BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Of 
 
 CALIFOKI>*A 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
OUIDA'S NOVELS. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 35. 6rf. each ; post 8vo, illustrated 
 boards, 25. each. 
 
 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Tricotrin. 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine' s Gage. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Puck. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Folle-Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pascarel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Two Little Wooden Shoes. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Moths. 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 
 A Village Commune. 
 
 In Maremma. 
 
 Bimbi. 
 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Wanda. 
 
 Frescoes. 
 
 Othmar. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 Guilderoy. 
 
 Ruffino. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 The Waters of Edera. Crown 8vo, cloth, 33. 6d. 
 Wisdom, Wit) and Pathos, selected from the Works 
 
 of OUIDA by F. SYDNEY MORRIS. Post 8vo. cloth extra, 55. CHEAP 
 EDITION, illustrated boards, 2s. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 1 1 1, St. Martin's Lane, W.C. 
 
THE 
 
 WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'STRATHMORE' 'UNDER TWO FLAGS' 'TRICOTRIN 
 'TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES' ETC. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 
 1900 
 
[All rights reserved.] 
 
THE WATEES OF EDEEA 
 
 TT was a country of wide pastures, of moors 
 * covered with heath, of rock-born streams and 
 rivulets, of forest and hill and dale, sparsely 
 inhabited, with the sea to the eastward of it, 
 unseen, and the mountains everywhere visible 
 always, and endlessly changing in aspect. 
 
 Herdsmen and shepherds wandered over it, and 
 along its almost disused roads pedlars and pack 
 mules passed at times but rarely. Minerals and 
 marbles were under its turf, but none sought for 
 them ; pools and lakes slept in it, undisturbed 
 save by millions of water fowl and their pursuers. 
 The ruins of temples and palaces were overgrown 
 by its wild berries and wild flowers. The buffalo 
 browsed where emperors had feasted, and the 
 
 673 
 
2 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 bittern winged its slow flight over the fields of 
 forgotten battles. 
 
 It was the season when the flocks are brought 
 through this lonely land, coming from the 
 plains to the hills. Many of them passed on their 
 way thus along the course of the Edera water. 
 The shepherds, clothed in goatskin, with the hair 
 worn outward, bearded, brown, hirsute men, 
 looking like savage satyrs, the flocks they drove 
 before them travel-worn, lame, heart-broken, the 
 lambs and kids bleating painfully. They cannot 
 keep up with the pace of the flock, and, when 
 they fall behind, the shepherds slit their throats, 
 roast their bodies over an evening fire, or bake 
 them under its ashes, and eat them ; if a town or 
 village be near, the little corpses are sold in it. 
 Often a sheep dog or a puppy drops down in the 
 same way, footsore and worn out; then the 
 shepherds do not tarry, but leave the creatures 
 to their fate, to die slowly of thirst and hunger. 
 
 The good shepherd is a false phrase. No one 
 is more brutal than a shepherd. If he were not 
 so he could not bear his life for a day. 
 
 All that he does is brutal. He stones the flock 
 where it would tarry against his will. He muti- 
 lates the males, and drags the females away from 
 their sucking babes. He shears their fleeces every 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 3 
 
 spring, unheeding how the raw skin drops blood. 
 He drives the halting, footsore, crippled animals 
 on by force over flint and slate and parching dust. 
 Sometimes he makes them travel twenty miles a 
 day. 
 
 For his pastime he sets the finest of his beasts 
 to fight. This is the feast day and holiday sport 
 of all the shepherds ; and they bet on it, until all 
 they have, which is but little, goes on the heads 
 of the rams ; and one will wager his breeches, 
 and another his skin jacket, and another his 
 comely wife, and the ram which is beaten, if he 
 have any life left in him, will be stabbed in the 
 throat by his owner : for he is considered to have 
 disgraced the branca. 
 
 This Sunday and Saints' day sport was going 
 on on a piece of grass land in the district known 
 as the Vale of Edera. 
 
 On the turf, cleared of its heaths and ferns, 
 there was a ring of men, three of them shepherds, 
 the rest peasants. In t-he midst of them were the 
 rams, two chosen beasts pitted against each other 
 like two pugilists. They advanced slowly at first, 
 then more quickly, and yet more quickly, till they 
 met with a crash, their two foreheads, hard as 
 though carven in stone, coming in collision with 
 a terrible force ; then each, staggered by the 
 
4 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 encounter, drew back, dizzy and bruised, to recoil, 
 and take breath, and gather fresh force, and so 
 charge one on the other in successive rounds until 
 the weaker should succumb, and, mangled and 
 senseless, should arise no more. 
 
 One of the rams was old, and one was young ; 
 some of the shepherds said that the old one was 
 more wary and more experienced, and would have 
 the advantage ; in strength and height they were 
 nearly equal, but the old one had been in such 
 duels before and the young one never. The young 
 one thought he had but to rush in, head downward, 
 to conquer ; the old one knew that this was not 
 enough to secure victory. The young one was 
 blind with ardour and impatience for the fray ; 
 the old one was cool and shrewd and could parry 
 and wait. 
 
 After three rounds, the two combatants met in 
 a final shock ; the elder ram butted furiously, the 
 younger staggered and failed to return the blow, 
 his frontal bone was split, and he fell to the 
 ground ; the elder struck him once, twice, thrice, 
 amidst the uproarious applause of his backers ; 
 a stream of blood poured from his skull, which 
 was pounded to splinters ; a terrible convulsion 
 shook his body and his limbs ; he stretched his 
 tongue out as if he tried to lap water ; the men 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 5 
 
 who had their money on him cursed him with 
 every curse they knew ; they did not cut his 
 throat, for they knew he was as good as dead. 
 
 " This is a vile thing you have done," said a 
 little beggar girl who had been passing, and had 
 been arrested by the horrible fascination of the 
 combat, and forced against her will to stand and 
 watch its issue. The shepherds jeered ; those 
 who had backed the victor were sponging his 
 wounds beside a runlet of water which was close 
 at hand ; those who had lost were flinging stones 
 on the vanquished. The girl knelt down by the 
 dying ram to save him from the shower of stones ; 
 she lifted his head gently upward, and tried to 
 pour water through his jaws from a little wooden 
 cup which she had on her, and which she had filled 
 at the river. But he could not swallow ; his beau- 
 tiful opaline eyes were covered with film, he 
 gasped painfully, a foam of blood on his lips and 
 a stream of blood coursing down his face; a 
 quiver passed over him again; then his head 
 rested lifeless on his knees. She touched his 
 shattered horns, his clotted wool, tenderly. 
 
 "Why did you set him to fight?" she said 
 with an indignation which choked her voice. 
 " It was vile. He was younger than the other, 
 and knew less." 
 
6 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Those who had won laughed. Those who 
 had lost cursed him again ; he had disgraced his 
 branca. They would flay him, and put him in 
 the cauldron over the wood fire, and would curse 
 him even whilst they picked his bones for a 
 white-livered spawn of cowards ; a son of a 
 thrice-damned ewe. 
 
 The girl knew that was what they do. She 
 laid his battered head gently down upon the turf, 
 and poured the water out of her cup; her eyes 
 were blind with tears; she could not give him 
 back his young life, his zest in his pastoral 
 pleasures, his joy in cropping the herbage, his 
 rude loves, his merry gambols, his sound sleep, 
 his odorous breath. 
 
 He had died to amuse and excite the ugly 
 passions of men, as, if he had lived longer, he 
 would, in the end, have died to satisfy their ugly 
 appetites. 
 
 She looked at his corpse with compassion, the 
 tears standing in her eyes ; then she turned away, 
 and as she went saw that her poor ragged clothes 
 were splashed here and there with blood, and that 
 her arms and hands were red with blood : she had 
 not thought of that before ; she had thought only 
 of him. The shepherds did not notice her ; they 
 were quarrelling violently in dispute over what 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 7 
 
 had been lost and won, thrusting their fingers in 
 each other's faces, and defiling the fair calm of 
 the day with filthy oaths. 
 
 The girl shrank away into the heather with the 
 silent swiftness of a hare ; now that she had lost 
 the stimulus of indignant pity she was afraid of 
 these brutes ; if the whim entered into them they 
 would be as brutal to her as to their flock. 
 
 Out of fear of them she did not descend at once 
 to the river, but pushed her way through the 
 sweet-smelling, bee-haunted, cross-leaved heaths ; 
 she could hear the sound of the water on her 
 right all the time as she went. She knew little of 
 this country, but she had seen the Edera, and had 
 crossed it farther up its course on one of its rough 
 tree-bridges. 
 
 When, as well as she could judge, she had got 
 half a mile away from the scene of the rams' 
 combat, she changed her course and went to the 
 right, directed by the murmur of the fiver. It 
 was slow walking through the heath and gorse 
 which grew above her head, and were closely 
 woven together, but in time she reached shelving 
 ground, and heard the song of the river louder on 
 her ear. The heath ceased to grow within a few 
 yards of the stream and was replaced by various 
 water plants and by acacia thickets ; she slid 
 
8 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 down the banks between the stems and alighted 
 on her bare feet where the sand was soft and the 
 water-dock grew thick. She looked up and down 
 the water ; there was no one in sight, nothing but 
 the banks rosehued with the bloom of the heather, 
 and, beyond the opposite shore, in the distance, 
 the tender amethystine hues of the mountains. 
 The water was generally low, leaving the stretches 
 of sand and of shingle visible, but it was still 
 deep in many parts. 
 
 She stripped herself and went down into it, and 
 washed the blood which had by this time caked 
 upon her flesh. It seemed a pity, she thought, to 
 sully with that dusky stain this pure, bright, 
 shining stream ; but she had no other way to rid 
 herself of it, and she had in all the world no other 
 clothes than these poor woollen rags. 
 
 Her heart was still sore for the fate of the 
 conquered ram ; and her eyes filled again with 
 tears as she washed his blood off her in the gay 
 running current. But the water was soothing 
 and fresh, the sun shone on its bright surface; 
 the comfrey and fig- wart blew in the breeze, the 
 heather smell filled the atmosphere. 
 
 She was only a child, and her spirits rose, and 
 she capered about in the shallows, and flung the 
 water over her head, and danced to her own 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 9 
 
 reflection in it, and forgot her sorrow. Then 
 she washed her petticoats as well as she could, 
 having nothing but water alone, and all the while 
 she was as naked as a Naiad, and the sun smiled 
 on her brown, thin, childish body as it smiled on a 
 stem of plaint ain or on the plumage of a coot. 
 
 Then when she had washed her skirt she spread 
 it out on the sand to dry, and sat down beside it, 
 for the heat to bake her limbs after her long bath. 
 There was no one, and there was nothing, in 
 sight ; if any came near she could hide under the 
 great dock leaves until such should have passed. 
 It was high noon, and the skirt of wool and the 
 skirt of hemp grew hot and steamed under the 
 vertical rays ; she was soon as dry as the shingles 
 from which the water had receded for months. 
 She sat with her hands clasped round her up- 
 drawn knees, and her head grew heavy with the 
 want of slumber, but she would not sleep, though 
 it was the hour of sleep. Some one might pass 
 by and steal her clothes, she thought, and how or 
 when would she ever get others? 
 
 When the skirt was quite dried, the blood stains 
 still showed on it ; they were no longer red, but 
 looked like the marks from the sand. She tied it 
 on round her waist and her shirt over it, and 
 wound an old crimson sash round both. Then she 
 
io THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 took up her little bundle in which were the wooden 
 cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of 
 hempen cloth and a small loaf of maize bread, 
 and went on along the water, wading and hopping 
 in it, as the water- wagtails did, jumping from 
 stone to stone and sinking sometimes up to her 
 knees in a hole. 
 
 She had no idea where she would rest at night, 
 or where she would get anything to eat ; but that 
 reflection scarcely weighed on her ; she slept well 
 enough under stacks or in outhouses, and she was 
 used to hunger. So long as no one meddled with 
 her she was content. The weather was fine and 
 the country was quiet. Only she was sorry for 
 the dead ram. By this time they would have 
 hung him up by his heels to a tree, and have pulled 
 his skin off his body. 
 
 She was sorry; but she jumped along merrily 
 in the water, as a kingfisher does, and scarcely 
 even wondered where its course would lead 
 her. 
 
 At a bend in it she came to a spot where a 
 young man was seated amongst the bulrushes, 
 watching his fishing net. 
 
 " Aie ! " she cried with a shrill cry of alarm, like 
 a bird who sees a fowler. She stopped short in 
 her progress; the water at that moment was up to 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 11 
 
 her knees. With both hands she held up her petti- 
 coat to save it from another wetting ; her little 
 bundle was balanced on her head, the light shone 
 in her great brown eyes. The youth turned and 
 saw her. 
 
 She was a very young girl, thirteen at most ; 
 her small flat breasts were still those of a child, 
 her narrow shoulders and her narrow loins spoke 
 of scanty food and privation of all kinds, and her 
 arms and legs were brown from the play of the 
 sun on their nakedness ; they were little else than 
 skin and bone, nerves and sinew, and looked like 
 stakes of wood. All the veins and muscles stood 
 revealed as in anatomy, and her face, which would 
 have been a child's face, a nymph's face, with 
 level brows, a pure, straight profile, and small 
 close- ears like shells, was so fleshless and so 
 sunburnt that she looked almost like a mummy. 
 Her eyes had in them the surprise and sadness 
 of those of a weaning calf ; and her hair, too 
 abundant for so small a head, would, had it not 
 been so dusty and entangled, have been of a red 
 golden brozne, the hue of a chestnut which has 
 just burst open its green husk. 
 
 " Who are you? " said the young man, looking 
 at her in surprise. 
 
 " I am Nerina," answered the child. 
 
li THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Where do you come from ? What is your 
 country ? " 
 
 She pointed vaguely to the south-west moun- 
 tains, where the snow on the upper ranges was 
 still lying with bands of cloud resting on it. 
 
 " From the Abruzzo ?" 
 
 She was silent. She did not know the moun- 
 tains of her birthplace by their names. 
 
 " Who was your father ? " he asked, with some 
 impatience. 
 
 " He was Black Fausto." 
 
 " What did he do for a living? " 
 
 " He went down with the fair season to the 
 Eoman plain." 
 
 He understood : the man had no doubt 
 been a labourer, one of those who descend in 
 bands from the villages of the Abruzzo heights to 
 plough, and mow, and sow, and reap, on the 
 lands of the Castelli Eomani ; men who work in 
 droves, and are fed and stalled in droves, as cattle 
 are, who work all through the longest and hottest 
 days in summer, and in the worst storms of 
 winter ; men who are black by the sun, are half 
 naked, are lean and hairy and drip with continual 
 sweat, but who take faithfully back the small 
 wage they receive to where their women and 
 children dwell in their mountain-villages. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 13 
 
 "He went, you say? Is he ill? Does he 
 work no longer?" 
 
 " He died last year." 
 
 " Of what ? " 
 
 She gave a hopeless gesture. " Who knows ? 
 He came back with a wolf in his belly, he said, 
 always gnawing and griping, and he drank water 
 all day and all night, and his face burned, and his 
 legs were cold, and all of a sudden his jaw fell, 
 and he spoke no more to us. There are many of 
 them who die like that after a hot season down in 
 the plains." 
 
 He understood; hunger and heat, foul air in 
 their sleeping places, infusoria in the ditch and 
 rain water, and excessive toil in the extremes of 
 heat and cold, make gaps in the ranks of these 
 hired bands every year as if a cannon had been 
 fired into them. 
 
 " Who takes care of you now? " he asked with 
 pity, as for a homeless bitch. 
 
 " Nobody. There is nobody. They are all 
 gone down into the earth." 
 
 " But how do you live ?" 
 
 " I work when I can. I beg when I cannot. 
 People let me sleep in the stalls, or the barns, 
 and give me bread." 
 
 " That is a bad life for a girl" 
 
14 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "I did not make it." 
 
 " And where are you going? " 
 
 She opened her arms wide and swept the air 
 with them. 
 
 " Anywhere. Along the water, until I find 
 something to do." 
 
 " I cannot do much," she added, after a pause. 
 " I am little, and no one has taught me. But I 
 can cut grass and card wool." 
 
 " The grass season is short, and the wool 
 season is far off. Why did you not stay in your 
 village?" 
 
 She was mute. She did not know why she had 
 left it, she had come away down the mountain- 
 side on a wandering instinct, with a vague idea 
 of finding something better the farther she went : 
 her father had always come back with silver 
 pieces in his pocket after his stay down there in 
 those lands which she had never seen, lying as 
 they did down far below under the golden haze of 
 what seemed an immeasurable distance. 
 
 " Are you not hungry ? " said the fisher. 
 
 " I am always hungry," she said, with some 
 astonishment at so simple a question. "I have 
 been hungry every since I can remember. We 
 all were up there. Sometimes even the grass was 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 15 
 
 too dried up to eat. Father used to bring home 
 with him a sack of maize ; it was better so long 
 as that lasted." 
 
 " Are you hungry now ? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Come to my house with me. We will feed 
 you. Come. Have no fear. I am Adone Alba, 
 of the Terra Vergine, and my mother is a kind 
 woman. She will not grudge you a meal." 
 
 The child laughed all over her thin, brown face. 
 
 " That will be good," she said, and leapt up out 
 of the water. 
 
 " Poor soul ! Poor little soul ! " thought the 
 young man, with a profound sense of pity. 
 
 As the child sprang up out of the river, shaking 
 the water off her as a little terrier does, he saw 
 that she must have been in great want of food for 
 a long time ; her bones were almost through her 
 skin. He set his fishing pole more firmly in the 
 ground, and left the net sunk some half a yard 
 below the surface ; then he said to the little girl : 
 " Come, come and break your fast. It has lasted 
 long, I fear." 
 
 Nerina only understood that she was to be fed ; 
 that was enough for her. She trotted like a stray 
 cur, beckoned by a benevolent hand, behind him 
 as he went, first through some heather and broom, 
 
1 6 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 then over some grass, where huge olive trees 
 grew, and then through corn and vine lands, to an 
 old farmhouse, made of timber and stone ; large, 
 long, solid; built to resist robbers in days when 
 robbers came in armed gangs. There was a wild 
 garden in front of it, full of cabbage roses, 
 lavender, myrtle, stocks, and wallflowers. Over 
 the arched door a four-season rose-tree clambered. 
 
 The house, ancient and spacious, with its high- 
 pitched roof of ruddy tiles, impressed Nerina with 
 a sense of awe, almost of terror. She remained 
 hesitating on the garden path, where white and 
 red stocks were blossoming. 
 
 "Mother," said Adone, "here is a hungry 
 child. Give her, in your kindness, some broth 
 and bread." 
 
 Clelia Alba came out into the entrance, and 
 saw the little girl with some displeasure. She 
 was kind and charitable, but she did not love 
 beggars and vagabonds, and this half -naked 
 female tatterdemalion offended her sense of 
 decency and probity, and her pride of sex. She 
 was herself a stately and handsome woman. 
 
 " The child is famished," said Adone, seeing his 
 mother's displeasure. 
 
 " She shall eat then, but let her eat outside," 
 said Clelia Alba, and went back into the kitchen. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 17 
 
 Nerina waited by the threshold, timid and mute 
 and humble, like a lost dog; her eyes alone ex- 
 pressed overwhelming emotions : fear and hope 
 and one ungovernable appetite, hunger. 
 
 Clelia Alba came out in a few minutes with a 
 bowl of hot broth made of herbs, and a large 
 piece of maize-flour bread. 
 
 " Take them," she said to her son. 
 
 Adone took them from her, and gave them to 
 the child. 
 
 " Sit and eat here," he said, pointing to a 
 stone settle by the wall under the rose of four 
 seasons. 
 
 The hands of Nerina trembled with excitement, 
 her eyes looked on fire, her lips shook, her breath 
 came feverishly and fast. The smell of the soup 
 made her feel beside herself. She said nothing, 
 but seized the food and began to drink the good 
 herb-broth with thirsty eagerness though the 
 steam of it scorched her. 
 
 Adone, with an instinct of compassion and 
 delicacy, left her unwatched and went within. 
 
 "Where did you find that scarecrow?" asked 
 his mother. 
 
 "Down by the river. She has nobody and 
 nothing. She comes from the mountains." 
 
 " There are poor folks enough in Buscino 
 3 
 
1 8 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 without adding to them from without," said 
 Clelia Alba impatiently. " Mind she does not 
 rob the fowl-house before she slips away." 
 
 " She has honest eyes," said Adone. " I am sure 
 she will do us no harm." 
 
