A Delicious Ramble In The Dewy Shade Of Morning, With Ten Minutes' Rest On A Wall At Serrone, Talking To An Old Woman Who Wore Those Ponderous Red Ornaments Designed, I Suppose, To Imitate Coral.

I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno - dead, I doubt not, by this time - that simple-hearted venerable with whom I whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost - his only snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many strokes of luck! Once I found a purse -

The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs - incurably monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fondness for living in trios.

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