Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/321

Rh has been stabbed, formed an echo to those words.

The innkeeper and the woman rose, and some neighbors ran up.

“What's the matter? what ails you, my boy?” said the innkeeper, drawing him into the shop and making him sit down. “There's no reason for despairing! The Mequinez family is not here, but at a little distance off, a few hours from Tucuman.”

“Where? where?” shrieked Marco, springing up like one restored to life.

“Fifteen miles from here,” continued the man, “on the river at Saladillo, in a place where a big sugar factory is being built, and a cluster of houses. Signor Mequinez's house is there; every one knows it: you can reach it in a few hours.”

“I was there a month ago,” said a youth, who had hastened up at the cry.

Marco stared at him with wide-open eyes, and asked him hastily, turning pale as he did so, “Did you see the servant of Signor Mequinez—the Italian?” T

“he Genoese? Yes; I saw her.”

Marco burst into a convulsive sob, which was half a laugh and half a sob. Then, with an impulse of violent resolution: “Which way am I to go? quick, the road! I shall set out instantly; show me the way!”

“But it is a day's march,” they all told him, in one breath. “You are weary; you should rest; you can set out to-morrow.”

“Impossible! impossible!” replied the lad. “Tell me the way; I shall not wait another moment; I shall set out at once, were I to die on the road!”

On perceiving him so inflexible, they no longer