URING this second summer that she passed upon the moors, early in a May morning, when she was out on the waters, there was a vessel standing off the shore; a rare sìght there, for, though many sailing ships and steamers passed in the offing, no one of them ever came close in, unless it were a tartana coasting, much less did any cast anchor anywhere nearer than Civita Vecchia one way, or Livorno the other.

This vessel, however, a comely barque of Sicilian rig, a brig of some 100 tons, had