Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/76

 naked feet and the four hoofs of the mule. She tracked them till nightfall over the moors and through the shrubs, but night soon fell over the land and then she could see nothing. She returned, and could not sleep, thinking of the poor old animal gone to unknown misery in hard toil and strange hands.

She remained wide awake, listening to the delicious song of the nightingales that came from every knot of thyme and clump of rosemary, crossed discordantly now and again by the croak of the snipe, the mourning of the owl, the scream of the coot seized by the fox.

At dawn she looked for the tracks again, but they were effaced by the dew.

With full daybreak she went across the country to San Lionardo, where it stood naked and white upon its low spur of the Apennines. She had never been there, but she ran all risks rather than not see Zirlo and find the mule. It was three hours' walk, and most of it was climbing work; but she reached there as the sun, that had long been up over the Umbrian pastures and Adrian shores of the east, first reached the dreary little hamlet hidden in the rocks.