Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/199

 scorched them brown, Musa, all by herself, still sought the shadow and the shelter of that tomb whose secret was only known to her.

She was never afraid; she was always watching, watching for the dead to arise or to return. The intense silence did not appal her; the intense solitude there, underneath the soil, all alone in that vault of sandstone, with the bones strewn on the beds of rock, had no terrors for her. These dead were like her people.

She was afraid lest any one should come to share their secret with her.

The moor was very lonely; far off, now and then, the figure of a shepherd, satyr-like and clad in goatskin, would loom black against the orange of the sunset sky; and she would watch him angrily and suspiciously lest he should bring his flocks to crop too near the mouth of the tombs, and learn their existence and rob her of their solitude. But no one disturbed her. The herds of buffaloes tramped by, snorting and bellowing as the gnats stung them, and the flies fastened in their flesh; the wild boars would come too, seeking roots in the cracked dry ground, and thrusting their snouts amidst the sawgrass,