“But the worst, sir, was the moon; which was not like any ordinary moon, but kept swelling and bursting in showers of the most beautiful fireworks, so that I said to myself, ‘O for the wings of a dove,’ I said, ‘so that I fetch some one to put a stop to this!’ And I’d hardly said the words before it was broad day, and me lying in the street with a small crowd about me, very solemn and curious, and my head in the lap of a middle-aged woman that smelt of garlic, but without any pretensions to looks.  And she was lifting up her head and singing a song, and the sound of it as melancholy as a gib-cat in a garden of cucumbers.  Whereby the whole crowd stood by and stared, without offering to help.  Whereby I said to myself, ’This is a pretty business, and no mistake.’  Whereby I saw Sir John come forth from the house where the drinking had been, and his face was white but his step steady; and says he, ’What have you been doing to this woman?’ ‘Nothing at all,’ said I; ’or, leastways, nothing to warrant this behaviour on her part.’  ‘Well,’ said he, ’you may be surprised to hear it, but she maintains that you are betrothed to her.’  ‘A man,’ said I, ’may woo where he will, but must wed where his wife is.  If this woman be my fate, I’ll say no more except that ’tis hard; but as for courting her, I never did so.’  ’You are in a worse case than you guess,’ said he; ’for, to begin with, the lady is a widow; and, secondly, she is marrying you, not for your looks, but for revenge.’  ‘Why, what have I done?’ said I.  ‘Nothing at all,’ said he; ’but from what I can hear of it, five years ago a man of Evisa, up the valley, stole a goat belonging to this woman’s husband; whereupon the husband took a gun and went to Evisa and shot the thief’s cousin, mistaking him for the thief; whereupon the thief came down to Otta and shot the honest man one day while he was gathering olives in his orchard.  He himself left neither chick nor child; but his kinsmen of the family of Paolantonuccio (I can pronounce the name, gentlemen, if you will kindly look the other way) took up the quarrel, and with so much liveliness that to-day but three of them survive, and these are serving just now with the militia.  For the while, therefore, the Widow Paolantonuccio has no one to carry on the custom of the country; nor will have, until a husband offers.’  ‘For pity’s sake, Sir John,’ said I, `get me out of this!  Tell them that if any man has been courting this woman ’tis not I, William Priske, but another in my image.’  ‘Why, to be sure!’ cried Sir John.  ‘It must have been the Invincible St. Cyprien!’

“So stepping back and seating himself again upon the doorstep, he began to argue with the villagers, the woman standing sullen all the while and holding me by the arm.  I could not understand a word, of course, but later on he told me the heads of his discourse.

“‘I began,’ he said, ’by expounding to ’em all the doctrine of cross-revenge, or vendetta trasversa, as they call it; and this I did for two reasons—­the first because in an argument there’s naught so persuasive as telling a man something he knows already—­the second because it proved to them, and to me, that I wasn’t drunk.  For the doctrine has more twists in it than a conger.