Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/115

 but it was certain the soldiery were out after me. In the stillness of dawn I could hear their heavy tread, and their weapons breaking the branches as they passed. They were hundreds of feet down below me. I packed a little bread up, and took a dagger I had found in those huts—the dagger you see, a three-edged old dagger of Florence—and then I fled for my life again, and hid in the holes of the rocks with the other hunted beasts of the hills. That was in April last; I knew the month because the ashes were in blossom, and made the woods below look as if a snow-storm had fallen on them. It is of no use going over all I suffered—suffering of starvation, of exhaustion, of cold, of heat, of rheumatism, of cramp, of wet, of darkness, of perpetual terror. Ah! do not think me a coward! I have been palsied with fear—I am still!'

He gazed at her with dilated eyes, with straining ears, with panting breath, with shivering flesh; his danger was ever present. Even now the muskets of the soldiers might be glancing in the moonlight amongst the Christ's thorn above the sepulchres.

Musa was alarmed at his look.

'You are unwell,' she said gently. 'Do