 When he thought that she had been given time 
 enough to finish her food he went out ; the child 
 was stretched at full length on the stone seat, and 
 was already sound asleep, lying on her back ; the 
 empty bowl was on the ground, of the bread there 
 was no longer a crumb ; she was sleeping peace- 
 fully, profoundly, her thin hands crossed on her 
 naked brown bosom, on which some rose leaves 
 had fallen from the rose on the wall above. 
 
 He looked at her in silence for a little while, 
 then returned to his mother. 
 
 " She is tired. She sleeps. Let her rest." 
 
 " It is unsafe." 
 
 " How unsafe, mother ? She is only a child." 
 
 " She may have men behind her." 
 
 "It is not likely." 
 
 Adone could not say (for he had no idea him- 
 self) why he felt sure that this miserable little 
 waif would not abuse hospitality : " She is a 
 child," he answered rather stupidly, for children 
 are often treacherous and wicked, and he knew 
 nothing of this one except what she had chosen 
 to tell of herself* 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA i 9 
 
 " She may have men behind her," repeated his 
 mother. 
 
 " Such men as you are thinking of, mother, do 
 not come to this valley nowadays. Ulisse Ferrero 
 was the last of them. Indeed, I think this poor 
 little creature is all alone in the world. Go and 
 look at her. You will see how forlorn and small 
 she is." 
 
 She went to the doorway and looked at the 
 sleeping beggar ; her eyes softened as she gazed, 
 the whole attitude and appearance of the child 
 were so miserable and so innocent, so helpless, 
 and yet so tranquil, that her maternal heart was 
 touched ; the waif slept on the stone bench beside 
 the door of strangers as though she were in some 
 safe and happy home. 
 
 Clelia Alba looked down on her a few moments, 
 then took the kerchief off her hair, and laid it 
 gently, without awakening the sleeper, over the 
 breast and the face of the child, on which flies 
 were settling and the sun was shining. 
 
 Then she picked up the empty earthenware 
 bowl, and went indoors again. 
 
 " I will go back to the river," said Adone. " I 
 have left the net there." 
 
 His mother nodded assent. 
 
 "You will not send this little foreigner away 
 
20 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 till I return?" he asked. Every one was a 
 foreigner who had not been born in the vale of 
 Edera. 
 
 " No ; not till you return." 
 
 He went away through the sunshine and 
 shadow of the olive-trees. He knew that his 
 mother never broke her word. But she thought 
 as she washed the bowl : "A little stray mongrel 
 bitch like that may bite badly some day. She 
 must go. She is nothing now ; but by and 
 by she may bite." 
 
 Clelia Alba knew human nature, though she 
 had never been out of sight of the river Edera. 
 She took her spinning-wheel and sat down by the 
 door. There was nothing urgent to do, and she 
 could from the threshold keep a watch on the 
 little vagabond, and would be aware if she awoke. 
 All around was quiet. She could see up and 
 down the valley, beyond the thin, silvery foliage 
 of the great olive-trees, and across it to where the 
 ruins of a great fortress towered in their tragic 
 helplessness. The sun shone upon her fields of 
 young wheat, her slopes of pasture. The cherry- 
 trees and the pear-trees were in bloom, her 
 trellised vines running from tree to tree. Eagged- 
 robin, yellow crowsfoot, purple orchis, filled the 
 grass, intermixed with the blue of borage and the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 21 
 
 white and gold of the oxeye. She did not note 
 these things. Those fancies were for her son. 
 Herself, she would have preferred that there 
 should be no flower in the grasses, for before the 
 cow was fed the flowers had to be picked out of 
 the cut grass, and had served no good end that 
 she could perceive, for she knew of no bees except 
 the wild ones, whose honey no one ever tasted, 
 hidden from sight in hollow trees as it was. 
 
 Nerina slept on in peace and without dreams. 
 Now and then another rose let fall some petals 
 on her, or a bee buzzed above her, but her repose 
 remained undisturbed. The good food filled her, 
 even in her sleep, with deep contentment, and 
 the brain, well nourished by the blood, was still. 
 
 Clelia Alba felt her heart soften despite herself 
 for this lonely creature ; though she was always 
 suspicious of her, for she had never known any 
 good thing come down from the high mountains, 
 but only theft and arson and murder, and men 
 banded together to solace their poverty with crime. 
 In her youth the great brigands of the Upper 
 Abruzzo had been names of terror in Kuscino, and 
 in the hamlets lying along the course of the Edera, 
 and many a time a letter written in blood had 
 been fastened with a dagger to the door of church 
 or cottage, intimating the will of the unseen chief 
 
2t THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 to the subjugated population. Of late years less 
 had been heard and seen of such men ; but they 
 or their like were still heard and felt sometimes, 
 up above in lonely forests, or down where the 
 moorland and macchia met, and the water of Edera 
 ran deep and lonely. In her girlhood, a father, 
 a son, and a grandson had been all killed on a 
 lonely part of the higher valley because they had 
 dared to occupy a farm and a water-mill after one 
 of these hillmen had laid down the law that no 
 one was to live on the land or to set the water- 
 wheel moving. 
 
 That had been a good way off, indeed, and for 
 many a year the Edera had not seen the masked 
 men, with their belts, crammed with arms and 
 gold, round their loins ; but still, one never knew, 
 she thought ; unbidden guests were oftener devils 
 than angels. 
 
 And it seemed to her that the child could not 
 really be asleep all this time in a strange place 
 and in the open air. At last she got up, went 
 again to the bench and drew her handkerchief 
 aside, and looked down on the sleeper; on the 
 thin, narrow chest, the small, bony hands, the 
 tiny virginal nipples like wood strawberries. 
 
 She saw that the slumber was real, the girl 
 very young and more than half-starved. "Let 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 23 
 
 her forget while she can," she thought, and 
 covered her face again. " It is still early in the 
 day." 
 
 The bees hummed on ; a low wind swept over 
 a full-hlown rose and shook its loose leaves to the 
 ground. The shadow from the ruined tower 
 began to touch the field which lay nearest the 
 river, a sign that it was two hours after noon. 
 
II 
 
 THE large square fresh-water fishing-net had 
 sunk under the surface, the canes which 
 framed it were out of sight ; only the great 
 central pole, which sustained the whole, and was 
 planted in the ground of the river-bank, remained 
 visible as it bent and swayed but did not yield or 
 break. Such nets as this had been washed by the 
 clear green waters of the pools and torrents of the 
 Edera ever since the days of Etruscan gods and 
 Latin augurs ; religions had changed, but the 
 river, and the ways of the men of the river, had 
 not altered. 
 
 Adone did not touch it, for it was well where it 
 was ; he seated himself on the bank ready to seize 
 and hold it if its pole showed any sign of yielding 
 and giving way and heeling over into the stream. 
 He sat thus amongst the bulrushes for many an 
 hour, on many a spring day and summer night. 
 Although fish were not numerous he never tired 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 25 
 
 of his vigil, lulled by the sound of the current as 
 it splashed among the stones and rippled through 
 the rushes; a deeper music coming from its 
 higher reaches, where it fell over a ledge of rock 
 and leapt like a live thing into the air. And, indeed, 
 what thing could be more living than this fresh, 
 pure, untroubled water, glad as a child, swift as a 
 swallow, singing for sport, as a happy boy sings, 
 as it ran down on its way from the hills ? 
 
 To the young man sitting now on its bank 
 amidst the bulrushes it was as living as himself, 
 his playmate, friend, and master, all in one. 
 First of all things which he could remember 
 were the brightness and the coolness of it as it 
 had laved his limbs in his childhood on mid- 
 summer noons, his mother's hands holding him 
 safely as he waded with rosy feet and uncertain 
 steps along its pebbly bottom ! How many morn- 
 ings, when he had grown to boyhood and to 
 manhood, had he escaped from the rays of the 
 vertical sun into its acacia-shadowed pools ; how 
 many moonlit, balmy nights had he bathed in its 
 still reaches, the liquid silver of its surface 
 breaking up like molten metal as he dived ! How 
 many hours of peace had he passed, as he was 
 spending this, waiting for the fish to float into his 
 great net, whils.t the air and the water were alike 
 
26 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 so still that he could hear the little voles stealing 
 in and out amongst the reeds, and the water- thrush 
 pushing the pebbles on its sands in search for 
 insects, though beast and bird were both unseen 
 by him ! How many a time upon the dawn of a 
 holy-day had he washed and swam in its waters 
 whilst the bells of the old church in the village 
 above had tolled in the softness of dusk ! 
 
 He thought of none of these memories dis- 
 tinctly, for he was young and contented, and 
 those who are satisfied with their lot live in their 
 present ; but they all drifted vaguely through his 
 mind as he sat by the side of the river, as the 
 memories of friends dear from infancy drift through 
 our waking dreams. 
 
 He was in every way a son of the Edera, for he 
 had been born almost in the water itself; his 
 mother had been washing linen with other women ' 
 at the ford when she had been taken with the 
 pains of labour two months before her time. Her 
 companions had had no time or thought to do 
 more than to stretch her on the wet sand, with 
 some hempen sheets, which had not yet been 
 thrown in the water, between her and the ground ; 
 and the cries of her in her travail had echoed over 
 the stream and had startled the kingfishers in the 
 osiers, and the wild ducks in the marshes, and 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 27 
 
 the tawny owls asleep in the belfry tower of the 
 village. But her pains had been brief though 
 sharp, and her son had first seen the light beside 
 the water ; a strong and healthy child, none the 
 worse for his too early advent, and the rough 
 river-women had dipped him in the shallows, 
 where their linen and their wooden beaters were, 
 and had wrapped him up in a soiled woollen 
 shirt, and had laid him down with his face on his 
 mother's young breast, opening his shut uncon- 
 scious mouth with their rough fingers, and crying 
 in his deaf ear, " Suck ! and grow to be a man ! " 
 Clelia Alba was now a woman of forty-one 
 years old, and he, her only son, was twenty-four ; 
 they had named him Adone ; the beautiful Greek 
 Adonais having passed into the number of the 
 saints of the Latin Church, by a transition so 
 frequent in hagiology that its strangeness is not 
 remembered save by a scholar here and there. 
 When he had been born she had been a young 
 creature of seventeen, with the wild grace of a 
 forest doe ; with that nobility of beauty, that purity 
 of outline, and that harmony of structure, which 
 still exist in those Italians in whom the pure 
 Italiote blood is undefiled by Jew or Gentile. 
 Now her abundant hair was white, and her fea- 
 tures were bronzed and lined by open-air work, and 
 
28 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 her hands of beautiful shape were hard as horn 
 through working in the fields. She looked an 
 old woman, and was thought so by others, and 
 thought herself so : for youth is soon over in 
 these parts, and there is no half-way house 
 between youth and age for the peasant. 
 
 Clelia Alba, moreover, had lost her youth earlier 
 even than others : lost it for ever when her 
 husband at five-and-twenty years of age had been 
 killed by falling from an olive-tree of which the 
 branch sustaining him had cracked and broken 
 under his weight. His neck had been broken in 
 the fall. She had been dancing and shouting with 
 her two-year-old child on the grassland not far off, 
 romping and playing ball with some dropped 
 chestnuts ; and when their play was over she had 
 lifted her boy on to her shoulder and run with 
 him to find his father. Under one of the great, 
 gnarled, wide-spreading olives she had seen him, 
 lying asleep as she thought. 
 
 " Oh, lazy one, awake ! The sun is only two 
 hours old ! " she had cried merrily, and the child 
 on her shoulder had cooed and shouted in imita- 
 tion, " Wake wake wake ! " and she, laughing, 
 had cast a chestnut she had carried in her hand 
 upon the motionless figure. Then, as the* pros- 
 trate form did not stir, a sudden terror had seized 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 29 
 
 her, and she had set the baby down upon the grass 
 and run to the olive-tree. There she had seen that 
 this was death, ior when she had raised him his 
 head had dropped, and seemed to hang like a 
 poppy broken in a blast of wind, and his eyes 
 had no sight, and his mouth had no breath. 
 
 From that dread hour Clelia Alba had never 
 laughed again. Her hair grew white, and her 
 youth went away from her for ever. 
 
 She lived for the sake of her son, but she and 
 joy had parted company for ever. 
 
 His death had made her sole ruler of the 
 Terra Vergine ; she had both the knowledge and 
 the strength necessary for culture of the land, 
 and she taught her boy to value and respect the 
 soil. 
 
 " As you treat the ground ill or well, so will 
 your ground treat you," she said to him. 
 
 She always wore the costume of the province, 
 which was similar to that of the Abruzzo villages, 
 and suited her cast of features and her strong and 
 haughty carriage. On feast-days she wore three 
 strings of fine pearls round her throat, and bracelets 
 of massive gold and of fine workmanship, so many 
 in number that her arms were stiff with them , 
 they had been her mother's and grandmother's 
 and great-grandmother's, and had been in her 
 
30 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 dower. To sell or pawn them under stress of 
 need, had such occurred, would never have seemed 
 to any of her race to be possible, It would have 
 seemed as sacrilegious as to take the chalice off 
 the church altar, and melt its silver and jewels in 
 the fire. When she should go to her grave these 
 ornaments would pass to Adone as heirlooms; 
 none of her family were living. 
 
 " Never talk of death, mother," he said, when- 
 ever she spoke of these things. " Death is always 
 listening; and if he hear his name he taps the 
 talker on the shoulder, just to show that he is 
 there arid must be reckoned with." 
 
 "Not so, my son! " replied Clelia Alba, with 
 a sigh. " He has every soul of us written down 
 in his books from the time we are born; we 
 all have our hour to go and none of us can 
 alter it." 
 
 " I do not believe that," said Adone. " We kill 
 ourselves oftentimes ; or we hasten our end, as 
 drunkards do." 
 
 "Did your father hasten his end?" said his 
 mother. " Did not some one break that olive 
 branch ? It was not the tree itself, though the 
 Kuscino folks would have it cut down because 
 they called it a felon." 
 
 " Was it not the devil ? " said Adone. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 31 
 
 He believed in the devil, of course, as he had 
 been taught to do ; and had he not as a child met 
 the infernal effigy everywhere in marble, in stone, 
 in wood, in colour, in the church and outside it, 
 on water-spout and lamp-iron, and even on the 
 leaves of his primer ? But it seemed to him that 
 the devil had " troppo braccia " given him, was 
 allowed too long a tether, too free a hand; if 
 indeed he it were that made everything go wrong, 
 and Adone did not see who else it could be. Here, 
 in the vale of Edera, all the world believed in 
 Satan as in holy water, or in daily bread. 
 
 Clelia Alba crossed herself hastily, for she was 
 a pious woman. 
 
 "We are talking blasphemy, my son," she said 
 gravely. " Of course there is the good God who 
 orders the number of our days for each of us, and 
 is over us all." 
 
 Adone was silent. To him it seemed doubtful. 
 Did the good God kill the pretty little children as 
 the butcher in a city killed his lambs ? But he 
 never contradicted or vexed his mother ; he loved 
 her with a great and tender affection. He was less 
 ignorant than she was, and saw many things she 
 could not see ; he was, as it were, on a hilltop 
 and she down in a valley, but he had a profound 
 respect for her ; he obeyed her implicitly, as if 
 
32 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 he were still a child, and he thought the world 
 held no woman equal to her. 
 
 When he went back to his house that evening, 
 with his great net on his shoulder and swinging in 
 one hand some fresh-water fish, he looked at the 
 stone bench, which was empty of all except some 
 fallen rose-leaves, and then anxiously, questioningly, 
 in the face of his mother. 
 
 She answered the regard. 
 
 " The girl is gone to Gianna's custody," she said 
 rather harshly. " Gianna will give her her supper, 
 and will let her sleep in the loft. With the morning 
 we will see what we can do for her, and how she 
 can be sped upon her way." 
 
 Adone kissed her hands. 
 
 "You are always good," he said simply. 
 
 " I am weak," answered his mother, "I am 
 weak, Adone ; when you wish anything I consent 
 to it against my judgment." 
 
 But she was not weak ; or at least only 
 weak in the way in which all generous natures 
 are so. 
 
 On the morrow Nerina was not sped on her 
 way. The old woman, Gianna, thought well of 
 her. 
 
 " She is as clean as a stone in the water," she 
 said; "she has foul-smelling rags, but her flesh 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 33 
 
 is clean. She woke at dawn, and asked for some- 
 thing to do. She knows nought, but she is willing 
 and teachable. We can make her of use. She 
 has nowhere to go. She is a stray little puppy. 
 Her people were miserable, but they seem to have 
 been pious folks. She has a cross pricked on 
 her shoulder. She says her mother did it when 
 she was a babe to scare the devil off her. I do 
 not know what to say ; she is a poor, forlorn little 
 wretch; if you like to keep her, I for my part 
 will see to her. I am old : it is well to do a good 
 work before one dies." 
 
 Gianna was an old woman, half house-servant, 
 half farm-servant, wholly friend ; she had lived at 
 the Terra Vergine all her life ; big, gaunt, and 
 very strong, she could do the work of a man, 
 although she was over seventy years of age; 
 burnt black by the sun, and with a pile of grey 
 hair like the hank of flax on her distaff, she was 
 feared by the whole district for her penetrating 
 glance and her untiring energy. When Gianna 
 was satisfied the stars had changed their courses, 
 said the people, so rare was the event ; therefore, 
 that this little wanderer contented her was at 
 once a miracle and a voucher indisputable. 
 
 So the child remained there ; but her presence 
 troubled Adone's mother, though Nerina was 
 
 4 
 
34 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 humble as a homeless dog, was noiseless and 
 seldom seen, was obedient, agile, and became 
 useful in many manners, and learned with equal 
 eagerness the farm work taught her by Gianna, 
 and the doctrine taught her by Don Silverio, for 
 she was intelligent and willing in every way. 
 Only Clelia Alba thought, " Perhaps Gianna's 
 good heart misleads her. Gianna is rough ; but 
 she has a heart as tender at bottom as a ripe 
 melon's flesh." 
 
 Anyhow, she took her old servant's word and 
 allowed the child to remain. She could not bring 
 herself to turn adrift a female thing to stray about 
 homeless and hungry, and end in some bottomless 
 pit. The child might be the devil's spawn. No 
 one could be sure. But she had eyes which 
 looked up straight and true, and were as clear 
 as the river water where it flowed over pebbles 
 in the shade. When the devil is in a soul he 
 always grins behind the eyes ; he cannot help it 
 and so you know him ; thus, at least, they thought 
 at Buscino and in all the vale of Edera ; and the 
 devil did not lurk in the eyes of Nerina. 
 
 "Have I done right, reverend sir?" asked 
 Clelia Alba of the Vicar of Euscino. 
 
 " Oh, yes yes charity is always right," he 
 answered, unwilling to discourage her in her 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 35 
 
 benevolence; but in his own mind he thought, 
 "The child is a child, but she will grow; she is 
 brown, and starved, and ugly now, but she will 
 grow ; she is a female thing and she will grow r , 
 and I think she will be handsome later on ; it 
 would have been more prudent to have put some 
 money in her hand and some linen in her wallet, 
 and have let her pass on her way down the river. 
 The saints forbid that I should put aloes into the 
 honey of their hearts ; but this child will grow." 
 
 Clelia Alba perceived that he had his doubts as 
 she had hers. But they said nothing of them to 
 each other. The issue would lie with Time, whom 
 men always depict as a mower, but who is also a 
 sower too. However, for good or ill, she was there ; 
 and he knew that, having once harboured her, 
 they would never drive her adrift. Clelia Alba 
 was in every sense a good woman ; a little hard 
 at times, narrow of sympathy, too much shut up 
 in her maternal passion ; but in the main merci- 
 ful and correct in judgment. 
 
 " If the child were not good the river would not 
 have given her to us," said Adone to her ; and 
 believed it. 
 
 " Good-day, my son," said the voice of the 
 Vicar, Don Silverio Frascara, behind him where 
 Adone worked in the fields. " Where did you 
 
36 THE WATERS OF 
 
 find that scarecrow whom your mother has shown 
 me just now? " 
 
 " She was in the river, most reverend, dancing 
 along in it, as merry as a princess." 
 
 " But she is a skeleton ! " 
 
 "Almost." 
 
 "And you know nothing of her? 
 
 " Nothing, sir." 
 
 " You were more charitable than wise." 
 
 "One cannot let a little female thing starve 
 whilst one has bread in the hutch. My mother 
 is a virtuous woman. She will teach the child 
 virtue." 
 
 " Let us hope so," said Don Silverio. " But 
 all, my son, do not take kindly to that lesson." 
 
