Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/200

 These were the only visitants that she had, except the frogs that croaked on the stagnant mud of the steaming pools, and all the feathered tribe of summer singers, that were mute under the burden of the windless weather, and sat dull and gasping in the caroba boughs.

One day at early morning, going there, she saw for the first time a human being amidst the maidenhair and the vetches about the orifice of the warrior's tomb. She saw him with displeasure and fear. Yet he was only a young goatherd about ten years of age, whose goats were all about him, cropping the herbage; grey, and black, and white, wise-looking, bright-eyed, creatures, half beast, half fawn, as all goats are, always looking as though they had strayed from Hymettus or from Tempe.

He was a pretty brown boy, a mountain and moorland boy, half-naked, and playing with his reed pipe, like a true son of Pan.

'Who are you?' she said angrily; for she felt that the moor was her own.

He laughed.

'I am Zefferino; they call me Zirlo. I know you. You are the girl they call