Page:Under the shadow of Etna; Sicilian stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga (IA undershadowofetn00vergrich).pdf/121

Rh trees, and were playing tambourines and bag-pipes, and dancing with the girls of the estate, as if they were all of the same class.

Jeli, meantime, went on with his work shearing the sheep, and felt something within him, without knowing what, like a thorn, like a nail, like a pair of shears, working within him, slowly, slowly, like a poison.

The padrone had ordered that they should kill a couple of goats, and the yeatling sheep, and some chickens, and a turkey cock. In fact, he was going to do things on a grand scale, and lavishly, so as to do honor to his friends; and while all those creatures were squealing under the death-agony, and the goats were screaming under the knife, Jeli felt his knees tremble, and little by little, it seemed to him that the wool that he was shearing, and the grass in which the sheep were leaping, were stained with blood.

"Don't go," he said to Mara, when Don