 " What will be, will be. The river brought her." 
 
 He credited the river with a more than human 
 sagacity. He held it in awe and in reverence as 
 
 deity, as the Greeks of old held their streams. 
 It would have drowned the child, he thought, if 
 she had been an evil creature or of evil augury. 
 But he did not say so, for he did not care to 
 provoke Don Silverio's fine fleeting ironical 
 smile. 
 
 A goatherd who passed some few days later with 
 his flock on his way to the mountains recognised 
 the little girl. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 37 
 
 " You are Black Fausto's daughter," he said to 
 her. "Is he dead? Eh, well, we must all die. 
 May his soul rest." 
 
 To Gianna, who questioned him, he said, "Yes, 
 he was a good soul. Often have I seen him down 
 in the Eoman plains. He worked himself to 
 death. These gangs of labourers get poor pay. 
 I saw him also in the hills where this girl comes 
 from, ever so high up, you seem to touch the sky. 
 I summered there two years ago ; he had his 
 womankind in a cabin, and he took all that he 
 got home to them. Aye, he was a good soul. 
 We can come away out of the heats, but they 
 have to stay down in them ; for the reaping and the 
 sowing are their chief gain, and they get the fever 
 into their blood, and the worms into their bellies, 
 and it kills them mostly before they are forty. 
 You see, at Ansalda, where he came from, it was 
 snow eight months out of the twelve, so the 
 heats and the mists killed him : for the air you 
 are born in you want, and if you do not get it in 
 time you sicken." 
 
 " Like enough," said Gianna, who herself had 
 never been out of sight of the river Edera ever 
 since she had been a babe in swaddling clothes. 
 " Tell me, gossip, was the child born in wedlock ? " 
 
 (< Eh, eh ! " said the goatherd grinning. " That 
 
38 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 I would not take on me to say. But like enough, 
 like enough ; they are always ready to go before 
 the priest in those high hills." 
 
 The little girl glided into her place humbly and 
 naturally, with no servility but with untiring 
 willingness and thankfulness. It seemed to her 
 an amazing favour of heaven to live with these 
 good people ; to have a roof over her head and 
 food regularly every day. Up there in her home, 
 amongst the crags of Ansalda, she had never 
 known what it was not to have a daily hunger 
 gnawing always in her entrails, and making her 
 writhe at night on her bed of dry leaves. In her 
 thirteen years of life she had never once had 
 enough no one ever had. A full stomach had 
 been a thing unknown. 
 
 She began to grow, she began to put a little 
 flesh on her bones ; they had cut her hair short, 
 for it had been so rough, and it grew again 
 burnished and bright like copper ; colour came 
 into her cheeks and her lips ; she seemed to spring 
 upward, visibly, like a young cane. She worked 
 hard, but she worked willingly, and she was well 
 nourished on sound food, though it had little 
 variety and was entirely vegetable ; and every 
 day she went down and bathed in the river at 
 the same place where she had sat nude under 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 39 
 
 the dock leaves whilst her skirt dried in the 
 sun. 
 
 To her the Terra Vergine was Paradise itself ; 
 to be fed, to be clothed, to have a mattress to 
 sleep on, to work amongst the flowers and the 
 grass and the animals it was all so beautiful, 
 she thought sometimes that she must be in 
 heaven. 
 
 She spoke little. Since she had been under this 
 roof she had grown ashamed of the squalor and 
 starvation and wretchedness of her past existence. 
 She did not like to think of it even ; it had been 
 no fault of hers, but she felt ashamed that she ever 
 should have been that little, filthy, unkempt, naked 
 thing, grovelling on the clay floor, and fighting 
 for mouldy crusts with the other children on the 
 rock of Ansalda. 
 
 " If I had only known when father was alive," 
 she thought ; but even if she had known all she 
 knew now, what could she have done? There 
 had been nothing to use, nothing to eat, nothing 
 to wear, and the rain and the snow and the wind 
 had come in on them where they had lain huddled 
 together on their bed of rotten leaves. 
 
 Now and then she said something of that rude 
 childhood of hers to Adone ; she was afraid of the 
 women, but not of him ; she trotted after him as 
 
40 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the little white curly dog Signorino trotted after 
 Don Silverio. 
 
 " Do not think of those dark days, little one," 
 he said to her. "They are gone by. Think of 
 your parents and pray for their souls ; but let the 
 rest go ; you have all your life to live." 
 
 " My mother was young when she died," said 
 the child. " If she had had food she would not 
 have died. She said so. She kept on gnawing a 
 bit of rag which was soaked in water ; you cheat 
 hunger that way, you know, but it does not fill 
 you." 
 
 " Poor soul ! Poor soul ! " said Adone, and he 
 thought of the great markets he had seen in the 
 north, the droves of oxen, the piles of fruits, the 
 long lines of wine carts, the heaps of slaughtered 
 game, the countless shops with their electric 
 light, the trains running one after another all the 
 nights and every night to feed the rich; and he 
 thought, as he had thought when a boy, that the 
 devil had troppo braccio, if any devil indeed there 
 were beside man himself. 
 
 Should there be anywhere on the face of the 
 earth, young women, good women, mothers of 
 babes who died of sheer hunger like this mother 
 of Nerina's up yonder in the snows of the 
 Abruzzo ? He thought not ; his heart revolted 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 41 
 
 at the vision of her, a living skeleton en her heap 
 of leaves. 
 
 " Father brought all he had," continued the 
 child, "but he could not come back until after 
 harvest, and when he came back she had been in 
 the ground two months and more. They put 
 him in the same ditch when his turn came ; but 
 she was no longer there, for they take up the 
 bones every three years and burn them. They 
 say they must, else the ditch would get too full." 
 
 Adone shuddered. He knew that tens of 
 thousands died so, and had died so ever since 
 the days of Phenicians and Gauls and Goths. 
 But it revolted him. The few gorged, the many 
 famished strange disproportion ! unkind and 
 unfair balance ! 
 
 But what remedy was there ? 
 
 Adone had read some socialistic and com- 
 munistic literature ; but it had not satisfied him ; 
 it had seemed to him vain, verbose, alluring, but 
 unreal, no better adapted to cure any real hunger 
 than the soaked rag of Nerina's mother. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE Valdedera is situated on the south of the 
 Marches, on the confines of what is now the 
 territorial division of the Abruzzo-Molese, and so 
 lies between the Apennines and the Adriatic, 
 fanned by cool winds in summer from the eternal 
 snow of the mountain peaks, and invigorated in 
 all seasons by breezes from the Adrian Sea. 
 
 Kuscino, placed midway in the valley, is only a 
 village to which no traveller has for many years 
 come, and of which no geographer ever speaks ; 
 it is marked on the maps of military topographers, 
 and is, of course, inscribed on the fiscal rolls, but 
 is now no more than a village ; though once, 
 when the world was young, it was the Etruscan 
 Rusciae, and then the Latin Euscinonis; and then, 
 when the Papacy was mighty, it was the militant 
 principality of the fortified town of Ruscino. But 
 it was, when the parish of Don Silverio, an almost 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 43 
 
 uninhabited village; a pale, diminutive, shrunken 
 relic of its heroic self; and of it scarcely any 
 man knows anything except the few men who 
 make their dwelling there ; sons of the soil, who 
 spring from its marble dust and return to it. 
 
 It had shrunk to a mere hamlet as far as its 
 population was counted; it shrank more and 
 more with every census. There was but a hand- 
 ful of poor people who, when gathered together 
 in the great church, looked no more than a few 
 flies on a slab of marble. 
 
 The oldest men and women of the place could 
 recall the time when it had been still of some 
 importance as a posting place on the mountain 
 route between the markets of the coast and the 
 western towns, when its highway had been kept 
 clean and clear through the woods for public and 
 private conveyance, and when the clatter of 
 horses' hoofs and merry notes of horns had 
 roused the echoes of its stones. In that first 
 half of the century, too, they had lived fairly 
 well, and wine and fowls had cost next to 
 nothing, and home-made loaves had been always 
 large enough to give a beggar or a stray dog a 
 slice. But these times had long been over ; every 
 one was hungry now, and every one a beggar, 
 by way of change, and to make things equal, as 
 
44 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the people said, with dreary mirth and helpless 
 acquiescence in their lot. Like most riverain 
 people, they lived chiefly by the river, cutting 
 and selling its canes, its sallows, its osiers, its 
 sedges, catching its fish, digging its sand; but 
 there were few buyers in this depopulated 
 district. 
 
 Don Silverio Frascara, its vicar, had been sent 
 thither as a chastisement for his too sceptical 
 and inquiring mind, his too undisciplined temper. 
 Nearly twenty years in this solitude had chastened 
 both ; the fire had died out of his soul and the 
 light out of his eyes. His days were as mono- 
 tonous as those of the blinded ass set to turn the 
 wine-press. All the steel of his spirit rusted, all 
 the brilliancy of his brain clouded ; his life was 
 like a fine rapier which is left in a corner of a 
 dusty attic and forgotten. 
 
 In certain rare states of the atmosphere the 
 gold cross on St. .Peter's is visible from some 
 of the peaks of the Abruzzese Apennines. It 
 looks like a speck of light far, far away in the 
 silver-green of the western horizon. When one 
 day he climbed to such an altitude and saw it 
 thus, his heart contracted with a sickly pain, for 
 in Rome he had dreamed many dreams; and 
 in Borne, until his exile to the Vale of Edera, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 45 
 
 he had been a preacher of noted eloquence, of 
 brilliant fascination, and of daring thought. 
 
 There had been long cypress alleys which at 
 sunset had glowed with rose and gold, where 
 he had in his few leisure hours builded up 
 such visions for the future as illumined the 
 unknown years to the eyes of an Ignatius, a 
 Hildebrand, a Lacordaire, a Bossuet. On the 
 place where those grand avenues had stretched 
 their green length in the western light, and the 
 seminarist had paced over the sward, there were 
 now long, dreary lines of brick and stone, the 
 beaten dust of roadways, the clang and smoke of 
 engines : as the gardens had passed away so had 
 passed his ambitions and visions; as the cypresses 
 had been ground to powder in the steam mill, so 
 was he crushed and effaced under an inexorable 
 fate. The Church, intolerant of individuality, 
 like all despotisms, had broken his spirit; like 
 all despotisms the tyranny had been blind. But 
 he had been rebellious to doctrine : she had bound 
 him to her stake. 
 
 He would have been a great prelate, perhaps 
 even a great Pope ; but he would have been also 
 a great reformer, so she stamped him down 
 into nothingness under her iron heel. And for 
 almost a score of years she had kept him in 
 
46 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Ruscino, where he buried and baptized the 
 old and new creatures who squirmed in the 
 dust, where any ordinary country priest able to 
 gabble through the ritual could have done as well 
 as he. Some few of the more liberal and learned 
 dignitaries of the Church did indeed think that it 
 was waste of great powers, but he had the Sacred 
 College against him, and no one ventured to 
 speak in his favour at the Vatican. He had 
 no pious women of rank to plead for him, no 
 millionaires and magnates to solicit his prefer- 
 ment. He was with time forgotten as utterly 
 as a folio is forgotten on a library shelf until 
 mildew eats its ink away and spiders nest 
 between its leaves. He had the thirty pounds a 
 year which the State pays to such parish priests ; 
 and he had nothing else. 
 
 He was a tall and naturally stately man, but 
 his form was bent by that want of good food 
 which is the chronic malady of many parts of 
 Italy. There was little to eat in Ruscino, and 
 had there been more there would have been no 
 one who knew how to prepare it. Bread, beans, 
 a little oil, a little lard, herbs which grew wild, 
 goat's milk, cheese, and at times a few small 
 river fish ; these were all his sustenance : his 
 feasts and his fasts were much alike, and the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 47 
 
 little wine he had he gave away to the sick and 
 the aged. For this reason his high stature was 
 bent and his complexion was of the clear, yellow 
 pallor of old marbles; his profile was like the 
 Caesarian outline on a medallion, and his eyes 
 were deep wells of impenetrable thought; his 
 finely cut lips rarely smiled, they had always 
 upon them an expression of bitterness, as though 
 the apple of life in its eating had been harsh and 
 hard as a crab. 
 
 .His presbytery was close to his church, a 
 dreary place with only a few necessaries and 
 many books within it, and his only servant was 
 an old man, lame and stupid, who served also as 
 sacristan. 
 
 It was a cure of souls which covered many 
 miles but counted few persons. Outside the old 
 walls of Euscino nearly all the land of the vale 
 of Edera was untilled, and within them a few 
 poverty-stricken people dragged out their days 
 uncared for by any one, only remembered by the 
 collectors of fiscal dues. " They never forget," 
 said the people. " As soon as one is born, always 
 and in every season, until one's bones rattle down 
 into the ditch of the dead, they remember 
 always." 
 
 The grasp of an invisible power took the crust 
 
48 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 off their bread, the toll off their oil, off their bed 
 of sacking, off their plate of fish, and took their 
 children when they grew to manhood and sent 
 them into strange lands and over strange seas; 
 they felt the grip of that hard hand as their fore- 
 fathers had felt it under the Caesars, under the 
 Popes, under the feudal lords, under the foreign 
 kings ; they felt it so now under the Casa Sabauda ; 
 the same, always the same ; for the manners and 
 titles of the State may change, but its appetite 
 never lessens, and its greed never spares. For 
 twice a thousand years their blood had flowed 
 and their earnings had been wrung out of them 
 in the name of the State, and nothing was 
 changed in that respect ; the few lads they begot 
 amongst them went to Africa, now as under 
 Pompeius or Scipio ; and their corn sack was 
 taken away from them under Depretis or Crispi, 
 as under the Borgia or the Malatesta ; and their 
 grape skins soaked in water were taxed as wine, 
 their salt for their soup-pot was seized as contra- 
 band, unless it bore the government stamp, and, if 
 they dared say a word of resistance, there were 
 the manacles and the prison under Vittorio and 
 Umberto as under Bourbon or Bonaparte ; for 
 there are some things which are immutable as 
 fate. At long intervals, during the passing of 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 49 
 
 ages, the poor stir, like trodden worms, under 
 this inexorable monotony of their treatment by 
 their rulers ; and then baleful fires redden the 
 sky, and blood runs in the conduits, and the rich 
 man trembles; but the cannon are brought up 
 at full gallop and it is soon over ; there is nothing 
 ever really altered^ the iron wheels only press 
 the harder on the unhappy worm, and there is 
 nothing changed. 
 
 Here at Kuscino there were tombs of nenfro 
 which had overhung the river for thirty centuries ; 
 but those tombs have never seen any other thing 
 than this, nor ever will, until the light and the 
 warmth of the sun shall be withdrawn for ever, 
 and the earth shall remain alone with her buried 
 multitudes. 
 
 There was only Don Silverio who thought of 
 such a thing as this, a scholar all alone amongst 
 barbarians ; for his heart ached for his barbarians, 
 though they bore him no love in return for his 
 pity. They would have liked better a gossiping, 
 rotund, familiar, ignorant, peasant priest, one of 
 themselves, chirping formula comfortably over 
 skeleton corpses. 
 
 In default of other interests he interested 
 himself in this ancient place, passing from neglect 
 into oblivion, as his own life was doing. There 
 
 5 
 
50 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 were Etruscan sepulchres and Pelasgic caves 
 which had been centuries earlier rifled of their 
 objects of value, but still otherwise remained 
 untouched under the acacia woods by the 
 river. There were columns and terraces and 
 foundations of marble which had been there 
 when the Latin city of Buscinonis had 
 flourished, from the time of Augustus until its 
 destruction by Theodoric. And nearest of all 
 these to him were the Longobardo church and 
 the ancient houses and the dismantled fortress 
 and the ruined walls of what had been the fief 
 of the Toralba, the mediaeval fortified town of 
 Ruscino. It still kept this, its latest, name, but 
 it kept little else. Thrice a thousand centuries 
 had rolled over it, eating it away as the sea eats 
 away a cliff. War and fire and time had had 
 their will with it for so long that dropped acorns 
 and pine-pips had been allowed leisure to sink 
 between the stones, and sprout and bud and 
 rise and spread, and were now hoary and giant 
 trees, of which the roots were sunk deep into its 
 ruins, its graves, its walls. 
 
 It had been Etruscan, it had been Latin, it had 
 been Longobardo, it had been Borgian and Papal ; 
 through all these changes a fortified city, then a 
 castellated town, then a walled village; and a 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 51 
 
 village it now remained. It will never be more ; 
 before many generations pass it will probably 
 have become still less; a mere tumulus, a 
 mere honeycomb of buried tombs. It was now 
 perishing, surely though slowly, but in peace, 
 with the grass growing on its temple stairs and 
 the woodbine winding round its broken columns. 
 
 The trained and stored intellect of Don Silverio 
 could set each period of its story apart, and read 
 all the vestiges remaining of each. Euscino was 
 now to all others a mere poverty-stricken place, 
 brown and gaunt and sorrowful, scorching in the 
 sun, with only the river beneath it to keep it clean 
 and alive. But to him it was as a palimpsest of 
 surpassing value and interest, which, sorely difficult 
 to decipher, held its treasures close from the pro- 
 fane and the ignorant, but tempted and rewarded 
 the scholar, like the lettering on a Pompeian 
 nuptial ring, the cyphers on a funeral urn of 
 Herculaneum. " After all, my lot might be worse 
 than it is," he thought with philosophy. " They 
 might have sent me to a modern manufacturing 
 town in one of the Lombard provinces, or exiled 
 me to some native settlement in Eritrea. 
 
 Here, at least, he had history and nature, and 
 he enjoyed thousands of hours undisturbed in 
 which to read or write, or muse and ponder on 
 
52 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 this chronicle of brick and stone, this buried mass 
 of dead men's labours and of dead men's dust. 
 
 Doubtless, his manuscripts would lie unknown, 
 unread; no man would care for them; but the 
 true scholar cares neither for public nor posterity ; 
 he lives for the work he loves ; and if he knows 
 that he will have few readers in the future may- 
 be none how many read Grotius, or Boethius, 
 or Chrysostom, or Jerome? 
 
 Here, like a colony of ants, the generations had 
 crowded one on another, now swept away by the 
 stamp of a conqueror's heel and now succeeded 
 by another toiling swarm, building anew each 
 time out of ruin, undaunted by the certainty of 
 destruction, taught nothing by the fate of their 
 precursors. From the profound sense of despair 
 which the contemplation of the uselessness of 
 human effort, and the waste of human life, pro- 
 duces on the scholar's mind, it was a relief to him 
 to .watch the gladness of its river, the buoyancy 
 of its currents, the foam of white blossom on its 
 acacia and syringa thickets, the gold sceptres and 
 green lances of its iris-pseudacorus, the sweep of 
 the winds through its bulrushes and canebreaks, 
 the glory of colour in the blue stars of its veronica, 
 the bright rosy spikes of its epilobium. The 
 river seemed always happy, even when the great 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA $3 
 
 rainfall of autumn churned it into froth and the 
 lightnings illumined its ink-black pools. 
 
 It was on the river that he had first made 
 friends with Adone, then a child of six, playing 
 and splashing in the stream, on a midsummer 
 noon. Don Silverio also was bathing. Adone, a 
 little nude figure, as white as alabaster in the hot 
 light, for he was very fair of skin, sprang suddenly 
 out of the water on to the turf above where his 
 breeches and shirt had been left ; he was in haste, 
 for he had heard his mother calling to him from 
 their fields ; an adder started out of a coil of bind- 
 weed and wound itself round his ankle as he 
 stooped for his clothes. 
 
 The priest, standing waist-deep in the river a few 
 yards away, saw it before the child did, and cried 
 out to him : " Stand still till I come ! Be not 
 afraid ! " Adone understood, and, although 
 trembling with terror and loathing as he realised 
 his danger, and felt the slimy clasp of the snake, 
 remained motionless as he was bidden to do. In 
 a second of time the priest had leaped through 
 the water to his side, seized tlie adder, and 
 killed it. 
 
 " Good boy," he said to the child. " If you had 
 moved your foot the creature would have bitten 
 you." 
 
54 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Adone's eyes filled with tears. 
 
 " Thank you, sir ; thank you for mother," he 
 said very gently, for he was a shy child, though 
 courageous. 
 
 The priest stroked his curls. 
 
 " There is death in the grass very often. We 
 should not fear death, but neither should we run 
 risk of it uselessly, especially when we have a 
 mother whom it would grieve. Come and bathe 
 at this spot, at this hour, to-morrow and every 
 day, if you like. I will be here and look after 
 you, you are little to be alone." 
 
