Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/248

 moments which wrung is inmost soul, but he stayed on, glad to be able to feel himself her only friend, glad to be able to watch for hours together the little grated window of her cell.

He and the advocate he employed, and on whom he spent all the gains of his latest voyages, hunted the Apennines for the shepherd's wife of whom Musa spoke once, when the lawyer retained by Daniello Villamagna asked her if there was no one who could testify that her little child had died of a newborn child's mere feebleness. Musa knew only that the woman was called Pomfilia, and that her husband's name was Nerone, and on that slender help they had to rely, and did at length trace the shepherd and his family from Maremma up to those chestnut woods on the sides of the Pistoiese hills where their summer home was made.

They also called on the priest of Santa Tarsilla, who, although when he heard of the coffin of Joconda having been taken away without his sexton even missing it was deeply incensed and terrified, yet was too tender-hearted a man to refuse his testimony that the girl reared by Joconda Romanelli, in his parish, had been always of