Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/177

 the horse he rode; and all her furred and feathered friends of the season who liked to hunt and travel by night; the grand-dukes and the smaller owls, were out, of course, and all the various races of the snipe tribe were busy after molluscs or mice, larvæ, or frogs, according to their size and prowess; the moor fox was stealing through the osiers to where the moorhen slept, and the first wild ducks of the year flew by against the slender horns of a new moon. Once a great dark bird sailed over her head so near that she could almost have touched him; it was a belated booted-eagle going from his summer haunts on Monte Amiato to his Asian or African eyrie on Himalaya or on Atlas.

Save these she met nothing.

Men do not care to be out on the Maremma lowlands after sunset; every pretty brown tarn reflecting clouds and stars may be a poison-bowl of noxious gases; every will-o'-the-wisp that dances over the hairy sundew and the vernal sandwort may be a torch that leads on to the grave.

She met no creature to do her harm, and knew her country so well that she did not lose her way or miss the unsteady