 They were often together from that day on- 
 wards. 
 
 The brutishness and greed of his flock oppressed 
 him. He was sent here to have care of their 
 souls, but where were their souls ? They would 
 all have sold them to the foul fiend for a mess of 
 artichokes fried in oil. In such a solitude as this 
 he had been glad to be able to teach and move 
 the young malleable mind of Adone Alba ; the only 
 one of them who seemed to have any mind at all. 
 Adone also had a voice as sweet as a nightingale 
 in the syringa bushes in May ; and it pierced the 
 gloom of the old naked gaunt church as a nightin- 
 gale's thrills through the dark hour before 
 dawn. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 55 
 
 There was no other music in that choir except 
 the children's or youths' voices ; there was nothing 
 to make music with except those flexible pipes of 
 the boyish throats ; and Don Silverio loved and 
 understood choral music ; he had studied it in 
 Eome. Adone never refused to sing for him, and 
 when the voice of adolescence had replaced that 
 of childhood, he would still stand no less docilely 
 by the old marble lectern, and wake the melodies 
 of early masters from the yellow pages. 
 
 The church was as damp as a vault of the 
 dead ; cold even when the dog-star reigned in the 
 heavens. The brasses and bronzes were rusted 
 with moisture, and the marbles were black with 
 the spores of mould; rain dripped through the 
 joints of the roof, and innumerable sparrows made 
 their nests there ; the mosaics of the floor were 
 green from these droppings, and from those of the 
 rain ; the sun never entered through any of the 
 windows, which were yellow with age and dust ; 
 but here, with a lantern for their only light, they 
 solaced each other with the song of the great 
 choral masters. Only Adone, although he never 
 said or showed it, was glad when the huge key 
 groaned in the lock of the outer door, and he ran 
 out into the evening starlight, down the steep 
 streets, across the bridge, and felt the fresh river 
 
56 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 air blowing on him, and heard the swirling of the 
 water amongst the frost-stiffened canes, and saw 
 far off in the darkened fields the glimmer of a 
 light the light of home. 
 
 That old home was the dearest thing on earth 
 to the young man. He had never been away 
 from it but once, when the conscription called 
 him. In that time, which had been to him like 
 a nightmare, the time of his brief exile to the 
 army, brief because he was the only son of a 
 widow, he had been sent to a northern city, one 
 of commerce and noise and crowded, breathless 
 life ; he had been cooped up in it like a panther 
 in a den, like a hawk in a cage. What he saw of 
 the vices and appetites of men, the pressure of 
 greed and of gain, the harsh and stupid tyranny 
 of the few, the slavish and ignoble submission of 
 the many, the brutish bullying, the crouching 
 obedience, the deadly routine, the lewd licence 
 of reaction all filled him with disdain and with 
 disgust. When he returned to his valley he 
 bathed in the waters of Edera before he crossed 
 his mother's threshold. 
 
 " Make me clean as I was when I left you ! " 
 he cried, and took the water in the hollow of his 
 hands and kissed it. 
 
 But no water flows on the earth, from land to 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 57 
 
 sea, which can wholly cleanse the soul as it 
 cleanses the body. 
 
 That brief time under arms he cursed as 
 thousands of youths have cursed it. Its hated 
 stigma and pollution never wholly passed away. 
 It left a bitterness on his lips, a soil upon his 
 memories. But how sweet to him beyond ex- 
 pression, on his return, were the sound of the 
 rushing river in the silence of the night, the pure 
 odours of the blossoming beanfields, the clear dark 
 sky with its radiant stars, the sense of home, the 
 peace of his own fields ! 
 
 " Mother, whether life for me shall be long or 
 short, here its every hour shall be spent ! " he 
 said, as he stood on his own ground and looked 
 through the olive-trees to the river, running 
 swiftly and strong beneath the moon. 
 
 " Those are good words, my son," said Clelia 
 Alba, and her hands rested on his bowed head. 
 
 He adored both the soil and the water of this 
 place of his birth ; no toil upon either seemed to 
 him hard or mean. All which seemed to him to 
 matter much in the life of a man was to be free, 
 and he was so. In that little kingdom of fertile 
 soil and running stream no man could bid him 
 come and go, no law ruled his uprising and his 
 down lying; he had enough for his own wants 
 
58 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and the wants of those about him, enough for the 
 needs of the body, and the mind here had not 
 many needs ; at the Terra Vergine he was his own 
 master, except so far as he cheerfully deferred to 
 his mother ; and all which he put into the earth 
 he could -take out of it for his own usage, though 
 indeed the fiscal authorities claimed well nigh one- 
 half, rating his land at far more than its worth. 
 No doubt scientific agriculture might have made 
 it yield more than he did; but he was content 
 to follow the ways of old ; he farmed as men did 
 when the Sun-god was the farm slave of Admetus. 
 The hellebore and the violets grew at will in his 
 furrows ; the clematis and the ivy climbed his fig- 
 trees ; the fritillaria and the daphne grew in his 
 pastures, and he never disturbed them, or scared 
 the starling and the magpie which fluttered in the 
 wake of his wooden plough. The land was good 
 land, and gave him whatever he wanted; he 
 grudged nothing off it to bird, or beast, or leaf, 
 or flower, or to the hungry wayfarer who chanced 
 to pass by his doors. In remote places the old 
 liberal, frank, open-handed hospitality of an earlier 
 time is still in Italy a practice as well as a tra- 
 dition. 
 
 The house was their own, and the earth gave 
 them their bread, their wine, their vegetables, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 59 
 
 their oil, hemp and flax for their linen, and herbs 
 for their soup ; of the olive-oil they had more 
 than enough for use, and the surplus was sold 
 once a year in the nearest town, San Beda, and 
 served to meet the fiscal demands. They had 
 rarely any ready money, but no peasant in Italy 
 ever expects, unless by some luck at lotto, to 
 have money in his pocket. 
 
 He worked hard; at some seasons extremely 
 hard ; he hired labour sometimes, but not often, 
 for to pay for the hiring takes the profit off the 
 land. But he had been used to such work from 
 childhood, and it was never irksome to him ; even 
 though he rose in the dark, and rarely went home 
 to supper till the stars were shining. He had no 
 near neighbours except the poor folks in Euscino. 
 All surrounding him was grass and moor and 
 wood, called communal property, but in reality 
 belonging legally to no one ; vast, still, fragrant 
 leagues of uninhabited country stretching away 
 to the blue hills, home of the fox and the hare 
 and the boar, of the hawk and the woodpecker 
 and the bittern. 
 
 Through those wilds he loved to wander alone ; 
 the sweet stillness of a countryside which was 
 uncontaminated by the residence of men stilling 
 the vague unrest of his youth, and the mountains 
 
60 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 towering in the light lending to the scene the 
 charm of the unknown. 
 
 In days of storm or rain he read with Don 
 Silverio or sang in the church ; on fine holy-days 
 he roamed far afield in the lonely heatherlands 
 and woodlands which were watered by the 
 Edera. He carried a gun, for defence if need be, 
 for there were boars and wolves in these soli- 
 tudes; but he never used it upon bird or beast. 
 
 Like St. Francis of Assissi, both he and Don 
 Silverio took more pleasure in the life than in the 
 death of fair winged things. 
 
 "We are witness, twice in every year, of that 
 great and inexplicable miracle," the priest said 
 often, " that passage of small, frail, unguided 
 creatures, over seas and continents, through 
 tempests and simoons, and with every man's 
 hand against them, and death waiting to take 
 them upon every shore, by merciless and treache- 
 rous tricks, and we think nought of it ; we care 
 nought for it ; we spread the nets and the gins 
 that is all. We are unworthy of all which 
 makes the earth beautiful vilely unworthy ! " 
 
 One of the causes of his unpopularity in 
 Buscino was the inexorable persistence with 
 which he broke their gins, lifted their nets, 
 cleared off their birdlime, dispersed their water- 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 61 
 
 traps, and forbade the favourite night poaching 
 by lanterns in the woods. More than once they 
 threatened his life, but he only smiled. 
 
 " Faccia pure / " he said, "you will cut a knot 
 which I did not tie, and which I cannot myself 
 undo." 
 
 But they held him in too much awe to dare to 
 touch him, and they knew that again and again 
 he went on bread and water himself to give his 
 wine to their sick, or his strip of meat to their 
 old people. 
 
 Moreover, they feared Adone. 
 
 "If you touch a hair of Don Silverio's head, 
 or the hem of his cassock, I will burn Kuscino," 
 said Adone to one of those who had threatened 
 his friend, " and you will all burn with it, for 
 the river will not help you; the river will turn 
 to oil and make the flames rage tenfold." 
 
 The people were afraid as they heard him, for 
 the wrath of the gentle is terrible from its rarity. 
 
 "For sure 'tis the dead Tor'alba as speak in 
 him," they said with fright under their breath, 
 for there was a tale told in the district that Adone 
 Alba was descended from the old war-lords. 
 
 The veterans of the village and the countryside 
 remembered hearing their fathers say that the 
 family of the Terra Vergine were descended from 
 
62 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 those great marquises who had reigned for cen- 
 turies in that Kocca which was now a grim, ivy- 
 covered ruin on the north of the Edera water. 
 But more than this no one could say; no one 
 could tell how the warlike race had become mere 
 tillers of the soil, or how those who had measured 
 out life and death up and down the course of the 
 valley had lost their power and possessions. 
 There were vague traditions of a terrible siege, 
 following on a great battle in the vale ; that was 
 all. 
 
IV 
 
 THE church in which Don Silverio officiated 
 every morning and evening for the benefit of 
 a few old crones, had once been a Latin temple ; 
 it had been built from the Corinthian pillars, the 
 marble peristyle, the rounded, open dome, like 
 that of the Pantheon, of a pagan edifice ; and to 
 these had been added a Longobardo belfry and 
 chancel; pigeons and doves roosted and nested 
 in it, and within it was cold even in midsummer, 
 and dark always as a vault. It was dedicated to 
 St. Jerome, and was a world too wide for the 
 shrunken band of believers who came to worship 
 in it ; there was a high, dark altar said to have 
 been painted by Bibera, and nothing else that 
 spoke in any way of art, except the capitals of 
 its pillars and the Koman mosaics of its floor. 
 
 The Longobardo bell-tower was of vast height 
 and strength; within it were various chambers, 
 
64 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and these chambers had served through many 
 ages as muniment-rooms. There were innumer- 
 able documents of many different epochs, almost 
 all in Latin, a few in Greek. Don Silverio, who 
 was a fine classic as well as a learned archaeolo- 
 gist, spent all his lonely and cold winter evenings 
 in the study of these early chronicles, his oil lamp 
 burning pale and low, hist little white dog lying 
 on his knees. 
 
 These manuscripts gave him great trouble, and 
 were in many parts almost unintelligible, in others 
 almost effaced by damp, in others again gnawed 
 by rats and mice. But he was interested in his 
 labours and in his subject, and after several years 
 of work on them, he was able to make out a con- 
 secutive history of the Valdedera, and he was 
 satisfied that the peasant of the Terra Vergine had 
 been directly descended from the feudal-lords of 
 Ruscino. That pittance of land by the water- 
 side under the shadow of the ruined citadel was 
 all which remained of the great fief to the youth 
 in whose veins ran the blood of men who had 
 given princes, and popes, and cardinals, and 
 captains of condottieri, and patrons of art, and 
 conquerors of revolted provinces, to the Italy of 
 old from the beginning of the thirteenth century 
 to the end of the sixteenth. For three hundred 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 65 
 
 years the Tor 'alba had been lords there, owning 
 all their eyes could reach from mountain to sea ; 
 then after long siege the "walled town and their 
 adjacent stronghold had fallen into the hands of 
 hereditary foes whose forces had been united 
 against them. Fire and steel had done their 
 worst, and only a month-old child had escaped 
 from the burning Roc^a, being saved in a boat 
 laden with reeds at anchor in the river, and 
 hidden by a faithful vassal. The child had grown 
 to manhood and had lived to old age, leading a 
 peasant's life on the banks of the Edera ; the 
 name had been mutilated in common usage 
 amongst those who spoke only the dialect of 
 the province, and for three more centuries 
 father and son had succeeded each other, working 
 for their daily bread where their ancestors had 
 defied Borgia and Delia Eovere, and Feltrio, and 
 Malatesta ; the gaunt dark shade of the dismantled 
 citadel lying athwart their fields between them 
 and the setting sun. 
 
 Should he tell Adone this or not ? 
 
 Would the knowledge of his ancestry put a thorn 
 in the boy's contented heart ? Would it act as a 
 spur to higher things, or be merely as the useless 
 sting of a nettle? 
 
 Who could say ? 
 
 6 
 
66 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Don Silverio remembered the gorgeous dreams 
 of his own youth ; and what had been their issue ? 
 
 At fifty years old he was buried in a deserted 
 village, never hearing from year's end to year's 
 end one word of friendship or phrase of culture. 
 
 Would it be well or would it be wrong to 
 disturb that tranquil acquiescence in a humble 
 destiny? He could not decide. He dared not 
 take upon himself so much responsibility. "In 
 doubt do nothing" has been the axiom of many 
 wise men. The remembrance of the maxim 
 closed his lips. He had himself been in early 
 manhood passionately ambitious ; he was only a 
 priest, but of priests are made the Gregorio, the 
 Bonifazio, the Leone of the Papal throne ; to 
 the dreams of a seminarist nothing is impossible. 
 But Adone had no such dreams; he was as 
 satisfied with his lot as any young steer which 
 wants nothing more than the fair, fresh fields of 
 its birth. 
 
 But one day as he was sitting with the boy, 
 then fifteen years old, on the south bank of the 
 Edera, the spirit moved him and he spake. It 
 was the day of San Benedetto, when the swallows 
 come. The grass was full of pink lychnis and 
 yellow buttercups. A strong east wind was blow- 
 ing from the sea. A number of martins, true to 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 67 
 
 the proverb, were circling gaily above the stream. 
 The water, reflecting the brilliant hues of the 
 heavens, was hurrying on its seaward way, 
 swollen by recent rains and hastened by a strong 
 wind blowing from the eastern mountains. 
 
 The lands of the Terra Vergine lay entirely on 
 the south-east bank of the river, and covered 
 many acres, of which some was moorland still. 
 Almost opposite to it was the one-arched stone 
 bridge, attributed to Theodoric, and on the 
 northern bank was the ruined Kocca, towering 
 above the trees which had grown up around it ; 
 whilst hidden by it and by the remains of the 
 fortifications was that which was now the mere 
 village of Kuscino. 
 
 " Listen, Adone!" he said in his deep, melo- 
 dious voice, grave and sweet as a mass of 
 Palestrina. " Listen, and I will tell you the tale 
 of yonder donjon and village, and of the valley 
 of the Edera, so far as I have been able to make 
 it out for myself." 
 
 According to the writers whose manuscripts he 
 had discovered the town of Euscino, like Cremona, 
 had existed before the siege of Troy, that is, six 
 hundred years before the foundation of Kome. Of 
 this there was no proof except tradition, but the 
 ruins of the walls and the tombs by the riverside 
 
68 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and in the fields proved that it had been an 
 Etruscan city, and of some considerable extent 
 and dignity, in those remote ages. 
 
 " The foundations of the Rocca," he continued, 
 " were probably part of a great stronghold raised 
 by the Gauls, who undoubtedly conquered the 
 whole of this valley at the time when they settled 
 themselves in what is now the Marches, and 
 founded Senegallia. It was visited by Asdrubal, 
 and burned by Alaric ; then occupied by the 
 Greek free lances of Justinian; in the time of 
 the Prankish victories, in common with greater 
 places, it was forced to swear allegiance to the 
 first papal Adrian. ALfter that it had been counted 
 as one of the fiefs comprised in the possessions of 
 the Pentapolis ; and later on, when the Saracens 
 ravaged the shores of the Adriatic, they had come 
 up the Valdedera and pillaged and burned again. 
 Gregory the Ninth gave the valley to the family 
 of its first feudal lords, the Tor'alba, in recom- 
 pense for military service, and they, out of the 
 remains of the Gallic, Etruscan, and Roman 
 towns, rebuilt Ruscino and raised the Rocca on 
 the ruins of the castle of the Gauls. There, 
 though at feud many a time with their foes, 
 the Delia Rovere, the Malatesta, and the Dukes 
 of Urbino, they held their own successfully, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 69 
 
 favoured usually by Eome, and for three centuries 
 grew in force and in possessions. But they lost 
 the favour of Eome by their haughtiness and 
 independence ; and under pretext that they 
 merited punishment, Cesare Borgia brought 
 troops of mercenaries against them, and after a 
 fierce conflict in the valley (the terrible battle of 
 which the villagers preserved the memory) the 
 town was besieged and sacked. 
 
 "After this battle, which must have taken place 
 on yonder moor, to the north-west, for the 
 assailants had crossed the Apennines, the Tor'- 
 alba and the remnant of men remaining to them 
 retreated within the walls of Euscino. 
 
 " The whole place and the citadel were burning, 
 set on fire by order of Borgia. The church alone 
 was spared, and the dead men were as thick as 
 stones on the walls, and in the streets, and in 
 the nave of the church, and on the steps of the 
 houses. This river was choked with corpses, and 
 dark with blood. The black smoke towered to 
 the sky in billows like a sea. The mercenaries 
 swarmed over the bastions and violated the 
 women, and cut off their breasts and threw their 
 bodies down into the stream and their children 
 after them. The Lady of Tor'alba, valiant as 
 Caterina Sforza, was the first slain. The whole 
 
70 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 place was given up to flame and carnage, and the 
 great captains were as helpless as dead oxen. 
 They were all slain amongst their troopers and 
 their vassals, and their bodies were burnt when 
 the fortress was fired. 
 
 " Only one little child escaped the massacre, a 
 month-old babe, son of the Marquis of Tor 'alba, 
 who was hidden by a faithful servant amongst 
 the reeds of the Edera in a basket. This servant 
 was the only male who escaped slaughter. 
 
 " The river rushes were more merciful than man, 
 they kept the little new-born lordling safe until 
 his faithful vassal, under cover of the night, when 
 the assailants were drunk and stupid with licence 
 gratified, could take him to a poor woman to be 
 suckled in a cottage farther down the river. How 
 he grew up I know not, but certain it is that 
 thirty years later one Federigo Tor'alba was 
 living where you live, and the glebe of the Terra 
 Vergine was his own, and your house and land 
 have never changed hands or title since ; only 
 your own name has been truncated, as often 
 happens in the speech of the people. How this 
 land called the Terra Vergine was first obtained I 
 cannot say ; the vassal may have saved some gold 
 or jewels which belonged to his masters, and 
 have purchased these acres, or the land may have 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 71 
 
 been taken up and put gradually into cultivation 
 without any legal right to it ; of this there is no 
 explanation, no record. But from that time the 
 mighty lordship of Tor'alba has been extinct, 
 and scarcely exists now even in local tradition ; 
 although their effigies are on their tombs, and the 
 story of their reign can be deciphered by any one 
 who can read a sixteenth-century manuscript, as 
 you might do for yourself, my son, had you been 
 diligent." 
 
 Adone was silent. He had listened with atten- 
 tion, as he did to everything which was said or 
 read to him by Don Silverio. But he was not 
 astonished, because he had often heard, though 
 vaguely, the legend of his descent. 
 
 " Of what use is it? " he said, as he sat moving 
 the bright water with his bare slim feet. " Noth- 
 ing will bring it all back." 
 
 "It should serve some great end," said Don 
 Silverio, not knowing very well what he meant 
 or to what he desired to move the young man's 
 mind. " Nobility of blood should make the hands 
 cleaner, the heart higher, the aims finer." 
 
 Adone had shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " We are all equal ! " he answered. 
 
 " We are not all equal," the priest said 
 curtly. " There is no equality in nature. Are 
 
72 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 there even two pebbles alike in the bed of the 
 river?" 
 
 Don Silverio, for the first time in his life, could 
 have willingly let escape him some unholy word. 
 It incensed him that he could not arouse in the 
 boy any of that interest and excitement which 
 had moved his own feelings so strongly as he had 
 spent his spare evenings poring over the crabbed 
 characters and the dust-weighted vellum of the 
 charred and mutilated archives discovered by him 
 in a secret closet in the bell-tower of his church. 
 With infinite toil, patience, and ability he had 
 deciphered the Latin of rolls, registers, letters, 
 chronicles, so damaged by water, fire, and the 
 teeth of rats and mice, that it required all an 
 archaeologist's ingenuity and devotion to make 
 out any sense from them. Summer days and 
 winter nights had found him poring over the 
 enigma of these documents, and now, when he 
 had conquered and revealed their secret, he who 
 was most concerned in it was no more stirred 
 by curiosity or pride than if he had been one of 
 the big tawny owls dwelling in the dusk of the 
 belfry. 
 
