Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/46

 She went now to the tavern where she had slept, and where her mule was put up, harnessed him with her own hands, and drove out of the city gates with her hardly-earned gains in a bag amongst the hay and straw at her feet.

She went over the flat desolate lands that lie cheerlessly and barrenly about Grosseto, past the lime quarries of Alberese, over the narrow ill-made roads that traverse the marshes, and over the rivers by ford or ferry or bridge, and underneath hills dark with forest where the buck and the boar roamed at liberty. She drove as long as it was light, then reached a miserable little inn, but a friendly one, and slept there; then at dawn resumed her homeward way.

She drove on and on, the old mule ambling slowly, for he only had long journeys twice a year, and resented them mournfully; the moss and the marshes, the wide fields lying red and bare for the plough, and the little knots of pale dust-coloured houses that made the villages of the hill-sides, were passed in succession until she got across country and down to the level of the sea, and saw little else save stunted aloes and sand, though the distance was dark with