Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/15

Rh year through, like life beside death. They are all mountain-born, and chiefly from the chestnut-woods of the northern spurs of the Apennines, where the snow has fallen already; here, down in the green Maremma, they will, year after year, arrive all their lives through, to plough, and harrow, and sow, to hew, and saw, and burn wood for timber and charcoal, all the winter long; and then, after waiting perhaps for the first hay stacking or wheat harvest, will go back with the money in their pockets to reap and plough, and gather the nuts, and prune the olive on their own hills; a half nomadic, half home life that is rough and healthy, changeful and pleasant, and makes them half vagrant and half husbandman; bitter foes and hot lovers; faithless ones, too; for when the Maremma girl sings of her lover, he is always some Pistoiese or Lucchese damo from the Apennines, and the burden of her song is always one of absence, of doubt, and of inconstancy.

When he goes away with the rich loads of summer-grass or grain, he goes to his own hamlet up high in the chestnut forests of a healthier land, and it is seldom