Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/145



HE summer passed on and entered the sign of the lion once again, and more than a year had gone since that night when she had come down the steps of the tombs and found a nameless fugitive seated by her hearth. All the summer, since he had forbade her going into the towns to sell her work, they had had but little food. It was the season of the year when the woods yielded the least, when it was hardest without going far afield to get enough to make even a slender meal. The wild oats indeed she had cut and threshed and kept; but such grain is unpalatable, and yields but little nutrition, and ill sustains the strength of a man.

Her old carking care came back on her;