Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/230

 start the cool of the midnight had come that comes with the descent of the dews.

Used to the look of the sky, she knew that it was midnight by the stars. She awoke refreshed, but conscience-stricken. Every moment she delayed was a pang of hunger and of fear more to the hunted man. She owed him no service, but she pitied him; she had promised him; these were bonds that knit her to him strongly, and that it never occurred to her to break.

But how to get him food and wine and the weapon that he had prayed for?—the weapon that she could understand would be sweeter to him than any drink to his thirst, any bread to his famine? She did not know how to find them. The houses of Santa Tarsilla would be all shut and the people all slumbering by the time she reached there, and money she had none, even had there been any place upon the coast nearer than the fishing-town that was her home. There was nothing for it but to ask Joconda.

She bent her back to the oars once more and rowed on steadily; the carabineers had passed out of sight long before: whilst she had been asleep they had ridden down into Santa Tarsilla and had revived long dormant