Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/99

 and pitied him, so she did this man. There was in her blood a fierce hatred of law and oppression; a keen sympathy with all that was driven and persecuted.

After awhile the stranger became more awake to where he was, and recovered, as the wine flowed down into his chilled, bruised, weary body, sight and speech and sense. She had piled dead wood on' the hearth, and he was still stretched where he had first dropped before it. The night was cold, though the days were scorching, and the heat of the fire was welcome to his limbs, numbed with long fatigue and exposure in woods and marshes where he had disputed acorns with the boars and the rats,

'You will not give me up?' he said, with timid appeal in his great dark eyes,

Musa standing above him, in her strength and her health, smiled with a little scorn. 'Why do you come to me if you think so?'

'Saturnino said you had been good to him, and that the place was a sure refuge.'

He did not say that Saturnino had also said to him:

'If the maiden be squeamish, or be like