“Don’t be frightened, Chili.  I don’t need your uncle.”

“If you would let me, I would go in front of you.”

“No, thanks!  No, thanks!”

And Orso, spurring his horse, rode rapidly in the direction to which the little girl had pointed.

His first impulse had been one of blind fury, and he had told himself that fortune was offering him an excellent opportunity of punishing the coward who had avenged the blow he had received by mutilating a horse.  But as he moved onward the thought of his promise to the prefect, and, above all, his fear of missing Miss Nevil’s visit, altered his feelings, and made him almost wish he might not come upon Orlanduccio.  Soon, however, the memory of his father, the indignity offered to his own horse, and the threats of the Barricini, stirred his rage afresh, and incited him to seek his foe, and to provoke and force him to a fight.  Thus tossed by conflicting feelings, he continued his progress, though now he carefully scrutinized every thicket and hedge, and sometimes even pulled up his horse to listen to the vague sounds to be heard in any open country.  Ten minutes after he had left little Chilina (it was then about nine o’clock in the morning) he found himself on the edge of an exceedingly steep declivity.  The road, or rather the very slight path, which he was following, ran through a maquis that had been lately burned.  The ground was covered with whitish ashes, and here and there some shrubs, and a few big trees, blackened by the flames, and entirely stripped of their leaves, still stood erect—­though life had long since departed out of them.  The sight of a burned maquis is enough to make a man fancy he has been transported into midwinter in some northern clime, and the contrast between the barrenness of the ground over which the flames have passed, with the luxuriant vegetation round about it, heightens this appearance of sadness and desolation.  But at that moment the only thing that struck Orso in this particular landscape was one point—­an important one, it is true, in his present circumstances.  The bareness of the ground rendered any kind of ambush impossible, and the man who has reason to fear that at any moment he may see a gun-barrel thrust out of a thicket straight at his own chest, looks on a stretch of smooth ground, with nothing on it to intercept his view, as a kind of oasis.  After this burned maquis came a number of cultivated fields, inclosed, according to the fashion of that country, with breast-high walls, built of dry stones.  The path ran between these fields, producing, from a distance, the effect of a thick wood.