Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/318

 shot fell like hail on the unresisting myriads, Musa could do nothing; she could only listen with throbbing heart and clenching hands, and laugh aloud in derision to think that men called the hill-fox a robber and the falcon bird of prey. But when she found the nets stretched across the pools, and the paratoio set on the turf, and the setters of these had gone away for the night, fearing the deadly vapours of the soil, then she, seeing these fell things at twilight, and not being afraid, would wait and go without sleep, and when the night was fully down, and the invaders of the birds' kingdom had gone to some distant knot of houses on the hillside or the shore, or to some shepherd's hut, she would work her hardest at the snares, pulling up the stakes from the ground, dragging the huge nets out of the water, hacking down with her hatchet the poles, and destroying all she could destroy of those treacherous engines.

If the men had ever suspected her, if they had ever returned before dawn and come upon her at her work of demolition, they would have shot her in all probability, as they would have shot the poor birds, and with no more scruple or remorse after it.