I thought much upon this lad Rocca Serra. Why had he died? Was it for loathing her? But men do not easily loathe such beauty. Was it for love of her? But men do not slay themselves for fortunate love. Had _her_ loathing been in some way the secret of his despair? I recalled my words to her, and how she had answered them, turning in the steep track among the pines "I am your hostage. Do with me as you will." "_If I could! Ah, if I could!_" I liked to think that the lad had loved her and been disdained; yet I pitied him for being disdained, and half hated him for having dared to love her. Yes, for certain he had loved her. But, if so, her secret had need be as strange almost as that of Sara, the daughter of Raguel, whom seven husbands married, to perish on the marriage eve--"_for a wicked spirit loveth her, which hurteth nobody but those which come unto her_." In dreams I found myself travelling beyond the grave in search of this dead lad, to question him; and not seldom would awake with these lines running in my head, remembered as old perplexing favourites with my father, though God knows how I took a fancy that they held the clue-- "I long to talk with some old lover's ghost Who dy'd before the God of Love was born. I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produc'd a Destiny, And that Vice-Nature Custom lets it be, I must love her that loves not me. "O, were we waken'd by this tyranny T'ungod this child again, it could not be I should love her who loves not me. "Rebel and Atheist too, why murmur I As though I felt the worst that love could do? Love may make me leave loving, or might try A deeper plague--to make her love me too; Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see: Falsehood is worse than hate: and that must be If she whom I love should love me." Many wild conjectures I made and patiently built upon, which, if I were to write them down here, would merely bemuse the reader or drive him to think me crazy. There on my enchanted mountain summit, ringed about day after day by the silent land, removed from all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the _macchia_, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which itself cried out against nature? Marc'antonio was all the while as matter-of-fact as a good nurse ought to be. He had fashioned me a capital pair of crutches out of boxwood, and no sooner could I creep about on them than he began to discourse, over the camp-fire, on the hunting excursions we were soon to make together. "_Pianu, pianu_; we will grow strong, and get our hand in by little and little. At first there will be the blackbirds and the foxes--" "You shoot foxes in Corsica?" I asked.