a footing; but its face receded from him, and he hung like a mason’s plummet. "Giacomo," said the visconte, "end his misery." The Calabrian levelled his musket over the breast-work, and his aiming eye, as it glanced along the smooth barrel, met the fixed and agonized glance of Navarro. He fired; the ramparts round us, and the rocks and caves beneath gave back the reverberated report like thunder: the ball had passed through the brain of Navarro, who vanished from the cliff, and was seen no more. So perished this unhappy traitor. *CHAPTER XIV.* *DIANORA—THE FORFEITED HAND.* The exciting affair with Navarro was scarcely over, before we became involved in another; which, though of a different description, caused me no little anxiety: of this, my gay friend, Oliver Lascelles, was the hero. Oliver was a handsome, good-humoured, light-hearted, curly-headed, thoughtless, young fellow; heir to one of the finest estates in Essex, with a venerable Elizabethan manor-house and deer park, a stud of horses and a kennel of hounds. He was a good shot, and a sure stroke at billiards; could push his horse wherever the hounds went, and, when hunting, was never known to crane in his life: he would spur, slapdash over everything; and he always led the field. However, these were but the least of his good qualities: he possessed others that were of a better order. Oliver was, every inch, an English gentleman and soldier; possessing a refined taste, and more solid acquirements than such as are necessary merely to enable a man to acquit himself in fashionable or military life: for, in truth, a very "shallow fellow" may pass muster, at times, in the ball room, on parade, or in the hunting-field. About this time, when Regnier’s advance kept us all on the alert, Oliver, as if he had not wherewithal to occupy his thoughts, contrived to fall in love; and, to all appearance, so earnestly, that I was not long in discovering and rallying him about it. People are very prone to fall in love in that land of bright eyes: the little god Cupid is still "king of gods and men," in sunny Ausonia; where love seems to be the principal occupation of the inhabitants.