On that spot there rose a little pyramid of branches, some of them green, some withered, heaped about three feet high.

Above them rose the top of a wooden cross, painted black.

In several of the Corsican cantons, especially those among the mountains, a very ancient custom, connected, it may be with some pagan superstition, constrains every passer-by to cast either a stone or a branch on the spot whereon a man has died a violent death.

For years and years--as long as the memory of his tragic fate endures--this strange offering goes on accumulating from day to day.
This is called the dead man's _pile_--his "_mucchio_." Colomba stopped before the heap of foliage, broke off an arbutus branch, and cast it on the pile.
"Orso," she said, "this is where your father died.

Let us pray for his soul!" And she knelt down.