The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-07-28
with unexpiored and inexplorable caves

with unexpiored and inexplorabie caves and grots. ... .,
 It is here that wild sheep and the
 banditti of Corsica roam at will. prey
 only at infrequent intervals to the starving fox or greedy sbirri or official who risk their lives for the price of out laws heads Ss
 IL is here. too. that the millions Of goats of Corsica thrive in the long sum- mer upon the rich grasses which spring beside the fountains i've thousand, feet above the sea, By foaming torrents. in shadowy glens. at gloomy cave mouths, or again perched like eagles nests at the edge of mighty precipices. are the huts of the goatherds. made of stone upon eternal stone. gray-blaok and forbidding within and without, and squatting close to earth as the beehive huts of prehistoric man.
 A strange, wild. harmless. hospitable folk are these goatherds of the heights, There Is no household stun in their homes. no chair. nor table. nor bed. Their hearthstone Is the mountain rock against which lies the burning log: their food Is milk and curd and cheese, strips of dried goat flesh and the wild fruits and nuts of the mountains: their couches are the bare black rocks: and their sole ambition is to avoid the ven- geance of the banditti and to multiply their herds.
 One great philosopher, another has said. had learned the art of sitting still Either the goatherds of Monte Rotondo are as was the almost primitive man. or. In the presence of the mighty tongues of the torrents. the thunder ings of the mountain tempests, the Walpurgis night-plaints of horrid witches and warlocks or the more deadly tutilage of the bandits gun or knife, they have learned the supreme lesson of silence.
 If the sbirri suddenly appear and, as If for wolves, smoke out their cave cellars and ruin their little stores of cheese, they are silent. If the gendarmes chain them to asses and drag them before magistrates for suc- coring outlaws. their mouths are closed and they suffer imprisonment in haugh- ty silence. If the banditti come for cheese or milk of fat kids, they give of their store in silence. If traveller pene- trate their strange patriarchal com their hospitality is boundless but silent. Even if death stalks among them in most tragic form. they suffer no moan to escape them, but are still grim and silent as their stealthy con- queror.
 So nothing ever surprises, alarms or abstracts the goatherd of Monte Roton- do. When Agnese returned along the foaming sides of the Restonica stream and, scowling and alone re-entered her hut near the herdmen's station of Rota del Dragone, there was not so much as inquiry for Fabiano. They knew that he was dead: but whether by fever or powder and ball, concerned them not.
 If Agnese prowled more and more from station to station, with gun in hand and cruel knives hidden in the goat-skin skirts at either side of her shapely limbs; if she let the milk mold and the cheese rot upon the dead pine branches in her cave-like cellar; if she wandered for weeks with her little herd, only to return with look of disap- pointment and despair settling more darkly in her handsome face; who was there on Monte Rotondo to heed or break the grewsome spell?
 And again, if new banditti came. if strange goatherds traversed the gorges or the sbirri were shot like dogs before their eyes, or if hermit, or traveller, or monk, found the wild sheep more com- than men, what matter was that of theirs? Was not Monte Roton- do free? And freedom to the Corsican Is the supreme freedom of the torrent, the wild beast or the tempest.
 So it was not strange that a young goatherd, with fair. flowing curls like the Norsemen, with light and silken beard, with eyes as blue as the ice tarns from which tumbles the milk white Restonica, with strange and thrilling songs to his bewildered goats, and with the habit if not the manner of monk. had built a hut against a cave, higher still than the highest herdsmens station of Cordi Mozzo, with only the muffro or brown-black sheep between him and the solitudes of ice and snow.
 Monaco iMelodioso. "the melodious monk" they named him for his sweet, far-reaching notes. which crept down the gorges and f1oated entrancingly to the ears of those who heard.
 Agnese was one of these.
 In her vengeful quests she found her self irresistibly drawn nearer and near CT the giddy heights whence the won drous music came. .'. ''
 Wandering with her herd, gun in hand and murder in her heart, the gen. tie influence of some half caught mel ody would hold her spellbound to the spot: when, as the notes were lost by the changing breeze, a sense of desola- tion, of desolation vaster and deeper than that which was brought with the dead Fabiano to Borgo, 30 hushed the cry of vengeance in her heart that she would fling herself prone upon the rocks and bathe them in her tears.
 From where sobs and tears abound, must at last take its vampire flight. And thus the fierce grasp upon the gun was gradually loosened. Her hands dragged 1t listlessly now, or 1t was left at the hut behind her. From fierce alertness for every .wanderinr form and face, from tigerish behind every skulking figure, the herd-girl came to listen, listen, listen, for only one voice upon the caught only one sound of lived almost as fercely and wildly now in one mad longing to be nearer and nearer him who sung.