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150 truder whom her son was obliged to support, although she knew that the unfortunate cripple honestly earned every sou expended on his living. Fortunately for domestic peace, Phenicia was so quiet, so meek and good, that she paid no attention whatever to the eternal grumbling of her mother-in-law. Only when Venera's cursing sounded too dreadful through the gloomy corridors of the old palace, would she rush out of the house and seek her favorite place by the side of the fountain whose surface was bubbling with silvery waves. From there she would look wistfully towards Mola perched high on the mountain slope, covered with grape vines, almond and Indian fig trees. This scene always had a soothing effect upon her; she felt as if she had confided her troubles to her mother, and had received her sympathy and blessing. She would return to the palace with a patient smile upon her lips.

Two years of happy married life passed away very rapidly, when great changes took place in the palace of Corvejo. From all sides fate dealt cruel blows upon poor Archangelo. Besides a son, Venera had also a married daughter, who lived down in Girardini, at the foot of the hills on which Taormin was situated. Lucia had little love either for her mother or brother, and they had not seen each other for years. Her husband was a laborer upon the railroad track, and Lucia helped him whenever she could. They had three children, the youngest still an infant when the great misfortune over took them. One day, Lucia was sitting by the seashore, cooling her feet in the water and looking for a shell for her babe, her husband at work upon the track near by. Suddenly she heard the rumbling of the train, and turning around, saw him beneath the wheels. She had no time to cry out; her child slipped from herarms, and she fell upon her face, senseless, while the waves, the soft, beautiful waves, so full of sunlight and sweet murmurings, soothed her babe to its eternal rest, covering its fixed, staring eyes with white sand. When Lucia recovered from her swoon, she laughed night and day without ceasing. They cut off her long black hair, placed ice upon her head, but it brought no relief; they said the milk had gone to her head.

About an hour before her death, she became quiet, and regained to some extent her reason. She begged an old neighbor to take her boys, when all was over, to her brother in Taormin.

"Tell him that I charge him by the soul of our dead father to take pity upon them. Tell him," she added, after a pause, "that I send them to him as a legacy." Then she began to laugh again, and did not stop even when she struggled in her last agony. The bystanders shuddered as they heard that wild laugh mingling with the death rattle.

The neighbor kept her word. Leaning upon her staff, in the scorching heat of the sun, she limped up the precipitous, rocky road leading to Taormin, and led the two boys, Anibal and Ettor, almost smothered with dust, into the gloomy shadow of Corvejo. They were received by their grandmother with a wail of despair. She tore her hair, as she complained to Nunziata: "To support children now, when there is no work! Does not God know any more justice? He has left us nothing but our eyes, that we may weep over our misery."

"And perhaps a piece of heart, that you might feel for those poor orphans," retorted Nunziata, reproachfully.

Ettor and Anibal, however, found that piece of heart with Phenicia, with Archangelo, and with poor Carmenio, upon whom at first they could not look without laughing—he reminded them so strongly of Pulcinello. In their simplicity, they imagined he was hunchbacked and ugly to amuse them. But when he never laid aside the mark, they became accustomed to it, and, like every one else, took it as a matter of course. The only thing that filled their young hearts with terror was the malignant looks cast at them by their grandmother.

In one thing, however, Venera was right. God had sent her those little ones when times were very, very hard.

The suit concerning the estate beyond