Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/123

 him in its power for many days, but the cold fit returned not, and she began to hope that life would be stronger than the marsh-poison.

What the fugitive said in his stupor told her nothing of him.

When he was sensible, he complained of thirst and racking pain; when he was delirious, he thought that the carabineers were on him, and he struggled with them and shouted aloud. Sometimes he murmured passionate love words and called with yearning endearment on the name of Aloysia.

'How could they think he killed her, since he loves her so?' thought Musa as she heard.

For fifteen months he had been wandering, pursued, hidden amidst hill-forests or by the sea in caves, holding his life in his hand, more wretched than a hunted stag or fox, waking from every hour of jaded sleep with the memory that his foes were seeking him and might be behind each rock, each tree, each tuft of marucca. Now that he had dropped thus in exhaustion, his harassed brain could not escape the horrid terrors of his haunted past.

Once she had seen a trapped flamingo