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The practice is not confined to Sicily, for it is observed also at Cosenza in Calabria, and perhaps in other places. The whole custom sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain may be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of Adonis. Nor are these Sicilian and Calabrian customs the only Easter ceremonies which resemble the rites of Adonis.

A revolt in Sicily in the year 1282, commonly called the Sicilian Vespers, had severed the relation between the island and the mainland, the former passing to the royal family of Aragon, and the latter troublously remaining in French hands until 1442.

When he had said this, he put on his helmet, having the rest of his arms on before he came out of his tent, which were coat of the Sicilian make, girt close about him, and over that a breastpiece of thickly quilted linen, which was taken among other booty at the battle of Issus.

The same enchantment, half psychic, half physical, ethereal yet strongly human, that had mastered him in the old Sicilian days, was at work upon him now. Dimly he felt that so mighty and natural a thing ought not to be resisted. He stood stiffly like a man spellbound.

The rejection of this proposal did not, of course, facilitate the arrangements that were now being made, and when Omar demanded that, in cases of exchange of prisoners, two Algerines should be returned for each Sicilian slave set free, it was seen that the prospect of a speedy termination of hostilities was not bright.

"You needn't tell me." The hot feeling stayed with her. She tried to control it. "You surely can't mind what ignorant people out here think of an utterly innocent action!" she said, at last, very quietly. But even as she spoke she remembered the Sicilian blood in him. "You have minded it!" she said. "You do mind now."

The case came before Rome, not as a case of injury to a colonial child, whom the general mother was bound to protect and avenge; but as an appeal, by way of special petition, from Sicilian clients. It was no grand political movement, but simply judicial. Verres was an ill-used man and the victim of private intrigues. We make no mention of the Christian oracles.

'Bright crescent of Diana! exclaimed the enraptured Queen, 'and ye too, sweet stars, that I have so often watched on the Sicilian plains; do I, then, indeed again behold you? or is it only some exquisite vision that entrances my being? for, indeed, I do not feel the freshness of that breeze that was wont to renovate my languid frame; nor does the odorous scent of flowers wafted from the shores delight my jaded senses.

The sound of flutes and cymbals accompanied it, and a band of children, bearing orange and palm branches, danced riotously before. Had the image been Pan instead of St. Agatha, the ceremonies would have been quite as appropriate. The speronara's boat at last took us to the gorgeous landing place, where we were carefully counted by a fat Sicilian official, and declared free from quarantine.

The Dutch surgeons, too, sallied forth in strength after such an encounter, and brought in great bags filled with human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy in the world for wounds and disease. Leaders were killed on both sides. Catrici, chief of the Italian artillery, and Braccamonte, commander of a famous Sicilian legion, with many less-known captains, lost their lives before the town.