Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/303

 In lieu of descending to follow the Via Aurelia where it wound down a few miles off the coast, by Santa Marinella and Santa Severa and mediæval Palo, and the volcanic soil and the steep ravines by Cervetri, where the long avenues of cliff sepulchres are all that remain to show the site of Cere, and gaining so the mouth of Tiber to ascend the stream in any boat that he might find by Fiumicino, he still struck across the country by cattle-tracks known alone to himself and wild men like him, and chose to leave the Maccarese morasses untrodden in his rear, and followed the course of the Arrone river as far as the high cliffs up by forsaken Galera.

At this deserted rock-village he slept that night, the fifth night of his pilgrimage, and she, still unseen by him, climbed also in the twilight of the early autumn night, and there rested also as a hill-hare worn out with travel might have done.

He, all unconscious that she was near, slept soundly with rude stones for his bed.

In his days of pride his range had sometimes swept as fer as those wood-clothed cliffs that rise about the lake of Bracciano, the Lacus Sabatinus of the Romans. In that time he had been well known in