Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/321



oxen toiled laboriously on their wearisome way; the waggon jolted on its large unpainted wheels; the soldiers marched on either side, and in the van and rear: the tawny leathern covering flapped idly to and fro, whilst about it clung a faint sweet fragrance from grass crops and vine-loads carried through many changing seasons of the earth.

Where they went she had no knowledge; they had bound her eyes; that the noon in time passed and the cooler day followed she could tell by some diminution in the intensity of heat, and by the tender music of birds' throats that every now and then broke out from myrtle thickets and lemon-gardens that they wended their way through as the hours advanced. The measured march of the men, and of the heavy tread of the cattle, at intervals