighbouring villas. Those gay subs who had looked forward with repugnance to detachment duty in the gloomy castle of Cardinal Ruffo, became delighted with the station and the gaiety of the entertainments. The towers rang perpetually with the dulcet voices of Italian girls, the twangling of mandolins, or the notes of the piano. Every evening, the hall—where the ambitious cardinal had formed his deep laid schemes of political intrigue, where his mailed ancestors had drunk "the red wine through the helmet barred," and where the Norman knight and Saracen emir had met hand-to-hand in deadly strife—was the scene of a waltz or quadrille party; or rang to the mad and merry tarantella, the modern remnant of the ancient bacchanalian dance. Never since the days of Faunus, Saturn’s fabled son, Ausonia’s oldest king, had the rock of Scylla witnessed such a continuance of festivity. Amid this joyous career, we had all a narrow escape from malice and treason. One evening Gask appeared with a very long face, and informed me that the castle well had been poisoned, for the purpose of destroying us all. Twenty men lay sick in hospital, and a cry of rage went through the whole castle. "Poisoned—O, lord!" cried Gascoigne, who was with me at the time, and snatching up a decanter of brandy, he nearly drained it at one gulp. Gask had seen a man in the garb of the Campagnia di Morti prowling about the margin of the well, whom we had no doubt was the perpetrator of the villany. While I was making inquiries and despatching parties in pursuit of him, Oliver Lascelles entered my room with a drawing in his hand.