Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/261

 He went to the Sasso Scritto on three fine mornings when the weather had cleared into the buoyant and transparent brilliancy usual in winter; but Musa did not come.

He thought of going on to Orbetello and there obtaining permission of the authorities to see the man who had once been the terror of all travellers and the idol of all Maremma.

He was curious to know and study something of that wild nature whose love of liberty and impatience of control and custom were inherited by her. He took blame to himself that he had not done so in the summer, that he had allowed her intolerance towards him to drive him so soon away from her shores.

He promised himself that with the morrow he would repair his fault. But when that day he reached Telamone, the people of the little town were talking of an event that had happened that night in Orbetello.

Listening to their chatter on the beach, where the aloes pricked through the sand, he heard that Saturnino of Santa Fiora, as the people still called him, had escaped a second time. As they had worked at night