She said it hard and low, with clenched teeth, almost hissing the words. I stared at her, amazed. No sign of anger had she shown until this moment. What cause indeed had she to be angered? In what way had my words offended? Yet angry she was, trembling with such a gust of wrath that the lantern shook in her hand. Before I could master my surprise, she had mastered herself: and, turning, resumed her way. For the next twenty minutes we descended in silence, while the dawn, breaking above the roofed pines, filtered down to us and filled the spaces between their trunks with a brownish haze. By-and-by, when the slope grew easier and flattened itself out to form the bottom of the basin, these pines gave place to a chestnut wood, and the carpet of slippery needles to a tangled undergrowth taller than a very tall man: and here, in a clearing beside the track, we came on a small hut with a ruinous palisade beside it, fencing off a pen or courtyard of good size--some forty feet square, maybe. The Princess halted, and I halted a few paces from her, studying the hut. It was built of pine-logs sawn lengthwise in half and set together with their untrimmed bark turned outwards: but the most of their bark had peeled away with age. It had two square holes for windows, and a doorway, but no door. Its shingle roof had buckled this way and that with the rains, and had taken on a tinge of grey which the dawn touched to softest silver. Lines of more brilliant silver criss-crossed it, and these were the tracks of snails. "O King of Corsica"--she turned to me--"behold your palace!" Her eyes were watching me, but in what expectation I could not tell. I stepped carelessly to the doorway and took a glance around the interior. "It might be worse; and I thank you, Princess." "Ajo, Marc'antonio! Since the stranger approves of it so far, go carry his friend within." "Your pardon, Princess," I interposed; "the place is something too dirty to house a sick man, and until it be cleaned my friend will do better in the fresh air." She shrugged her shoulders. "Your subjects, O King, have left it in this mess, and they will help you very little to improve it." I walked over to the palisade and looked across it upon an unsightly area foul with dried dung and the trampling of pigs. For weeks, if not months, it must have lain uninhabited, but it smelt potently even yet. "My subjects, Princess?" "With Giuse lying sick, the hogs roam without a keeper: and my people have chosen you in his room." She paused, and I felt, rather than saw, that both the men were eyeing me intently. I guessed then that she was putting on me a meditated insult; to the Corsican mind, doubtless a deep one. "So I am to keep your hogs, Princess?" said I, with a deliberate air. "Well, I am your hostage." "I am breaking no faith, Englishman."