The following day went by without any hostile demonstration.  Both sides kept on the defensive.  Orso did not leave his house, and the door of the Barricini dwelling remained closely shut.  The five gendarmes who had been left to garrison Pietranera were to be seen walking about the square and the outskirts of the village, in company with the village constable, the sole representative of the urban police force.  The deputy-mayor never put off his sash.  But there was no actual symptom of war, except the loopholes in the two opponents’ houses.  Nobody but a Corsican would have noticed that the group round the evergreen oak in the middle of the square consisted solely of women.

At supper-time Colomba gleefully showed her brother a letter she had just received from Miss Nevil.

“My dear Signorina Colomba,” it ran, “I learn with great pleasure, through a letter from your brother, that your enmities are all at an end.  I congratulate you heartily.  My father can not endure Ajaccio now your brother is not there to talk about war and go out shooting with him.  We are starting to-day, and shall sleep at the house of your kinswoman, to whom we have a letter.  The day after to-morrow, somewhere about eleven o’clock, I shall come and ask you to let me taste that mountain bruccio of yours, which you say is so vastly superior to what we get in the town.

“Farewell, dear Signorina Colomba.

“Your affectionate

“LYDIA NEVIL.”

“Then she hasn’t received my second letter!” exclaimed Orso.

“You see by the date of this one that Miss Lydia must have already started when your letter reached Ajaccio.  But did you tell her not to come?”

“I told her we were in a state of siege.  That does not seem to me a condition that permits of our receiving company.”

“Bah!  These English people are so odd.  The very last night I slept in her room she told me she would be sorry to leave Corsica without having seen a good vendetta.  If you choose, Orso, you might let her see an assault on our enemies’ house.”

“Do you know, Colomba,” said Orso, “Nature blundered when she made you a woman.  You’d have made a first-rate soldier.”

“Maybe.  Anyhow, I’m going to make my bruccio.”

“Don’t waste your time.  We must send somebody down to warn them and stop them before they start.”

“Do you mean to say you would send a messenger out in such weather, to have him and your letter both swept away by a torrent?  How I pity those poor bandits in this storm!  Luckily they have good piloni (thick cloth cloaks with hoods).  Do you know what you ought to do, Orso.  If the storm clears you should start off very early to-morrow morning, and get to our kinswoman’s house before they leave it.  That will be easy enough, for Miss Lydia always gets up so late.  You can tell them everything that has happened here, and if they still persist in coming, why! we shall be very glad to welcome them.”