 Don Silverio was a learned man and a holy 
 man, and should have despised such vanities, 
 but an historic past had great seduction for 
 
THE WATERS OP EDERA 73 
 
 nim; a militant race fascinated him against his 
 conscience, and aristocracy allured him despite 
 all his better judgment; it seemed to him that 
 if he had learned that he had come from a 
 knightly gens such as this of the Tor 'alba, he 
 would have been more strongly moved to self- 
 glorification than would have become a servant 
 of the Church. He himself had no know- 
 ledge even of his own near parentage; he had 
 been a forsaken child, left one dark autumn 
 night in the iron cradle at the gates of a found- 
 ling hospital in Eeggio Calabrese. His names 
 had been bestowed on him by the chaplain of the 
 institution; and his education had been given 
 him by an old nobleman of the town, attracted by 
 his appearance and intelligence as a child. 
 He was now fifty years of age; and he had 
 never known anything of kith and kin, or of 
 the mingled sweetness and importunity of any 
 human tie. 
 
 Adone sat silent, looking up at the fortress of 
 his forefathers. He was more moved than his 
 words showed. 
 
 "If we were lords of the land and the town 
 and the people, we were also lords of the river," 
 was what he was thinking; and that thought 
 moved him to strong pride and pleasure, for he 
 
74 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 loved the river with a great love, only equalled by 
 that which he felt for his mother. 
 
 "They were lords of the river?" he asked 
 aloud. 
 
 " Undoubtedly," answered the priest. " It was 
 one of the highways of the province from east to 
 west and vice versa in that time ; the signoria of 
 this Eocca took toll, kept the fords and bridges 
 and ferries ; none could pass up and down under 
 Euscino without being seen by the sentinels 
 on the ramparts here. The Edera was different 
 then; more navigable, perhaps less beautiful. 
 Eivers change like nations. There have been 
 landslips which have altered its course and made 
 its torrents. In some parts it is shallower, in 
 others deeper. The woods which enclosed its 
 course then have been largely felled, though not 
 wholly. Sand has been dug from it incessantly, 
 and rocks have fallen across it. As you know, no 
 boats or barges which draw any depth of water 
 can ascend or descend it now without being towed 
 by horses; and in some parts, as here, it is too 
 uncertain in its depth, too devious in its course, 
 too precipitous in its fall for even small boats to 
 adventure themselves upon it : its shoals of lilies 
 can blossom unmolested where its surface is level. 
 Yes ; undoubtedly, the lords of Euscino were also 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 75 
 
 lords of the Edera, from its mouth to its source ; 
 and their river formed at once their strongest 
 defence and their weakest point. It was difficult 
 sufficiently to guard so many miles of water; 
 above all because, as I say, its course was so 
 much clearer, and its depth so much greater, that 
 a flotilla of rafts or cutters could ascend it from 
 its mouth as far as this town in the Middle Ages ; 
 in fact, more than once, corsairs from the Levant 
 and from Morocco did so ascend it, and though 
 they were driven back by the culverins of the 
 citadel, they every time carried off to slavery 
 some of the youths and maidens of the 
 plain." 
 
 Adone gazed across the river to the moss-grown 
 walls which had once been fortifications still 
 visible on the side of the hill, and to the frowning 
 donjon, the blackened towers, the ruined bastions, 
 of what had been once the Rocca, with the amber 
 light and rosy clouds of the unseen sun behind 
 them. 
 
 " Teach me Latin, your reverence," was all he 
 said. 
 
 "I have always offered to do so," said Don 
 Silverio. 
 
 Adone was again silent, swinging his slender 
 brown feet in the water, and looking always 
 
76 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 upward at the evening sky beyond the great round 
 shape of the dismantled fortress. 
 
 He learned some Latin with much difficulty, 
 studying hard in his evening leisure in the winters, 
 and with time he could decipher for himself, with 
 assistance from Don Silverio, the annals of the 
 Tor'alba; and he saw that it was as certain as 
 anything grown over with the lichens and cobwebs 
 of time can be that he himself was the last of the 
 race. 
 
 "Your father used to say something of the 
 sort," his mother said ; " but he had only heard 
 it piecemeal from old people, and never heard 
 enough to put the pieces together as you have 
 done. ' What does it matter either ? ' he used 
 to say ; and he said those great lords had been 
 cut-throats on the land and robbers on the river. 
 For your father's father had worn the red shirt in 
 his youth, as I have told you often, and thought 
 but little of lords and princes." 
 
 But Adone was different; the past allured 
 him with the fascination which it has for poets 
 and scholars ; he was neither of these, except in 
 a vague, unconscious way ; but his imagination 
 was strong and fertile once aroused ; the past, as 
 suggested to him by the vicar, by degrees became 
 to him a living thing and nearer than the present, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 77 
 
 as it is to scholars who are also poets. He was 
 neither scholar nor poet ; but he loved to muse 
 upon that far-off time when his forefathers had 
 been lords of the land and of the water. 
 
 He did not want the grandeur, he did not envy 
 the power which they had possessed; but he 
 wished that, like them, he could own the Edera 
 from its rise in the hills to its fall into the sea. 
 
 " Oh, dear river ! " he sang to it tenderly, " I 
 love you. I love you as the dragon-flies do, 
 as the wagtails do, as the water voles do; I 
 am you and you are me. When I lean over you 
 and smile, you smile back to me. You are beauti- 
 ful in the night and the morning, when you mirror 
 the moon and play with the sunbeams, when you 
 are angry under the wind, and when you are at 
 peace in the heat of the noon. You have been 
 purple with the blood of my people, and now you 
 are green and fresh as the leaves of the young 
 vine. You have been black with powder and 
 battle, now you are fair with the hue of the sky 
 and the blue of the myosotis. You are the same 
 river as you were a thousand years ago, and yet 
 you only come down to-day from the high hills, 
 young and strong, and ever renewing. What is 
 the life of man beside yours ? " 
 
 That was the ode which he sang in the dialect 
 
78 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 of the province, and the stream washed his feet 
 as he sang ; and with his breath on his long reed 
 flute the same flute as youths have made and 
 used ever since the days that Apollo reigned on 
 Saracte he copied the singing of the river, which 
 piped as it ran, like birds at dawn. 
 
 But this was only at such times as daybreak or 
 early night when he was alone. 
 
 There were but a few people within the ruined 
 walls of Kuscino ; most of the houses were 
 tenantless and tottering to their fall. A few old 
 bent men and weather-beaten women and naked 
 children climbed its steep lanes and slept under 
 its red-brown roofs, bawled to each other from its 
 deep arched doorways to tell of death or birth, 
 and gathered dandelion leaves upon its ramparts 
 to cure their shrunken and swollen bladders. He 
 knew them every one, he was familiar with and 
 kind to them ; but he was aloof from them by 
 temperament and thought, and he showed them 
 his soul no more than the night birds in the 
 towers showed their tawny breasts and eyes of 
 topaz to the hungry and ragged fowls which 
 scratched amongst the dust and refuse on the 
 stones in the glare of day. 
 
 "II bel Adone!" sighed matrons and the 
 maidens of the scattered farms and the old gloomy 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 79 
 
 castellated granges which here and there, leagues 
 distant from one another, broke the green and 
 silent monotony of the vast historic country 
 whose great woods sloped from hill to plain. But 
 to these, too, he was indifferent, though they had 
 the stern and solid beauty of the Latium women 
 on their broad low brows, their stately busts, their 
 ox-like eyes, their shapely feet and limbs; and 
 often, joined to that, the red-gold hair and the 
 fair skin of the Adriatic type. As they bound 
 the sheaves, and bore the water-jars, and went 
 in groups through the seeding grass to chapel, 
 or fountain, or shrine, they had the free, frank 
 grace of an earlier time; just such as these had 
 carried the votive doves to the altars of Venus 
 and chaunted by the waters of the Edera the 
 worship of Isis and her son. But to Adone they 
 had no charm. What did he desire or dream of? 
 Himself he could not have said. Perhaps they were 
 too warm ; it was certain that they left him cold. 
 
 Sometimes he leaned over the river and looked 
 longingly into its depths. 
 
 " Show me the woman I shall love," he said to 
 the water, but it hastened on, glad, tumultuous, 
 unheeding ; and he only saw the reflection of the 
 white jonquils or of the golden sword rush on its 
 
F BUTTS ripen quickly in these provinces, 
 and children become women in a summer 
 hour ; but with Nerina, through want and suffer- 
 ing and hunger, physical growth had been slow, 
 and she remained long a child in many things and 
 many ways. Only in her skill and strength for 
 work was she older than her actual age. 
 
 She could hoe and reap and sow : she could 
 row and steer the boat amongst the shallows as 
 well as any man ; she could milk the cow, and 
 put the steers in the waggon; she could card 
 hemp and flax, and weave and spin either.; she 
 could carry heavy weights balanced on her head ; 
 she was strong and healthy and never ill, and with 
 it all she was happy. Her large bright eyes were 
 full of contentment, and her rosy mouth often 
 smiled out of the mere gladness of living. Her 
 senses were still asleep and her young soul 
 wanted nothing more than life gave her. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 81 
 
 "You can earn your bread anywhere now, little 
 one," said Clelia Alba to her one day, when she 
 had been there three years. 
 
 The girl shrank as under a blow ; her brown 
 and rosy face grew colourless. "Do you wish me 
 to go away ? " she said humbly. 
 
 " No, no," said Clelia, although that was what 
 she did desire. " No, not while I live. But should 
 I die, you could not stay here with my son." 
 
 " Why ? " said Nerina. She did not understand 
 why. 
 
 Clelia hesitated. 
 
 "You ought to feel that yourself," she said 
 harshly. "Young men and young maids do not 
 dwell together, unless " 
 
 " Unless what? " asked Nerina. 
 
 " You are a simpleton indeed, or you are 
 shamming," thought Adone's mother ; but aloud 
 she only said, " It is not in our usage." 
 
 " B f ut you will not die," said Nerina anxiously. 
 " Why should you think of dying, madonna ? 
 You are certainly old, but you are not so very, 
 very old." 
 
 Clelia smiled. 
 
 " You do not natter, child. So much the 
 better. Kun away and drive in those fowls. 
 They are making havoc in the beanfield." 
 
 7 
 
8z THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 She could not feel otherwise than tenderly 
 towards this young creature, always so obedient, 
 so tractable, so contented, so grateful ; but she 
 would willingly have placed her elsewhere could 
 she have done so with a clear conscience. 
 
 " My son will never do ill by any creature 
 under his roof," she thought. " But still youth 
 is youth ; and the girl grows." 
 
 "We must dower her and mate her ; eh, your 
 reverence?" she said to Don Silverio when he 
 passed by later in that day. 
 
 "Willingly," he answered. "But to whom? 
 To the owls or the cats at Euscino ? " 
 
 In himself he thought, " She is as straight and 
 as slight as a chestnut wand, but she is as strong. 
 When you shall try to bend her where she shall 
 not want to go you will not succeed." 
 
 For he knew the character of Nerina in the 
 confessional better than Clelia Alba judged of it 
 in her house. 
 
 " It was not wise to bring her here," he added 
 aloud. " But having committed that error it 
 would be unfair to charge the child with the 
 painful payment of it. You are a just woman, 
 my good friend ; you must see that." 
 
 Clelia saw it clearly, for she never tried to trick 
 her conscience. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 83 
 
 " Your reverence mistakes me," she answered. 
 "I would not give her to any but a good man 
 and a good home." 
 
 " They are not common," said Don Silverio. 
 " Nor are they as easy to find as flies in 
 summer." 
 
 What was the marriage of the poor for the 
 woman? What did it bring? What did it 
 mean? The travail of child-bearing, the toil of 
 the fields, the hardship of constant want, the 
 incessant clamour on her ear of unsatisfied 
 hunger, the painful rearing of sons whom the 
 State takes away from her as soon as they are of 
 use, painful ending of life on grudged crusts as a 
 burden to others on a hearth no longer her own. 
 This, stripped of glamour, is the lot nine times 
 out of ten of the female peasant a creature of 
 burden like the cow she yokes, an animal valued 
 only in her youth and her prime ; in old age or in 
 sickness like the stricken and barren goat, who 
 has nought but its skin and its bones. 
 
 Poor little Nerina ! 
 
 As he went home he saw her cutting fodder for 
 a calf ; she was kneeling in a haze of rose colour 
 made by the many blossoms of the orchis maculata 
 which grew there. The morning light sparkled 
 in the wet grass. She got up as she saw him 
 
84 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 cross the field, dropped her curtsey low with a 
 smile, then resumed her work, the dew, the sun, 
 the sweet fresh scents shed on her like a benison. 
 
 " Poor little soul," thought Don Silverio. 
 "Poor little soul! Has Adone no eyes?" 
 
 Adone had eyes, but they saw other things than 
 a little maiden in the meadow-grass. 
 
 To her he was a deity ; she believed in him and 
 worshipped him with the strongest faith, as a little 
 sister might have done. She would have fought for 
 him like a little mastiff; she would have suffered 
 in his service with rapture and pride ; she was as 
 vigilant for his interests as if she were fidelity incar- 
 nated. She watched over all that belonged to 
 him, and the people of Ruscino feared her more 
 than they feared Pierino the watch-dog. Woe 
 betided the hapless wight who made free with 
 the ripe olives, or the ripe grapes, with the fig or 
 the peach or the cherry which grew on Adone's 
 lands ; it seemed to such marauders that she had 
 a thousand eyes and lightning in her feet. 
 
 One day, when she had dealt such vigorous 
 blows with a blackthorn stick on the back of a 
 lad who had tried to enter the fowl-house, that he 
 fell down and shrieked for pardon, Adone reproved 
 her. ' ' Remember they are very poor, Nerina, ' ' he 
 said to her. " So were your own folks, you say." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 85 
 
 "I know they are poor," replied Nerina ; she 
 held to her opinions. " But when they ask, you 
 always give. Therefore it is vile to rob you. 
 Besides," she added, "if you go on and let them 
 steal they do not thank you ; and they will steal 
 and steal and steal till you will have nothing 
 left." 
 
 Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, she 
 told Adone ; and he gave ear to her because she 
 was not a chatterer, but was usually of few words. 
 All her intelligence was spent in the defence and 
 in the culture of the Terra Vergine ; she did not 
 know her alphabet, and did not wish to do so ; 
 but she had the quickest of ears, the keenest of 
 eyes, the brightest of brains. 
 
 One morning she came running to him where 
 he was cutting barley. 
 
 " Adone ! Adone ! " she cried breathlessly, 
 "there were strange men by the river to-day." 
 
 " Indeed," said Adone astonished, because 
 strangers were never seen there. Kuscino was 
 near no highroad, and the river had long ceased 
 to be navigable. 
 
 " They asked me questions, but I put my hands 
 to my ears and shook my head ; they thought I 
 was deaf." 
 
 " "What sort of men were they? " he asked with 
 
86 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 more attention, for there were still those who 
 lived by violence up in the forests which overhung 
 the valley of the Edera. 
 
 " How do I know? They were clothed in long 
 woollen bed-gowns, and they had boots on their 
 feet, and on their heads hats shaped like kitchen- 
 pans." 
 
 Adone smiled. He saw men from a town, or 
 country fellows who aped such men, with a con- 
 tempt which was born at once of that artistic 
 sense of fitness which was in him, and of his 
 adherence to the customs and habits of his 
 province. The city-bred and city -clothed man 
 looked to him a grotesque and helpless creature, 
 much sillier than an ape. 
 
 "That sounds like citizens or townsfolk. 
 What did they say?" 
 
 " I could not understand ; but they spoke of 
 the water, I think, for they pointed to it and said 
 a great deal which I did not understand, and 
 seemed to measure the banks, and took your punt 
 and threw a chain into the water in places." 
 
 " Took castings ? Used my punt ? That is 
 odd ! I have never seen a stranger in my life by 
 the Edera. Were they anglers ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or sportsmen?" 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 87 
 
 " They had no guns." 
 
 " How many were they ? " 
 
 " Three. They went away up the river talk- 
 ing." 
 
 " Did they cross the bridge ? " 
 
 "No. They were not shepherds, or labourers, 
 or priests," said Nerina. To these classes of men 
 her own acquaintance was confined. 
 
 " Painters, perhaps?" said Adone; but no 
 artists were ever seen there ; the existence even 
 of the valley was scarcely known, except to 
 topographers. 
 
 " What are painters ? " said Nerina. 
 
 " Men who sit and stare and then make 
 splashes of colour." 
 
 " No ; they did not do that.' 1 
 
 " It is strange." 
 
 He felt vaguely uneasy that any had come near 
 the water ; as a lover dislikes the pressure of a 
 crowd about his beloved in a street, so he disliked 
 the thought of foreign eyes resting on the Edera. 
 That they should have used his little punt, 
 always left amongst the sedges, seemed to him 
 a most offensive, and unpardonable action. 
 
 He went to the spot where the intruders had 
 been seen, but there was no trace of them, except 
 that the wet sand bore footprints of persons who 
 
88 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 had, as she had said of them, worn boots. He 
 followed these footprints for some mile or more 
 up the edge of the stream, but there he lost them 
 from sight ; they had passed on to the grass of a 
 level place, and the dry turf, cropped by sheep to 
 its roots, told no tales. Near this place was a 
 road used by cattle drivers and mules ; it crossed 
 the heather for some thousand yards, then 
 plunged into the woods, and so went up over the 
 hills to the town of Teramo, * thirty-five kilo- 
 metres away. It was a narrow, rough, steep 
 road, wholly unfit for vehicles of any kind more 
 tender than the rude ox-treggia, slow as a snail, 
 with rounds of a tree-trunk for its wheels, and 
 seldom used^ except by country folks. 
 
 He would have asked Don Silverio if he had 
 heard or seen anything of any strangers, but 
 the priest was away that day at one of the 
 lonely moorland cabins comprised in his parish 
 of Kuscino, where an oM man, who had been a 
 great sinner in his past, was at his last gasp, and 
 his sons and grandsons and great-grandchildren 
 all left him to meet his end as he might. 
 
 It was a fine day, and they had their grain to get 
 in, and even the women were busy. They set a 
 stoup of water by him, and put some in his nostrils, 
 and shut the door to keep out the flies. It was 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 89 
 
 no use to stay there they thought. If you helped 
 a poor soul to give up the ghost by a hand on his 
 mouth, or an elbow in his stomach, you got into 
 trouble ; it was safer to leave him alone when he 
 was a-dying. 
 
 Don Silverio had given the viaticum to the old 
 man the night before, not thinking he would outlive 
 the night. He now found the door locked and saw 
 the place was deserted. He broke the door open 
 with a few kicks, and found the house empty save 
 for the dying creature on the sacks of leaves. 
 
 " They would not wait ! They would not wait 
 hell take them ! " said the old man, with a groan, 
 his bony hands fighting the air. 
 
 " Hush, hush ! the holy oil is on you," said 
 Don Silverio. " They knew I should be here." 
 
 It was a charitable falsehood, but the brain of 
 the old man was still too awake to be deceived 
 by it. 
 
 " Why locked they the door, then? Hell take 
 them ! They are reaping in the lower fields hell 
 take them ! " he repeated, his bony, toothless 
 jaws gnashing with each word. 
 
 He was eighty-four years old; he had been 
 long the terror of his district and of his descen- 
 dants, and they paid him out now that he was 
 powerless ; they left him alone in that sun-baked 
 
90 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 cabin, and they had carefully put his crutch out 
 of reach, so that if any force should return to his 
 paralysed body he should be unable to move. 
 
 It was the youngest of them all, a little boy of 
 seven years old, who had thought to do that ; the 
 crutch had hit him so often. 
 
 The day had been only beginning when Don 
 Silverio had reached the cabin, but he resolved to 
 await there the return of the family; its hours 
 were many and long and cruel in the midsummer 
 heat, in this foetid place, where more than a score 
 of men, women, and children of all ages, slept and 
 swarmed through every season, and where the floors 
 of beaten earth were paven with filth three milli- 
 metres thick. The people were absent, but their 
 ordure, their urine, their lice, their saliva were left 
 there after them, and the stench of all was concen- 
 trated on this bed where the old man wrestled 
 with death. 
 
