Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/136

 lest it should draw near. 'The long horns of her old familiar friends the buffaloes seemed to her fancy like the weapons of the carabineers, and when a shot cracked in a far-off swamp full of water-fowl, her pity and her fear were no longer only for the winged dwellers of Maremma.

It was near the season of the year which she had dreaded for herself. She dreaded it a thousand times more keenly now.

Why was it not the windless, vaporous, silent summer, when all the land was empty, and the great heat lay on it like a pall, covering all the motionless mute figures of the drowsy, sweating cattle and colts dropped down beside some reedy drinkingplace—the only multitudes that peopled the great plains of that Etruria which now was dumb as they.

'If it were but the summer!' she thought. If it were but the summer there would be no cause to fear, no need to scan the sky-line and gaze apprehensive through the leaves.

But it was once more the month of October, and the time had again come when the Maremma awoke to motion and noise of men. Already the snow upon the Apen-