his own life, for his wife’s relatives were determined to avenge her death. They sent a false message to Sampiero by a trusted servant, telling him to go to a certain place to put down a rising. His way lay through a narrow defile, and there, behind the rocks, his enemies lay concealed. At a convenient moment they surrounded him and fired upon him. He fought valiantly for his life, but fell at last, stabbed to the heart. His head was cut off and taken to the Genoese, as evidence that their powerful foe was dead. Sampiero was nearly seventy when he died. Except for the murder of his wife, whom he regarded as a traitor to his country, his life was singularly pure and upright, and he was respected by friend and foe alike. Here for the present we may leave off our history. What remains to be told can best be related in connection with one or two of the towns that we shall presently describe. CHAPTER III ALERIA AND THEODORE Aleria is a little hamlet on the east coast of Corsica. In the days when the Romans held the island there was a population of about 20,000. To-day there is but a mere handful of dirty houses. In those times there was a residence for the governor and several important public buildings. All that is left to remind us of the Romans consists of a few formless heaps of stone, and the oyster-shell island in the neighbouring Lake of Diana. As I rode into Aleria on my bicycle one sunny afternoon, I was greeted by a crowd of children and a shower of stones. The little ones seemed quite good-natured, but their stony welcome was rather too vigorous to be pleasant. Everybody in Corsica throws stones, and most people can aim straight. A shepherd will bring back a straggler into the flock with a well-directed pebble; a muleteer will guide his mule in the same way; the dogs are so used to this kind of message that if a man but stoop to the ground, they expect a visit from a lump of granite, and fly with all the speed they possess. The three most interesting things to be seen in Aleria to-day are the inn, the village bakehouses, and the old Genoese fort. The inn is a poor specimen of a place of rest for a weary traveller. It contains a shop, where wine and hair-oil, biscuits and tin-tacks, straw hats and jam, are sold to the people of the hamlet; a dark kitchen; one bedroom for all the family, and another for all the guests. The breakfast served in the morning is not a tempting one. All the food that can be obtained is sour bread without butter, bacon, or jam, and black coffee without either milk or sugar. Sour bread and black coffee form the usual breakfast of the Corsican peasant, and are all that the traveller can obtain in out-of-the-way places.