Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/140

 A murmur ran through the group.

"Silence, friends!" exclaimed the determined girl." "They dare not do it. They know that for each one they shoot down, his murderer would die a six-fold death. You speak like a fool," she went on, turning to the commissary. "The fear depicted on your faces is a more sensible spokesman. Do as it suggests to you. The way is open to you, gentlemen!"

She stepped back, pointing with her left hand to the door of the house. The men in the bedroom whispered together a little; then, with tolerable composure, they marched through the excited band of villagers, whose parting curses waxed louder and louder as the strangers left the house. The surgeon seemed uncertain whether to go too, but, on an authoritative sign from the girl, he hastily joined his companions.

The wounded man in bed had followed the entire scene with wide-open eyes. The old woman now went to him and settled his pillows. "Lie still, my son!" she said. There is no danger. The old chiaruccia keeps watch, and our Fenice, blessed child, will see that you are safe. Sleep, sleep!"

She hushed him to slumber like a child, singing monotonously until he slept. But the face of Fenice was with him in his dreams.

For ten days Filippo had been up in the mountains, nursed by the old woman. He slept soundly at night, and in the daytime he sat at the open door enjoying the fresh air and the solitude. As soon as he was able to write once more, he sent a messenger to Bologna with a letter, to which he received an answer the next day; but his pale countenance did not show whether it was satisfactory or not. He spoke to no one except his old nurse and the children from the village. Fenice he saw only in the evening, when she was busy at her fireside, for she left the house with the rising sun and remained away the whole day in the mountains. He gathered from chance remarks that this was not her usual custom. But even when she was in the house there was no opportunity of talking to her. Altogether, she seemed not to notice his presence in the very least, and her life went on as before. But her face had become like stone, and the light had faded from her eyes.

One day, enticed on by the lovely weather, Filippo had gone further than usual from the house, and for the first time, conscious of returning strength, was climbing up a gentle slope, when, turning a corner of a rock, he was startled to see Fenice sitting on the moss beside a spring. She had a distaff and a spindle in her hands, and as she spun was lost in thought. She looked up when she heard Filippo's footsteps, but not not utter a word, not did the expression of her face alter. She rose up