Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/132

 had far more character and a luxuriant vegetation, though both were sombre and mournful from the utter loneliness that prevailed there.

She went onwards, happy though solitary, watching with grave eyes the flight of feathered things and the movements of animal life. She knew their ways better than those of the human people around her at Santa Tarsilla; the turtle-dove and the common coot, the fox and the hare, the mole and the porcupine, and a hundred other tribes that lived their life in the dull waste once peopled by the Pelasgic and Etrurian nation—all were dear to her and familiar; and even of the savage boar, the monarch of the marshes, she was never afraid when he passed her with gleaming tusks and fierce eyes, crushing boughs and branches in his ponderous haste, and pushing his shaggy crest through the reeds.

She used to wish that she were he, great, strong, bold, ruler of the swamps, living his hardy life under the oak shadows, and dying, when he did die, with his front to the foe and his fangs red with vengeance.

'Why cannot they let him alone?' she said to herself once, when she saw hunters