Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/119

 light if I could rise. You forget that I am a hunted beast.'

'That is why I trouble myself for you,' she answered. 'I would always save the boars if could. They kill nothing; they only eat roots and berries, and men hunt them wickedly. Of course they fight when they are pressed; so did you. Now lie still and sleep, and I will light a fire.'

She had burned some fallen wood in the summer into charcoal, and made of that the brace, which was the only form of fire known in Santa Tarsilla. She filled a big vessel with this; a metal lebes that had served in Etruscan times to hold the wines of a funeral feast. Once lighted, the slow warmth of the smouldering embers soon spread itself through the place, though it had no power to cure the chills and shivering of the sick man.

She did for him what she had seen Joconda do for those thus afflicted; and the grand sunshine and storm of the late summer days passed over the moors and mountains, and the libeccio blew the sea into a field of foam, a steam of mist, and for the first time she kept no count of the change on the face of nature, but in the twilight of the Etruscan tombs watched the waning of strength, the