Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/311

 seemed to her, as she had said to Andreino, an unequal and unjust division of toil.

Her only fear of men was lest, if they knew of her beloved tombs, they might drive her out and rifle them of the bronze and the pottery as the galley-slave had done of the gold. It was for that reason alone that she scanned the horizon with the keenness of the roebuck, and fled at any sound of steps into the shelter of the thorny coverts with the self-preserving instinct of the mountain hare.

The chill season was at hand, but she was not much in awe of it; she was only afraid lest those sportsmen whose guns echoed over the lonely wastes, or the labourers from the north who passed by on their way to level some remnant of sacred wood or of historic forest, should see her and wonder and talk.

She grew learned in all the ways of nature, and, could she have told or written all she saw, would have lent much to the world's knowledge of fauna and of flora. In proportion as she fled from man so she grew familiar with and endeared to the beasts and birds that filled the moorland with innocent life, and with as deep an interest as ever the Etruscan priests had watched them, to fore-