Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/59

 fore had seen the light, there is a filthy little drinking-house, whose only customers are the shepherds and the woodcutters and the muleteers.

There Mastarna, as the hero and martyr of the soil, was being lamented by a knot of ill-looking foresters as Joconda passed the open door by which they were sitting together playing at dominoes. Being a brave woman, and not caring for their ill looks, she gathered from them what direction to take so as to reach the mountain crest without sinking miserably in a quagmire, or wandering till dead of hunger in the intricacy of the pathless jungle.

She asked for the Rocca del Giulio, and they pointed it to her; far, very far away, where the autumn snows lay on the highest lines of the hills. She took her staff and wallet and set out again.

'You cannot reach it to-night, mother,' the men said to her.

She said to them, 'Very well. No one will hurt me. I am old and ugly, and I have not a coin to steal.'

They laughed and asked her why she went; she told them 'to get a child to nurse;' and with the prudence of her country