 Don Silverio stayed on in the sultry and pestilent 
 steam which rose up from the floor. Gnats and flies 
 of all kinds buzzed in the heavy air, or settled in 
 black knots on the walls and the rafters. With a 
 bunch of dried maize-leaves he drove them off the 
 old man's face and hands and limbs, and ever and 
 again at intervals gave the poor creature a draught 
 of water with a few drops in it from a phial of 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 91 
 
 cordial which he had brought with him. The hours 
 passed, each seeming longer than a day ; at last the 
 convulsive twitching of the jaws ceased; the jaw 
 had fallen, the dark cavern of the toothless mouth 
 yawned in a set grimace, the vitreous eyes were 
 turned up into the head : the old man was dead. 
 But Don Silverio did not leave him ; two sows 
 and a hog were in a stye which was open to the 
 house ; he knew that they would come and gnaw 
 the corpse if it were left to them ; they were 
 almost starving, and grunted angrily. 
 
 He spent so many vigils similar to this that the 
 self-sacrifice entailed in them never struck either 
 him or those he served. 
 
 When the great heat had passed he set the door 
 wide open ; the sun was setting ; a flood of light 
 inundated the plain from the near mountains on 
 the west, where the Leonessa towered, to those 
 shadowy green clouds which far away in the east 
 were the marshes before the sea. Through the 
 ruddy glory of the evening the family returned, 
 dark figures against the gold; brown women, half- 
 nude men, footsore children, their steps dragging 
 reluctantly homeward. 
 
 At the sight of the priest on the threshold they 
 stopped and made obeisance humbly in reverent 
 salutation. 
 
92 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Is he dead, most reverend?" said the eldest 
 of the brood, a man of sixty, touching the ground 
 with his forehead. 
 
 " Your father is dead," said Don Silverio. 
 
 The people were still ; relieved to hear that all 
 was over, yet vaguely terrified, rather by his gaze 
 than by his words. A woman wept aloud out of 
 fear. 
 
 " We could not let the good grain spoil," 
 said the eldest man, with some shame in his 
 voice, 
 
 " Pray that your sons may deal otherwise with 
 you when your turn shall come," said Don 
 Silverio ; and then he went through them, un- 
 moved by their prayers and cries, and passed 
 across the rough grass-land out of sight. 
 
 The oldest man, he who was now head of the 
 house, remained prostrate on the threshold and 
 beat the dust with his hands and heels ; he was 
 afraid to enter, afraid of that motionless, lifeless 
 bag of bones of which the last cry had been a 
 curse cast at him. 
 
 Don Silverio went on his way over the moors 
 homeward, for he had no means except his own 
 limbs whereby to go to his scattered parishioners. 
 When he reached the village and climbed its 
 steep stones night had long fallen and he was 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 93 
 
 sorely tired. He entered by a door which was 
 never locked, and found an oil wick burning on 
 his table, which was set out with the brown 
 crockery used for his frugal supper of cheese 
 and lettuces and bread. His old servant was 
 abed. His little dog alone was on the watch to 
 welcome him. It was a poor, plain place, with 
 whitewashed walls and a few necessary articles of 
 use ; but it was clean and sweet, its brick floors 
 were sanded, and the night air blew in from its 
 open casement with the freshness from the river in 
 it. Its quiet was seldom disturbed except by the 
 tolling of the bell for the church services ; and it 
 was welcome to him after the toil and heat and 
 stench of the past day. 
 
 " My lot might have been worse," he thought, 
 as he broke his loaf ; he was disinclined to eat ; 
 the filthy odours of the cabin pursued him. 
 
 He was used to have had a little weekly journal 
 sent to him by the post ; which came at rare in- 
 tervals on an ass's back to Euscino, the ass and his 
 rider, with a meal sack half filled by the meagre 
 correspondence of the district, making the rounds 
 of that part of the province with an irregularity 
 which seemed as natural to the sufferers by it 
 as to the postman himself. " He cannot be every- 
 where at once," they said of him with indulgence. 
 
94 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 When he reached his home that evening the 
 little news-sheet was lying on his table beside the 
 brown crockery, the cheese, lettuces, and bread. 
 He scarcely touched the food; he was saddened 
 and sickened by the day he had passed, although 
 there had been nothing new in it, nothing of 
 which he had not been witness a hundred times in 
 the cabins of his parishioners. The little paper 
 caught his eye, he took it and opened it. It 
 was but a meagre thing, tardy of news, costing 
 only two centimes, but it was the only publica- 
 tion which brought him any intelligence of that 
 outer world from which he was as much separa- 
 ted as though he had been on a deserted isle in 
 mid-ocean. 
 
 By the pale light of the single wick he 
 turned over its thin sheet to distract his 
 thoughts; there was war news in east and 
 west, Church news in his own diocese and else- 
 where ; news of fires and wrecks, of suicides, of 
 thefts, news all ten days old and more; politi- 
 cal news also, scanty and timidly related. 
 The name of the stream running underneath 
 the walls of Ruscino caught his regard ; a 
 few lines were headed with it, and these lines 
 said curtly : 
 
 "The project to divert the course of the Edera 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 95 
 
 river will be brought before the Chamber shortly ; 
 the Minister of Agriculture is considered to favour 
 the project." 
 
 He held the sheet nearer to the light and read 
 the paragraph again, and yet again. The words 
 were clear and indisputable in their meaning ; 
 they could not be misconstrued. There was but 
 one river Edera in the whole province, in the 
 whole country; there could be no doubt as to 
 what river was meant ; yet it seemed to him 
 utterly impossible that any such project could be 
 conceived by any creature. Divert the course of 
 the Edera ? He felt stupefied. He read the words 
 over and over again ; then he read them aloud in 
 the stillness of the night, and his voice sounded 
 strong in his own ears. 
 
 " It must be a misprint ; it must be a mistake 
 for the Era of Volterra, or the Esino, north of 
 Ancona," he said to himself, and he went to 
 his book closet and brought out an old folio 
 geography which he had once bought for a 
 few pence on a Koman bookstall, spread it open 
 before him, and read one by one the names of 
 all the streams of the peninsula, from the Dora 
 Baltea to the Giarretta. There was no other 
 Edera river. Unless it were indeed a misprint 
 altogether, the stream which flowed under his 
 
96 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 church walls was the one which was named 
 in the news-sheet. 
 
 " But it is impossible, it is impossible ! " he 
 said so loudly, that his little dog awoke and 
 climbed on his knee uneasily and in alarm. 
 "What could the people do? What could the 
 village do, or the land or the fisher folk? Are 
 we to have drought added to hunger ? Can they 
 respect nothing? The river belongs to the 
 valley : to seize it, to appraise it, to appropriate 
 it, to make away with it, would be as monstrous 
 as to steal his mother's milk from a yearling 
 babe ! " 
 
 He shut the folio and pushed it away from him 
 across the table. " If this be true," he said to 
 himself, "if, anyhow, this monstrous thing be 
 true, it will kill Adone ! " 
 
 In the morning he awoke from a short per- 
 turbed sleep with that heavy sense of a vaguely 
 remembered calamity which stirs in the awakening 
 brain like a worm in the unclosing flower. 
 
 The morning-office over, he sought out the little 
 news-sheet, to make sure that he had read aright ; 
 his servant had folded it up and laid it aside on a 
 shelf, he unfolded it with a hand which trembled ; 
 the same lines stared at him in the warm light of 
 sunrise as in the faint glimmer of the floating 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 97 
 
 wick. The very curtness and coldness of the 
 announcement testified to its exactitude. He 
 did not any longer doubt its truth; but there 
 were no details, no explanations : he pondered on 
 the possibilities of obtaining them ; it was useless 
 to seek them in the village or the countryside, 
 the people were as ignorant as sheep. 
 
 Adone alone had intelligence, but he shrank from 
 taking these tidings to the youth, as he would 
 have shrunk from doing him a physical hurt. The 
 news might be false or premature ; many projects 
 were discussed, many schemes sketched out, 
 many speculations set on foot which came to 
 nothing in the end : were this thing true, Adone 
 would learn it all too soon and read it on the 
 wounded face of nature. Not at least until he 
 could himself be certain of its truth would he 
 speak of it to the young man whose fathers had 
 been lords of the river. 
 
 His duties over for the forenoon, he went up 
 the three hundred stairs of his bell-tower, to the 
 wooden platform, between the machicolations. 
 It was a dizzy height, and both stairs and roof 
 were in ruins, but he went cautiously, and was 
 familiar with the danger. The owls which bred 
 there were so used to him that they did not stir 
 in their siesta as he passed them. He stood aloft 
 
 8 
 
98 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 in the glare of noonday, and looked down on the 
 winding stream as it passed under the ruined 
 walls of Euscino, and growing, as it flowed, 
 clearer and clearer, and wilder and wilder, as it 
 rushed over stones and boulders, foaming and 
 shouting, rushed through the heather on its way 
 towards the Marches. Under Euscino it had 
 its brown mountain colour still, but as it ran 
 it grew green as emeralds, blue as sapphires, silver 
 and white and grey like a dove's wings ; it was 
 unsullied and translucent ; the white clouds were 
 reflected on it. It went through a country lonely, 
 almost deserted, only at great distances from one 
 another was there a group of homesteads, a 
 cluster of stacks, a conical cabin in some places 
 where the woods gave place to pasture ; here and 
 there were the ruins of a temple, of a fortress, of 
 some great marble or granite tomb ; but there 
 was no living creature in sight except a troop of 
 buffaloes splashing in a pool. 
 
 Don Silverio looked down on its course until 
 his dazzled eyes lost it from sight in the glory of 
 light through which it sped, and his heart sank, 
 and he would fain have been a woman to have 
 wept aloud. For he saw that its beauty and 
 its solitude were such as would likely enough 
 tempt the spoilers. He saw that it lay fair and 
 defenceless as a maiden on her bed. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 99 
 
 He dwelt out of the world now, but he had 
 once dwelt in it ; and the world does not greatly 
 change, it only grows more rapacious. He 
 knew that in this age there is only one law, 
 to gain ; only one duty, to prosper : that nature is 
 of no account, nor beauty either, nor repose, nor 
 ancient rights, nor any of the simple claims of 
 normal justice. He knew that if in the course of 
 the river there would be gold for capitalists, for 
 engineers, for contractors, for promoters, for specu- 
 lators, for attorneys, for deputies, for ministers, 
 that then the waters of the Edera were in all 
 probability doomed. 
 
 He descended the rotten stairs slowly, with a 
 weight as of lead at his heart. He did not any 
 longer doubt the truth of what he had read. 
 Who, or what, shall withstand the curse of its 
 time? 
 
 " They have forgotten us so long," he thought, 
 with bitterness in his soul. " We have been left 
 to bury our dead as we would, and to see the 
 children starve as they might ; they remember us 
 now, because we possess something which they 
 can snatch from us ! " 
 
 He did not doubt any more. He could only 
 wait : wait and see in what form and in what 
 time the evil would come to them. Meantime, 
 
ioo THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 he said to himself, he would not speak of it to 
 Adone, and he burned the news-sheet. Adminis- 
 trations alter frequently and unexpectedly, and 
 the money-changers, who are fostered by them, 
 sometimes fall with them, and their projects 
 remain in the embryo of a mere prospectus. 
 There was that chance. 
 
 He knew that, in the age he lived in, all things 
 were estimated only by their value to commerce 
 or to speculation; that there was neither space 
 nor patience amongst men for what was, in their 
 reckoning, useless ; that the conqueror was now but 
 a trader in disguise ; that civilisation was but the 
 shibboleth of traffic ; that because trade follows 
 the flag, therefore to carry the flag afar, thousands 
 of young soldiers of every nationality are 
 slaughtered annually in poisonous climes and 
 obscure warfare, because such is the suprema lex 
 and will of the trader. If the waters of Edera 
 would serve to grind any grit for the mills of 
 modern trade they would be taken into bondage 
 with many other gifts of nature as fair and as free 
 as they were. All creation groaned and travailed 
 in pain that the great cancer of the cities should 
 spread. 
 
 "It is not only ours/' he remembered with a 
 pang ; on its way to and from the Valdedera the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 101 
 
 river passed partially through two other com- 
 munes, and water belongs to the district in which 
 it runs. True, the country of each of these was 
 like that of this valley, depopulated and wild ; 
 but, however great a solitude any land may be, 
 it is still locally and administratively dependent 
 on the chief town of its own commune. Kuscino 
 and its valley were dependent on San Beda ; 
 these two other communes were respectively 
 under a little town of the Abruzzo and under 
 a seaport of the Adriatic. 
 
 The interest of the valley of the Edera in its 
 eponymous stream was a large share; but it 
 was not more than a share, in this gift of nature. 
 If it came to any question of conflicting interests, 
 Euscino and the valley might very likely be power- 
 less, and could only, in any event, be represented 
 by and through San Beda ; a strongly ecclesiastical 
 and papal little place, and, therefore, without 
 influence with the ruling powers, and conse- 
 quently viewed with an evil eye by the Prefecture. 
 
 He pondered anxiously on the matter for some 
 days, then, arduous as the journey was, he resolved 
 to go to San Beda and inquire. 
 
 The small mountain city was many miles 
 away upon a promontary of marble rocks, and 
 its many spires and towers were visible only in 
 
102 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 afternoon light from the valley of the Edera. 
 It was as old as Kuscino, a dull, dark, very 
 ancient place with monasteries and convents 
 like huge fortresses and old palaces still fortified 
 and grim as death amongst them. A Cistercian 
 monastery, which had been chiefly built by the 
 second Giulio, crowned a prominent cliff, which 
 dominated the town, and commanded a view of 
 the whole of the valley of the Edera, and, on 
 the western horizon, of the Leonessa and her 
 tributary mountains and hills. 
 
 He had not been there for five years; he went 
 on foot, for there was no other means of transit, 
 and if there had been he would not have wasted 
 money on it ; the way was long and irksome ; 
 for the latter half, entirely up a steep mountain 
 road. He started in the early morning as soon 
 as Mass had been celebrated, and it was four 
 in the afternoon before he had passed the gates 
 of the town, and paid his respects to the Bishop. 
 He rested in the Certosa, of which the superior 
 was known to him ; the monks, like the Bishop, 
 had heard nothing. So far as he could learn 
 when he went into the streets no one in the 
 place had heard anything of the project to alter 
 the course of the river. He made the return 
 journey by night, so as to reach his church by 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 103 
 
 daybreak, and was there in his place by the high 
 altar when the bell tolled at six o'clock, and the 
 three or four old people, who never missed an 
 office, were kneeling on the stones. 
 
 He had walked over forty miles, and had eaten 
 nothing except some bread and a piece of dried fish. 
 But he always welcomed physical fatigue; it 
 served to send to sleep the restless intellect, the 
 gnawing regrets, the bitter sense of wasted powers 
 and of useless knowledge, which were his daily 
 company. 
 
 He had begged his friends, the friars, to 
 obtain an interview with the Syndic of San Beda, 
 and interrogate him on the subject. Until he 
 should learn something positive he could not 
 bring himself to speak of the matter to Adone : 
 but the fact of his unusual absence had too much 
 astonished his little community for the journey 
 not to have been the talk of Euscino. Surprised 
 and disturbed like others, Adone was waiting for 
 him in the sacristy after the first mass. 
 
 " You have been away a whole day and night 
 and never told me, reverendissimo ! " he cried in 
 reproach and amazement. 
 
 "I have yet to learn that you are my keeper," 
 said Don Silverio with a cold and caustic intona- 
 tion. 
 
104 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Adone coloured to the roots of his curling hair. 
 
 " That is unkind, sir ! " he said humbly ; " I 
 only meant that that " 
 
 " I know, I know ! " said the priest impatiently, 
 but with contrition. " You meant only friendship 
 and good-will ; but there are times when the best 
 intentions irk one. I went to see the Prior of the 
 Certosa, an old friend; I had business in San 
 Beda." 
 
 Adone was silent, afraid that he had shown an 
 unseemly curiosity ; he saw that Don Silverio 
 was irritated and not at ease, and he hesitated 
 what words to choose. 
 
 His friend relented, and blamed himself for 
 being hurried by disquietude into harshness. 
 
 " Come and have a cup of coffee with me, 
 my son," he said in his old, kind tones. " I am 
 going home to break my fast." 
 
 But Adone was hurt and humiliated, and made 
 excuse of field work, which pressed by reason of 
 the weather, and so he did not name to his friend 
 and councillor the visit of the three men to the 
 river. 
 
 Don Silverio went home and boiled his coffee ; 
 he always did this himself ; it was the only luxury 
 he ever allowed himself, and he did not indulge 
 even in this very often. But for once the draught 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 105 
 
 had neither fragrance nor balm for him. He was 
 overtired, weary in mind as in body, and greatly 
 dejected ; even though nothing was known at San 
 Beda he felt convinced that what he had read was 
 the truth. 
 
 He knew but little of affairs of speculation, but 
 he knew that it was only in reason to suppose that 
 such projects would be kept concealed, as long as 
 might be expedient, from those who would be 
 known to be hostile to them, in order to minimise 
 the force of opposition. 
 
VI 
 
 ON the morning of the fourth day which fol- 
 lowed on the priest's visit to San Beda, 
 about ten in the forenoon, Adone, with his two 
 oxen, Orlando and Binaldo, were near the river 
 on that part of his land which was still 
 natural moorland, and on which heather, and 
 ling, and broom, and wild roses, and bracken grew 
 together. He had come to cut a waggon load of 
 furze, and had been at work there since eight 
 o'clock, when he had come out of the great porch 
 of the church after attending mass, for it was the 
 twentieth of June, the name-day of Don Silverio. 
 Scarcely had that day dawned when Adone had 
 risen and had gone across the river to the 
 presbytery, bearing with him a dozen eggs, two 
 flasks of his best wine, and a bunch of late- 
 flowering roses. They were his annual offerings 
 on this day ; he felt some trepidation as he 
 climbed the steep, stony, uneven street lest they 
 
 106 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 107 
 
 should be rejected, for he was conscious that three 
 evenings before he had offended Don Silverio, 
 and had left the presbytery too abruptly. But his 
 fears were allayed as soon as he entered the 
 house ; the vicar was already up and dressed, and 
 was about to go to the church. At the young 
 man's first contrite words Don Silverio stopped 
 him with a kind smile. 
 
 "I was impatient and to blame," he said as he 
 took the roses. " You heap coals of fire on my 
 head, my son, with your welcome gifts." 
 
 Then together they had gone to the quaint old 
 church of which the one great bell was tolling. 
 
 Mass over, Adone had gone home, broken his 
 fast, taken off his velvet jacket, his long scarlet 
 waistcoat, and his silver-studded belt, and put the 
 oxen to the pole of the waggon. 
 
 " Shall I come ? " cried Nerina. 
 
 "No," he answered. "Go and finish cutting 
 the oats in the triangular field." 
 
 Always obedient, she went, her sickle swinging 
 to her girdle. She was sorry, but she never 
 murmured. 
 
 Adone had been at work amongst the furze 
 two hours when old Pierino, who always accom- 
 panied the oxen, got up, growled, and then barked. 
 
 "What is it, old friend?" asked Adone, and 
 
log tHE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 left off his work and listened. He heard voices 
 by the waterside, and steps on the loose shingle 
 of its shrunken summer bed. He went out of 
 the wild growth round him and looked. There 
 were four men standing and talking by the 
 water. They were doubtless the same persons 
 as Nerina had seen, for they were evidently men 
 from a city and strangers. Disquietude and 
 offence took alarm in him at once. 
 
 He conquered that shyness which was natural 
 to him, and which was due to the sensitiveness 
 of his temperament and the solitude in which he 
 had been reared. 
 
 "Excuse me, sirs," he said, as he advanced 
 to them with his head uncovered ; " what is it 
 you want with my river?" 
 
 " Your river ! " repeated the head of the group, 
 and he smiled. " How is it more yours than your 
 fellows?" 
 
 Adone advanced nearer. 
 
 " The whole course of the water belonged to 
 my ancestors," he answered, " and this portion 
 at least is mine now ; you stand on my ground ; 
 I ask you what is your errand ? " 
 
 He spoke with courtesy, but in a tone of 
 authority which seemed to the intruders imperious 
 and irritating. But they controlled their annoy- 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 109 
 
 ance ; they did not wish to offend this haughty 
 young peasant. 
 
 " To be owner of the water it is necessary to 
 own both banks of it," the stranger replied 
 politely, but with some impatience. " The 
 opposite bank is communal property. Do not 
 fear, however, whatever your rights may be they 
 will be carefully examined and considered." 
 
