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 other parts the scattered peasantry here and there made a little money as custodians of the opened tombs, and wondered to see travellers ford bridgeless streams and force a difficult way through the prickles merely to see painted caves with coffins of stone.

But there were none of these near at hand, and Santa Tarsilla knew nothing but of its own fever, its own fishing, and its own smuggling, carried on under the very eyes of the sickly coastguard in a small way, but successfully; Santa Tarsilla within a few miles of Cosa and Vetulonia knew nothing of Etruria.

That Joconda knew anything was because she was a northern woman, and so had keen use of both her eyes and ears, and coming and going to and from Grosseto through fifty long years had gathered many a quaint random scrap of information, and remembered it even when she could make but little of it.

Musa had a strong visionary fancy, though no poet read or history studied had fed it. All she had ever had to nourish it were the songs and improvisations of the foresters and mountaineers, when, with autumn and spring-time, they came into