Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/262

 passed into the adjacent chamber where the mule was stabled, bridled him and led him out into the open air, first having bound upon his back her own mattress, with its hempen sheeting and its coarse but warm blankets.

The women were yelling and quarrelling over the scattered coin; the old man was trying to snatch his share, and was buffeted and beaten between them. In their haste and their greed and their struggle they did not notice or know what she did.

Without looking back once she passed out of the old home of her childhood, and went out between the blocks of stone and the stunted aloes, leading the mule and followed by the dog.

She went straight across the tufa mounds, and the narrow paths crossing the reedy, moist soil, the rank grass lands, and the wild undergrowth that stretched around Santa Tarsilla, and walked slowly on and on, on and on, for eight miles, plunging into the deep woodland and entering the vast virgin meadows, until she came within sight of those cliffs of sandstone, where the tombs of the Tyrrhenes were hidden away behind the fence of thorny ruscus and the dense walls of bay.