 " By whom ? They concern only myself." 
 
 " None of our rights concern only ourselves. 
 What are those which you claim in especial on 
 the Edera water?" 
 
 Adone was silent for a few moments ; he was 
 astonished and embarrassed ; he had never 
 reflected on the legal side of his claim to the 
 river ; he had grown up in love and union with 
 it ; such affections, born with us at birth, are not 
 analysed until they are assailed. 
 
 "You are strangers," he replied. "By what 
 right do you question me ? I was born here. 
 What is your errand ? " 
 
 " You must be Adone Alba ? " said this person, 
 as if spokesman for the others. 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "And you own the land known as the Terra 
 Vergine ? " 
 
 "I do." 
 
no THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "You will hear from us in due course, then. 
 Meantime ' ' 
 
 " Meantime you trespass on my ground. Leave 
 it, sirs." 
 
 The four strangers drew away a few paces, and 
 conferred together in a low tone, consulting a 
 sheaf of papers. Their council over, he who 
 appeared the most conspicuous in authority 
 turned again to the young man, who was watching 
 them with a vague apprehension which he could 
 not explain to himself. 
 
 " There is no question of trespass ; the river- 
 side is free to all," said the stranger, with some 
 contempt. " Courtesy would become you better, 
 Ser Adone." 
 
 Adone coloured. He knew that courtesy was 
 at all times wise, and useful, and an obligation 
 amongst men; but his anger was stronger than 
 his prudence and his vague alarm was yet 
 stronger still. 
 
 " Say your errand with the water," he replied 
 imperiously. "Then I can judge of it. No 
 one, sirs, comes hither against my will." 
 
 " You will hear from us in due time," answered 
 the intruder. " And believe me, young man, you 
 may lose much, you cannot gain anything, by 
 rudeness and opposition." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA in 
 
 " Opposition to what ? " 
 
 The stranger turned his' back upon him, rolled 
 up his papers, spoke again with his companions, 
 and lifted from a large stone on which he had 
 placed it a case of surveyor's instruments. Adone 
 went close up to him. " Opposition to what ? 
 What is it you are doing here ? " 
 
 "We are not your servants," said the gentle- 
 man with impatience. " Do not attempt any 
 brawling I advise you; it will tell against you 
 and cannot serve you in any way." 
 
 " The soil and the water are mine, and you 
 meddle with them," said Adone. " If you were 
 honest men you would not be ashamed of what 
 you do, and would declare your errand. Brawling 
 is not in my habit ; but either speak clearly, or get 
 you gone, or I will drive my oxen over you. The 
 land and the waters are mine." 
 
 The chief of the group gave a disdainful, in- 
 credulous gesture, but the others pulled him by 
 the sleeve and argued with him in low tones and 
 a strange tongue, which Adone thought was 
 German. The leader of the group was a 
 small man with a keen and mobile face and 
 piercing eyes ; he did not yield easily to the 
 persuasions of his companions ; he was dis- 
 posed to be combative ; he was offended 
 
H2 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 by what seemed to him the insults of a mere 
 peasant. 
 
 Adone went back to his oxen, standing dozing 
 with drooped heads; he gathered up the reins 
 of rope and mounted the waggon, raising the 
 heads of the sleepy beasts. He held his goad in 
 his hand; the golden gorze was piled behind 
 him ; he was in full sunlight, his hair was lifted 
 by the breeze from his forehead ; his face was 
 flushed and set and stern. They saw that he 
 would keep his word and drive down on to them, 
 and make his oxen knock them down and the 
 wheels grind their bodies into pulp. They had 
 no arms of any kind, they felt they had no choice 
 but to submit : and did so, with sore reluctance. 
 
 " He looks like a young god," said one of them 
 with an angry laugh. " Mortals cannot fight 
 against the gods." 
 
 With discomfiture they retreated before him 
 and went along the grassy path northward, as 
 Nerina had seen them do on the day of their 
 first arrival. 
 
 So far Adone had conquered. 
 
 But no joy or pride of a victor was with him. 
 He stood and watched them pass away with a 
 heavy sense of impending ill upon him ; the river 
 was flowing joyously, unconscious of its doom, but 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 113 
 
 on him, though he knew nothing, and conceived 
 nothing, of the form which the approaching evil 
 would take, a great weight of anxiety descended. 
 
 He got down from the waggon when he had 
 seen them disappear, and continued his uninter- 
 rupted work amongst the furze ; and he remained 
 on the same spot long after the waggon was filled, 
 lest in his absence the intruders should return. 
 Only when the sun set did he turn the heads of 
 the oxen homeward. 
 
 He said nothing to the women, but when he 
 had stalled and fed his cattle he changed his 
 leathern breeches and put a clean shirt on his 
 back, and went down the twilit fields and across 
 the water to Kuscino ; he told his mother that he 
 would sup with Don Silverio. 
 
 When Adone entered the book-room his friend 
 was seated at a deal table laden with volumes 
 and manuscripts, but he was neither writing nor 
 reading, nor had he lighted his lamp. The moon- 
 light shone through the vine climbing up and 
 covering the narrow window. He looked up and 
 saw by Adone's countenance that something was 
 wrong. 
 
 " What are they coming for, sir, to the river? " 
 said the young man as he uncovered his head on 
 the threshold of the chamber. Don Silverio hesi- 
 
 9 
 
ii4 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 tated to reply ; in the moonlight his features 
 looked like a mask of a dead man, it was so white 
 and its lines so deep. 
 
 " Why do they come to the river, these 
 strangers?" repeated Adone. "They would not 
 say. They were on my land. I threatened to 
 drive my cattle over them. Then they went. 
 But can you guess, sir, why they come ? " 
 
 Don Silverio still hesitated. Adone repeated 
 his question #ith more insistence; he came up 
 to the table and leaned his hands upon it, and 
 looked down on the face of his friend. 
 
 "Why do they come?" he repeated a fourth 
 time. They must have some reason. Surely you 
 know?" 
 
 " Listen, Adone, and control yourself," said 
 Don Silverio. "I saw something in a journal a 
 few days ago which made me go to San Beda. 
 But there they knew nothing at all of what the 
 newspaper had stated. What I said startled and 
 alarmed them. I begged the Prior to acquaint me 
 if he heard of any scheme affecting us. To-day, 
 only, he has sent a young monk over with a letter 
 to me, for it was only yesterday that he heard 
 that there is a project in Rome to turn the river 
 out of its course, and use it for hydraulic power ; 
 to what purpose he does not know. -The towns- 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 115 
 
 folk of San Beda are in entire sympathy with this 
 district and against the scheme, which will only 
 benefit a foreign syndicate. That is all I know, 
 for it is all he knows ; he took his information 
 direct from the syndic, Count Corradini. My 
 boy, my dear boy, control yourself ! " 
 
 Adone had dropped down on a chair, and 
 leaning his elbow on the table hid his face upon 
 his hands. A tremor shook his frame from head 
 to foot. 
 
 " I knew it was some devilry," he muttered. 
 " Oh, Lord ! oh, Lord ! would that I had made 
 the oxen trample them into a thousand pieces ! 
 They ought never to have left my field alive ! " 
 
 " Hush, hush ! " said the priest sternly. " I 
 cannot have such language in my house. Compose 
 yourself." 
 
 Adone raised his head ; his eyes were alight as 
 with fire ; his face was darkly red. 
 
 " What, sir ! You tell me the river is to be 
 taken away from us, and you ask me to be calm ! 
 It is not in human nature to bear such a wrong in 
 peace. Take away the Edera ! Take away the 
 water ! They had better cut our throats. What ! 
 a poor wretch who steals a few grapes off a vine, 
 a few eggs from a hen roost, is called a thief and 
 hounded to the galleys, and such robbery as this 
 
n6 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 is to be borne in silence because the thieves wear 
 broadcloth ! It cannot be. It cannot be ; I 
 swear it shall never be whilst I have life. The 
 river is mine. We reigned here three hundred 
 years and more ; you have told me so. It is written 
 on the parchments. I will hold my own." 
 
 Don Silverio was silent ; he was silent from 
 remorse. He had told Adone what, without him, 
 Adone would have lived and died never knowing 
 or dreaming. He had thought only to stimulate 
 the youth to gentle conduct, honourable pride, 
 perhaps to some higher use of his abilities : no 
 more than this. 
 
 He had never seen the young man thus violent 
 and vehement ; he had always found him tranquil 
 to excess, difficult to rouse, slow to anger, indeed 
 almost incapable of it ; partaking of the nature of 
 the calm and docile cattle with whom so much of 
 his time was passed. But under the spur of an 
 intolerable menace the warrior's blood which 
 slumbered in Adone leapt to action ; all at once 
 the fierce temper of the lords of Euscino displayed 
 its fire and its metal ; it was not the peasant of 
 the Terra Vergine who was before him now, but 
 the heir of the seigneury of the Rocca. 
 
 "It is not only what I told him of his race," 
 he thought. "If he had known nothing, none 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 117 
 
 the less would the blood in his veins have stirred 
 and the past have moved him." 
 
 Aloud he said : 
 
 " My son, I feel for you from the depths of my 
 soul. I feel with you also. For if these foreigners 
 take the river-water from us what will become of 
 my poor, desolate people, only too wretched already 
 as they are? You would not be alone in your 
 desperation, Adone. But do not let us take alarm 
 too quickly. This measure is in gestation ; but it 
 may never come to birth. Many such projects 
 are discussed which from one cause or another 
 are not carried out ; this one must pass through 
 many preliminary phases before it becomes fact. 
 There must be surely many vested rights which 
 cannot with impunity be invaded. Take courage. 
 Have patience." 
 
 He paused, for he saw that for the first time 
 since they had known each other, Adone was not 
 listening to him. 
 
 Adone was staring up at the moon which hung, 
 golden and full, in the dark blue sky, seeming 
 framed in the leaves and coils of the vine. 
 
 " The river is mine," he muttered. "The river 
 and I are as brothers. They shall kill me before 
 they touch the water." 
 
 " He will go mad or commit some great crime," 
 
u8 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 thought his friend, looking at him. "We must 
 move every lever and strain every nerve, to frus- 
 trate this scheme, to prevent this spoliation. But 
 if the thieves see money in it who shall stay their 
 hands?" 
 
 He rose and laid his hands on Adone's shoulders. 
 
 " To-night you are in no fitting state for calm 
 consideration of this possible calamity. Go home, 
 my son. Go to your room. Say nothing to your 
 mother. Pray and sleep. In the forenoon come 
 to me and we will speak of the measures which it 
 may be possible to take to have this matter 
 examined and opposed. We are very poor; but 
 still we are not altogether helpless. Only, there 
 must be no violence. You wrong yourself and 
 you weaken a good cause by such wild threats. 
 Good-night, my son. Go home." 
 
 The long habit of obedience to his superior, 
 and the instinctive docility of his temper com- 
 pelled Adone to submit ; he drew a long, deep 
 breath and the blood faded from his face. 
 
 Without a word he turned from the table and 
 went out of the presbytery into the night and the 
 white glory of the moonshine. 
 
VII 
 
 DON SILVEEIO drew to him his unfinished 
 letter to the Prior; the young monk who 
 would take it back in the morning to San Beda 
 was already asleep in a little chamber above. But 
 he could not write, he was too perturbed and too 
 anxious. Although he had spoken so calmly he 
 was full of carking care ; both for the threatened 
 evil in itself, and for its effects upon his parishion- 
 ers ; and especially upon Adone. He knew that in 
 this age it is more difficult to check the devouring 
 monster of commercial covetousness than it ever 
 was to stay the Bull of Crete; and that for a 
 poor and friendless community to oppose a strong 
 and wealthy band of speculators is indeed for the 
 wooden lance to shiver to atoms on the brazen 
 shield. 
 
 He left his writing table and extinguished his 
 lamp. Bidding the little dog lie still upon his chair, 
 
120 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 he went through the house to a door which 
 opened from it into the bell tower of his church 
 and which allowed him to go from the house to 
 the church without passing out into the street. 
 He climbed the belfry stairs once more, lighting 
 himself at intervals by striking a wooden match ; 
 for through the narrow loopholes in the walls the 
 moonbeams did not penetrate. He knew the way 
 so well that he could have gone up and down 
 those rotting stairs even in total darkness, and 
 he safely reached the platform of the bell 
 tower, though one halting step might have 
 eent him in that darkness head foremost to his 
 death. 
 
 He stood there, and gazed downwards on 
 the moonlit landscape far below, over the roofs 
 and the walls of the village towards the open 
 fields and the river, with beyond that the 
 wooded country and the cultured land known 
 as the Terra Vergine, and beyond those again 
 the moors, the marshes, and the mountains. 
 The moonlight shone with intense clearness 
 on the waters of the Edera and on the stone 
 causeway of the old one-arched bridge. On the 
 bridge there was a figure moving slowly; he 
 knew it to be that of Adone. Adone was going 
 home, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 121 
 
 He was relieved from the pressure of one 
 immediate anxiety, but his apprehensions for the 
 future were greai, both for the young man and 
 for the people of Euscino and its surrounding 
 country. To take away their river was to deprive 
 them of the little which they had to make life 
 tolerable and to supply the means of existence. 
 Its winter overflow nourished the fields which 
 they owned around it, and the only cornmill of 
 the district worked by a huge wheel in its water. 
 If the river were turned out of its course above 
 Kuscino the whole of this part of the vale would 
 be made desolate. 
 
 Life was already hard for the human creatures 
 in these fair scenes on which he looked ; without 
 the river their lot would be intolerable. 
 
 " Forbid it, Lord ! forbid this monstrous 
 wrong," he said, as he stood with bared head 
 under the starry skies. 
 
 When the people of a remote place are smitten 
 by a public power the blow falls on them as unin- 
 telligible in its meaning, as invisible in its agency, 
 as a thunderbolt is to the cattle whom it slays in 
 their stalls. Even Don Silverio, with his classic 
 culture and his archaeological learning, had little 
 comprehension of the means and methods by which 
 these enterprises were combined and carried out ; 
 
122 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the world of commerce and speculation is as aloof 
 from the scholar and the recluse as the rings of 
 Saturn or the sun of Aldebaran. Its mechanism, 
 its intentions, its combinations, its manners of 
 action, its ways of expenditure, its intrigues with 
 banks and governments: all these, to men who 
 dwell in rural solitudes, aloof from the babble of 
 crowds, are utterly unknown ; the very language 
 of the Bourses has no more meaning to them 
 than the jar of wheels or roar of steam. 
 
 He stood and looked with a sinking heart on 
 the quiet, moonlit country, and the winding 
 course of the water where it flowed, now silvery 
 in the light, now black in the gloom, passing 
 rapidly through the heather and the sallows 
 under the gigantic masses of the Etruscan walls. 
 It seemed to him to the full as terrible as to 
 Adone; but it did not seem to him so utterly 
 impossible, because he knew more of the ways of 
 men and of their unhesitating and immeasurable 
 cruelty whenever their greed was excited. If the 
 fury of speculation saw desirable prey in the 
 rape of the Edera then the Edera was doomed, 
 like the daughter of .ZEdipus or the daughter of 
 Jephtha. 
 
 Adone had gone across the bridge, but he had 
 remained by the waterside. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 123 
 
 " Pray and sleep ! " Don Silverio had said in 
 his last words. But to Adone it seemed that 
 neither prayer nor sleep would ever come to 
 him again so long as this impending evil hung 
 over him and the water of Edera. 
 
 He spent the first part of that summer night 
 wandering aimlessly up and down his own bank, 
 blind to the beauty of the moonlight, deaf to the 
 songs of the nightingales, his mind filled with one 
 thought. An hour after midnight he went home 
 and let himself into the silent house by a small 
 door which opened at the back, and which he 
 used on such rare occasions as he stayed out late. 
 He struck a match and went up to his room, and 
 threw himself, dressed, upon his bed. His mother 
 was listening for his return, but she did not call 
 to him. She knew he was a man now, and must 
 be left to his own will. 
 
 "What ails Adone that he is not home?" had 
 asked old Gianna. Clelia Alba had been herself 
 perturbed by his absence at that hour, but she 
 had answered : 
 
 "What he likes to tell, he tells. Prying ques- 
 tions make false tongues. I have never questioned 
 him since he was breeched." 
 
 " There are not many women like you," had said 
 Gianna, partly in admiration, half in impatience, 
 
124 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Adone is a boy for you and me," had replied 
 his mother. " But for himself and for all others 
 he is a man. We must remember it." 
 
 Gianna had muttered mumbled, rebellious 
 words; he did not seem other than a child to 
 her; she had been one of those present at his 
 birth on the shining sands of the Edera. 
 
 He could not sleep. He could only listen to 
 the distant murmur of the river. With dawn the 
 women awoke. Nerina came running down the 
 steep stone stair and went to let out and feed 
 her charges, the fowls. Gianna went to the 
 well in the court with her bronze pitcher and pail. 
 Clelia Alba cut great slices of bread at the kitchen 
 table ; and hooked the cauldron of maize flour to 
 the chain above the fire on the kitchen hearth. 
 He could not wait for their greetings, their 
 questions, the notice which his changed mien 
 would surely attract. For the first time in all 
 his twenty-four years of life he went out of the 
 house without a word to his mother, and took 
 his way to the river again; for the first time 
 he was neglectful of his cattle and forgetful of 
 the land. 
 
 Nerina came in from the fowl-house with p. 1 arm 
 on her face. 
 
 " Madama Clelia ! " she said timidly, " Adone 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 125 
 
 has gone away without feeding and watering the 
 oxen. May I do it ? " 
 
 " Can you manage them, little one ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; they love me." 
 
 " Go then ; but take care." 
 
 " She is a good child ! " said Gianna. " The 
 beasts won't hurt her. They know their friends." 
 
 Clelia Alba, to whom her own and her son's 
 dignity was dear, said nothing of her own dis- 
 pleasure and surprise at Adone's absence. But 
 she was only the more distressed by it. Never, 
 since he had been old enough to work at all, had 
 he been missing in the hours of labour. 
 
 ' I only pray," she thought, "that no woman 
 may have hold of him." 
 
 Adone hardly knew what he did ; he was like a 
 man who has had a blow on the temple ; his sight 
 was troubled; his blood seemed to burn in his 
 brain. He wandered from habit through the 
 fields and down to the river, to the spot where 
 from his infancy he had been used to bathe. He 
 took off his clothes and waded into the water, 
 which was cold as snow after the night. The 
 shock of the cold, and the sense of the running 
 current laving his limbs, restored him in a measure 
 to himself. He swam down the stream in the 
 shadow of the early morning. The air was full of 
 
iz6 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the scent of dog-roses and flowering thyme ; he 
 turned on his back and floated ; between him and 
 the sky a hawk passed ; the bell of the church was 
 tolling for the diurnal mass. He ran along in the 
 sun, as it grew warm, to dry his skin by movement, 
 as his wont was. He was still stupefied by the 
 fear which had fallen upon him ; but the water 
 had cooled and braced him. 
 
 He had forgotten his mother, the cattle, the 
 labours awaiting him ; his whole mind was 
 absorbed in this new horror sprung up in his 
 path, none knew from where, or by whom be- 
 gotten. The happy, unconscious stream ran 
 singing at his feet as the nightingale sang in the 
 acacia thickets, its brown mountain water growing 
 green and limpid as it passed over submerged 
 grass and silver sand. 
 
 How could any thieves conspire to take it from 
 the country in which it was born ? How could 
 any dare to catch it, and imprison it, and put it to 
 vile uses ? It was a living thing, a free thing, a 
 precious thing, more precious than jewel or gold. 
 Both jewels and gold the law protected. Could it 
 not protect the Edera ? 
 
 " Something must be done, ".he said to himself. 
 "But what?" 
 
 He had not the faintest knowledge of what 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 127 
 
 could or should be done; he regretted that he 
 had not written his mark with the horns and 
 the hoofs of his oxen on the foreign invaders ; 
 they might never again fall into his power. 
 
 He had never felt before such ferocious or cruel 
 instincts as arose in him now. Don Silverio 
 seemed to him tame and lukewarm before this 
 monstrous conspiracy of strangers. He knew 
 that a priest must not give way to anger; yet 
 it seemed to him that even a priest should be 
 roused to fury here; there was a wrath which 
 was holy. 
 
 When he was clothed he stood and looked down 
 again at the gliding stream. 
 
 A feeble, cracked voice called to him from the 
 opposite bank. 
 
