Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/268

Rh olives, or in reaping their maize, and lived so like one of themselves, that he soon conciliated them, and persuaded them that he was a paid-off maríner who had sailed to far distant places, and liked now to wander at will over the country.

From them he gleaned various news; nothing that told him, however, the one great thing—where Idalia had been taken. When the sun set each day, and he was free from observation, he put Sulla on the track again from the spot where they had last left it, and worked on the line unwearyingly through the nights. The hound had been perfectly trained, and understood what was needed of him to a marvel; he had attached himself to Erceldoune with a strange sagacity of instinct, seeming to lay aside the jealousy he had hitherto shown him for sake of their mutual love and service to the one both had lost. Such sleep as he was obliged to take he took in the hottest hours of the day under the screen of millet-sheaves, or in the cool shade of deep ravines filled with chestnuts or cypresses; with the fall of evening he resumed the search, and through the clear lambent light of the Italian moon, or in the gloom of frowning hills and woods, the two shadows of the man and dog glided unceasingly, bending down and seeking hither and