Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/127

 with blind eyes and dulled plumage, and she had been sure that it was dead. Then she had warmed it in her bosom, and it had recovered. She had kept it all winter, and then the wing had grown whole once more. On Easter-day it had flown off her shoulder over the sea, a speck of silver and bronze in the sunshine, which she had watched with big tears in eyes that had never been so dimmed before.

As she had watched the bird then, so she watched now the struggle between life and death in the body of this doomed and hunted man.

When he was restless and could not sleep at all through the nights that seemed long as centuries, she took her mandoline and sang to soothe him such sonnets as she had sung to the shore people at Santa Tarsilla. The mellow, tender thrilling of the old chitarra chimed in softly with her voice, which in its youth and its clearness was as melodious as the spring and autumn song of the woodlark, which chaunts ever, as the old French quatrain has it, 'Adieu, dieu, adieu!'

Once above ground a shepherd went by over the turf, not witting of all that lay