Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/79

 doubt in some direction the most opposite to the great lake, since this wretch had named Bolsena. She was too proud and too strong to protest when she was powerless to avenge. She turned away and went down the steep street of San Lionardo, roughly paven with rough granite of the mountain.

'We will come and smoke you out some night, as we do the foxes,' yelled the father of Zefferino after her, and muttered to his cow and his pipe, 'They say there were bags full of the Austrians' gold florins in those caves. Zirlo was sure there were none left, else a knife across her throat'

Happily for her and for himself, he was a very lazy man, and munched on at his big onion without going after her to try the persuasion of his knife.

Musa scarcely saw the mountain side as she descended it for the mist of passionate sorrow that blinded her eyes. The menace to herself passed her ear unheeded; what she grieved for, what she saw in her thoughts, was the poor old mule plodding far away over cruel, stony roads, with no one to give him a draught of water, or pull for him a handful of grass, taken in his old age to the torture-loads of the Carrara marbles, or to the