I learned that he purchased them in a _paese_ to the
southward, beyond the forest and beyond the ridge of the hills; but
he made a mystery of this, and I had to be content with his word that
in Corsica folk in the bush need never starve. Also, sometimes I
would hear his gun, and he would bring me home five or six brace of
blackbirds strung on a wand of osier; and these birds grew plumper
and made the better eating as autumn painted the arbutus with scarlet
berries.
To me, so long held a prisoner within the hut, this change of season
came with a shock upon the never-to-be-sufficiently-blessed day when
Marc'antonio, having examined and felt my bones and pronounced them
healed, lifted and bore me, as you might carry a child, up the path
to the old camp on the ridge. He was proud (good man) as he had a
right to be. Surgeons in Corsica there might be none, as he assured
me, or none capable of probing an ordinary bullet wound. But in
youth he had learnt the art of bone-setting, and practised it upon
the sheep which slipped and broke themselves in the gorge of the
Taravo; and his care of me was a masterpiece, to be boasted over to
his dying day.
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