 " Adone, my lad, what is this tale ? " 
 
 The speaker was an old man of eighty odd 
 years, a native of Euscino, one Patrizio Cambi, 
 who was not yet too feeble to cut the rushes and 
 osiers, and maintained a widowed daughter and 
 her young children by that means. 
 
 "What tale?" said Adone, unwilling to be 
 roused from his own dark thoughts. "What 
 tale, Trizio?" 
 
 " That they are going to meddle with the river," 
 ^answered the old man. " They can't do it, can 
 -.they?" 
 
128 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " What have you heard ? " 
 
 "That they are going to meddle with the 
 river." 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 " The Lord knows, or the devil. There was a 
 waggon with four horses came as near as it could 
 get to us in the woods yonder by Buffo's, and the 
 driver told Buffo that the gentry he drove had 
 come by road from that town by the sea I forget 
 its name in order to see the river, this river, our 
 river ; and that he had brought another posse of 
 gentry two weeks or more on the same errand, 
 and that they were a-measuring and a-plumbing 
 it, and that they were going to get possession of it 
 somehow or other, but Buffo could not hear any- 
 thing more than that ; and I supposed that you 
 knew, because this part of it is yours if it be any 
 man's ; this part of it that runs through the Terra 
 Vergine." 
 
 " Yes, it is mine," answered Adone very slowly. 
 " It is mine here, and it was once ours from source 
 to sea." 
 
 " Aye, it is ours ! " said old Trizio Cambi mis- 
 taking him. He was a man once tall, but now 
 bent nearly double; he had a harsh, wrinkled 
 face, brown as a hazel nut, and he was nearly a 
 skeleton ; but he had eyes which were still fine 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 129 
 
 and still had some fire in them. In his youth he 
 had been a Garibaldino. 
 
 "It is ours," repeated Trizio. "At least if 
 anything belongs to poor folks. What say you, 
 Adone?" 
 
 " Much belongs to the poor, but others take it 
 from them," said Adone. "You have seen a 
 hawk take a sparrow, Trizio. The poor count 
 no more than the sparrows." 
 
 "But the water is the gift of God," said the 
 old man. 
 
 Adone did not answer. 
 
 " What can we do ? " said Trizio, wiping the 
 dew off his sickle. "Who knows aught of us? 
 Who cares ? If the rich folks want the river they 
 will take it, curse them ! " 
 
 Adone did not answer. He knew that it was 
 so, all over the earth. 
 
 " We shall know no more than birds tangled in 
 a net," said Trizio. " They will come and work 
 their will." 
 
 Adone rose up out of the grass. " I will go 
 and see Buffo," he said. He was glad to do 
 something. 
 
 " Ruffo knows no more than that," said Trizio 
 angrily. " The driver of the horses knew no 
 more." 
 
 10 
 
1 3 o THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Adone paid him no heed, but began to push his 
 way through the thick network of the interlaced 
 heather. He thought that perhaps Ruffo, a man 
 who made wooden shoes, and hoops for casks, and 
 shaped chestnut poles for vines, might tell him 
 more than had been told to old Trizio ; might at 
 least be able to suggest from what quarter and 
 in what shape this calamity was rising, to burst 
 over their valley as a hailstorm broods above, 
 then breaks, on helpless fields and defenceless 
 gardens, beating down without warning the birds 
 and the blossoms of spring. 
 
 When he had been in Lombardy he had seen 
 once a great steam-engine at work, stripping a 
 moorland of its natural growth and turning it 
 into ploughed land. He remembered how the 
 huge machine with its stench of oil and fire had 
 forced its way through the furze and ferns and 
 wild roses and myrtle, and torn them up, and 
 flung them on one side, and scattered and trampled 
 all the insect life, and all the bird life, and all the 
 hares, and field mice, and stoats, and hedgehogs, 
 who made their home there. "A fine sight," a 
 man had said to him ; and he had answered, 
 "A cursed wickedness." Was this what they 
 would do to the vale of Edera? If they took the 
 river they could not spare the land. He felt 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 131 
 
 scared, bruised, terrified, like one of these poor 
 moorland hares. He remembered a poor stoat 
 which, startled out of its sleep, had turned and 
 bitten one of the iron wheels of the machine, 
 and the wheel had gone over it and crushed 
 it into a mass of blood and fur. He was as 
 furious and as helpless as the stoat had been. 
 
 But when he had walked the four miles which 
 separated the Terra Vergine from the chestnut 
 woods where the maker of wooden shoes lived, he 
 heard nothing else from Buffo than this : that 
 gentlemen had come from Teramo to study the 
 Edera water; they were going to turn it aside 
 and use it ; more than that the man who had 
 driven them had not heard and could not explain. 
 
 " There were four horses, and he had nothing 
 to give them but water and grass," said the 
 cooper. " The gentry brought wine and food for 
 themselves. They came the day before yesterday 
 and slept here. They went away this morning. 
 They paid me well, oh, very well. I did what I 
 could for them. It is five- and- thirty miles if one 
 off Teramo, aye, nearer forty. They followed 
 the old posting road ; but you know where it 
 enters the woods it is all overgrown, and gone to 
 rack and ruin, from want of use. In my grand- 
 father's time it was a fine, well-kept highway, with 
 
132 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 posthouses every ten miles, though a rare place 
 for robbery ; but nowadays nobody wants it at all, 
 for nobody comes or goes. It will soon be blocked, 
 so the driver says ; it will soon be quite choked 
 up what with brambles, and rocks, and fallen 
 trees, and what not. He was black with rage, 
 for he was obliged to go back as he had come, 
 and he said he had been cheated into the job." 
 
 Adone listened wearily to the garrulous Buffo, 
 who emphasised each phrase with a blow of his 
 little hammer on a shoe. He had wasted all his 
 morning hours, and learned nothing. He felt like 
 a man who is lost in a strange and deserted 
 country at night ; he could find no clue, could see 
 no light. Perhaps if he went to the seaport town, 
 which was the Prefecture, he might hear some- 
 thing? 
 
 But he had never left the valley of the Edera 
 except for that brief time which he had passed 
 under arms in the north. He felt that he had no 
 means, no acquaintance, no knowledge, whereby 
 he could penetrate the mystery of this scheme. 
 He did not even know the status of the promoters, 
 or the scope of their speculation. The Prefecture 
 was placed in a port on the Adriatic which had 
 considerable trade to the Dalmatian and Greek 
 coasts, but he scarcely knew its name. If he went 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 133 
 
 there what could he do or learn ? Would the stones 
 speak, or the waves tell that which he thirsted 
 to know? What use was the martial blood in 
 his veins ? He could not strike an invisible foe. 
 
 " Don't go to meet trouble half way," said the 
 man Buffo, meaning well. " I may have mistaken 
 the driver. They cannot take hold of a river, how 
 should they ? Water slips through your fingers. 
 Where it was set running in the beginning of the 
 world, there it will go on running till the crack of 
 doom. Let them look; let them prate; they 
 can't take it." 
 
 But Adone's reason would not allow him to be 
 so consoled. 
 
 He understood a little of what hydraulic science 
 can compass ; he knew what canalisation meant, 
 and its assistance to traffic and trade ; he had 
 seen the waterworks on the Po, on the Adige, on 
 the Mincio ; he had heard how the Velino had been 
 enslaved for the steel foundry of Terni, how the 
 Nerino fed the ironworks of Narni ; he had seen 
 the Adda captive at Lodi, and the lakes held in 
 bond at Mantua ; he had read of the water drawn 
 from Monte Amiata ; and not very many miles off 
 him, in the Abruzzo, was that hapless Fuscino, 
 which had been emptied and dried up by rich 
 meddlers of Rome. 
 
134 T H WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 He knew also enough of the past to know how 
 water had been forced to serve the will and the 
 wants of the Koman Consulate and the Koman 
 Empire, of how the marble aqueducts had cast 
 the shadow of their arches over the land, and 
 how the provinces had been tunnelled and bridged 
 and canalised and irrigated, during two thousand 
 years, by those whose bones were dust under the 
 Latin soil. He could not wholly cheat himself, 
 as these unlettered men could do ; he knew that 
 if the commerce which has succeeded the Caesars 
 as ruler of the world coveted the waters of Edera, 
 the river was lost to the home of its birth and 
 to him. 
 
 " How shall I tell my mother? " he asked himself 
 as he walked back through the fragant and 
 solitary country. He felt ashamed at his own 
 helplessness and ignorance. If courage could 
 have availed anything he would not have been 
 wanting; but all that was needed here was a 
 worldly and technical knowledge, of which he 
 possessed no more than did the trout in the 
 stream. 
 
 As he neared his home, pushing his way 
 laboriously through the interlaced bracken and 
 heaths which had never been cut for a score of 
 years, he saw approaching him the tall, slender 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 135 
 
 form of Don Silverio, moving slowly, for the 
 heather was breast high, his little dog barking 
 at a startled wood-pigeon. 
 
 ''They are anxious about you at your house," 
 Don Silverio said with some sternness. "Is it 
 well to cause your mother this disquietude?" 
 
 "No, it is not well," replied Adone. "But 
 how can I see her and not tell her, and how can 
 I tell her this thing?" 
 
 "Women to bear trouble are braver than men," 
 said the priest. " They have more patience in 
 pain than we. I have said something to her; 
 but we need not yet despair. We know nothing 
 of any certainty. Sometimes such schemes are 
 abandoned at the last moment because too costly 
 or too unremunerative. Sometimes they drag on 
 for half a lifetime ; and at the end nothing comes 
 of them." 
 
 " You have told my mother? " 
 
 " I told her what troubles you, and made you 
 leave your work undone. The little girl was 
 feeding the cattle." 
 
 Adone coloured. He was conscious of the 
 implied rebuke. 
 
 " Sir," he said in a low tone, "if this accursed 
 thing comes to pass what will become of us? 
 What I said in my haste last night I say in cold 
 reason to-day." 
 
136 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Then you are wrong, and you will turn a 
 calamity into a curse. Men often do so." 
 
 " It is more than a calamity." 
 
 "Perhaps. Would not some other grief be yet 
 worse ? If you were stricken with blindness ? " 
 
 " No ; I should still hear the river running." 
 
 Don Silverio looked at him. He saw by the 
 set, sleepless, reckless look on his face that the 
 young man was in no mood to be reached by 
 any argument, or to be susceptible to either 
 rebuke or consolation. The time might come 
 when he would be so ; but that time was far off 
 he feared. The evenness, the simplicity, the 
 loneliness of Adone's existence, made it open to 
 impressions, and absorbed by them, as busy and 
 changeful lives never are ; it was like the heather 
 plants around them, it would not bear trans- 
 planting ; its birthplace would be its tomb. 
 
 " Let us go back to your mother," he said. 
 "Why should you shun her? What you feel 
 she feels also. Why leave her alone?" 
 
 " I will go home," said Adone. 
 
 "Yes, come home. You must see that there 
 is nothing to be done or to be learned as yet. 
 When they know anything fresh at San Bed a 
 they will let me know. The Prior is a man of 
 good faith." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 137 
 
 Adone turned on him almost savagely ; his eyes 
 were full of sullen anger. 
 
 " And I am to bear my days like this? Knowing 
 nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing to pro- 
 tect the water that is as dear to me as a brother, 
 and the land which is my own ? What will the 
 land be without the river ? You forget, sir, you 
 forget ! " 
 
 " No, I do not forget," said Don Silverio 
 without offence. " But I ask you to hear reason. 
 What can you possibly do ? Think you no man 
 has been wronged before you? Think you that 
 you alone here will suffer ? The village will be 
 ruined. Do you feel for yourself alone? " 
 
 Adone seemed scarcely to Kear. He was like 
 a man in a fever who sees one set of images and 
 cannot see anything else. 
 
 " Sir," he said suddenly, " why will you not go 
 to Borne?" 
 
 " To Rome?" echoed the priest in amazement. 
 
 " There alone can the truth of this thing be 
 learned," said Adone. "It is to Eome that the 
 promoters of this scheme must carry it ; there to 
 be permitted or forbidden as the Government 
 chooses. All these things are brought about by 
 bribes, by intrigues, by union. Without authority 
 from high office they cannot be done. We here 
 
138 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 do not even know who are buying or selling 
 us " 
 
 " No, we do not," said Don Silverio ; and he 
 thought, " When the cart-horse is bought by the 
 knacker what matter to him the name of his 
 purchaser or his price?" 
 
 " Sir," said Adone, with passionate entreaty. 
 " Do go to Eome. There alone can the truth be 
 learnt. You, a learned man, can find means to 
 meet learned people. I would go, I would have 
 gone yesternight, but, when I should get there, I 
 know no more than a stray dog where to go or 
 from whom to inquire. They would see I am a 
 country fellow. They would shut the doors in 
 my face. But you carry respect with you. No 
 one would dare to flout you. You could find 
 ways and means to know who moves this scheme, 
 how far it is advanced, what chance there is of 
 our defeating it. Go, I beseech you, go! " 
 
 " My son, you amaze me," said Don Silverio. 
 "I? In Kome? I have not stirred out of this 
 district for eighteen years. I am nothing. I 
 have no voice. I have no weight. I am a poor 
 rural vicar buried here for punishment." 
 
 He stopped abruptly, for no complaint of the 
 injustice from which he suffered had ever in those 
 eighteen years escaped him. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 139 
 
 " Go, go," said Adone. " You carry respect with 
 you. You are learned and will know how to find 
 those in power and how to speak to them. Go, 
 go ! Have pity on all of us, your poor, helpless, 
 menaced people." 
 
 Don Silverio was silent. 
 
 Was it now his duty to go into the haunts of 
 men, as it had been his duty to remain shut up 
 in the walls of Kuscino ? The idea appalled him. 
 
 Accomplished and self-possessed though he was, 
 his fine mind and his fine manners had not served 
 wholly to protect him from that rust and nervous- 
 ness which come from the disuse of society and 
 the absence of intercourse with equals. 
 
 It seemed to him impossible that he could 
 again enter cities, recall usages, seek out acquaint- 
 ances, move in the stir of streets, and wait in 
 antechambers. 
 
 That was the life of the world; he had done 
 with it, forsworn it utterly, both by order of his 
 superiors and by willing self-sacrifice. Yet he 
 knew that Adone was right. It was only from 
 men of the world and amongst them, it was only 
 in the great cities, that it was possible to follow 
 up the clue of such speculations as now threatened 
 the vale of Edera. 
 
 The young man he knew could not do what 
 
HO THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 was needed, and certainly would get no hearing 
 a peasant of the Abruzzo border, who looked like 
 a figure of Giorgione's, and would probably be 
 arrested as an anarchist if he were to endeavour 
 to enter any great house or public office. But to 
 go to Eome himself ! To revisit the desecrated 
 city! This seemed to him a pilgrimage impos- 
 sible except for the holiest purpose. He felt as if 
 the very stones of Trastevere would rise up and 
 laugh at him, a country priest with the moss and 
 the mould of a score of years passed in rural 
 obscurity upon him. Moreover, to revisit Eome 
 would be to tear open wounds long healed. There 
 his studious youth had been passed, and there his 
 ambitious dreams had been dreamed. 
 
 " I cannot go to Eome," he said abruptly. 
 " Do not ask me, I cannot go to Eome." 
 
 " Then I will go," said Adone ; " and if in no 
 other way, I will force myself into the king's 
 palace and make him hear." 
 
 " And his guards will seize you, and his judges 
 will chain jou up in a solitary cell for life ! Do 
 not say such mad things. What could the king 
 reply, even if he listened, which he would not do ? 
 He would say that these things were for ministers 
 and prefects and surveyors and engineers to judge 
 of, not for him or you. Be reasonable, Adone; 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 141 
 
 do not speak or act like a fool. This is the first 
 grief you have known in your life, and you are 
 distraught by it. That is natural enough, my 
 poor boy. But you exaggerate the danger. It 
 must be far off as yet. It is a mere project." 
 
 "And I am to remain here, tilling the land in 
 silence and inaction until, one day without notice, 
 I shall see a crowd of labourers at work upon the 
 river, and shall see appraisers measuring my 
 fields! You know that is how things are done. 
 You know the poor are always left in the dark 
 until all is ripe for their robbery. Look you, sir, 
 if you go to Rome I will wait in such patience as 
 as I can for whatever you may learn. But if you 
 do not go, I go, and if I can do no better I will 
 take the king by the throat." 
 
 "I have a mind to take you by the throat 
 myself," said Don Silverio, with an irritation 
 which he found it hard to contrql. " Well, I will 
 think over what you wish, and if I find it possible, 
 if I think it justified, if I can afford the means, if 
 I can obtain the permission, for such a journey, I 
 will go to Eome ; for your sake, for your mother's 
 sake. I will let you know my decision later. 
 Let us walk homeward. The sun is low. At 
 your house the three women must be anxious." 
 
 Adone accompanied him in silence through the 
 
142 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 heather, of which the blossoming expanse was 
 reddening in the light of the late afternoon until 
 the land looked a ruby ocean. They did not 
 speak again until they reached the confines of 
 the Terra Vergine. 
 
 Then Don Silverio took the path which went 
 through the pasture to the bridge, and Adone 
 turned towards his own dwelling. 
 
 " Spare your mother. Speak gently," said the 
 elder man ; the younger man made a sign of assent 
 and of obedience. 
 
 "He will go to Home," said Adone to himself, 
 and almost he regretted that he had urged the 
 journey, for in his own veins the fever of unrest 
 and the sting of fierce passions were throbbing, 
 and he panted and pined for action. He was the 
 heir of the lords of the river. 
 
VIII 
 
 LIKE the cooper Buffo, Clelia Alba had received 
 the tidings with incredulity, though aghast 
 at the mere suggestion. 
 
 " It is impossible," she said. She had seen 
 the water there ever since she had been a babe in 
 swaddling clothes. 
 
 "It is not possible," she said, " that any man 
 could be profane enough to alter the bed which 
 heaven had given it." 
 
 But she was sorely grieved to see the effect 
 such a fear had upon Adone. 
 
 " I was afraid it was a woman," she thought ; 
 " but this thing, could it be true, would be worse 
 than any harlot or adulteress. If they took away 
 the river the land would perish. It lives by the 
 river." 
 
 " The river is our own as far as we touch it," 
 she said aloud to her son ; " but it was the earth's 
 
 143 
 
144 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 before it was ours. To sever water from the land 
 it lives in were worse than to snatch a child from 
 its mother's womb." 
 
 Adone did not tell her that water was no more 
 sacred than land to the modern contractor. She 
 would learn that all too soon if the conspiracy 
 against the Edera succeeded. But he tried to 
 learn from her what legal rights they possessed to 
 the stream : what had his father thought ? He 
 knew well that his old hereditary claim to the 
 Lordship of Euscino, however capable of proof, 
 would be set aside as fantastic and untenable; 
 but their claim to the water through the holding 
 of Terra Vergine could surely not be set aside. 
 
 " Your father never said aught about the water 
 that I can remember," she answered. " I think 
 he would no more have thought it needful to say 
 it was his than to say that you were his son. It 
 is certain we are writ down in the district as 
 owners of the ground ; we pay taxes for it ; and 
 the title of the water must be as one with that." 
 
 " So say I ; at least over what runs through 
 our fields we, alone, have any title, and for that 
 title I will fight to the death," said Adone. 
 " Eiver rights go with the land through which 
 the river passes." 
 
 "But, my son," she said with true wisdom, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 145 
 
 " your father would never have allowed any danger 
 to the water to make him faithless to the land. 
 If you let this threat, this dread, turn you away 
 from your work ; if you let your fears make you 
 neglect your fields and your olives, and your cattle 
 and your vines, you will do more harm to yourself 
 than the worst enemy can do you. To leave a 
 farm to itself is to call down the vengeance of 
 heaven. A week's abandonment undoes the 
 work of years. I and Gianna and the child do 
 what we can, but we are women, and Nerina is 
 young." 
 
 " No doubt you speak wisely, mother," replied 
 Adone humbly. "But of what use is it to dress 
 and manure a vine, if the accursed phylloxera be 
 in its sap and at its root ? What use is it to till 
 these lands if they be doomed to perish from 
 thirst?" 
 
 " Do your best," said his mother, " then the 
 fault will not lie with you, whatever happen." 
 
 The counsel was sound ; but to Adone all 
 savour and hope were gone out of his labour. 
 When he saw the green gliding water shine 
 through the olive branches, and beyond the foliage 
 of the walnut-trees, his arms fell nerveless to his 
 side, his throat swelled with sobs, which he 
 checked as they rose, but which were only the 
 
 ii 
 
146 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 more bitter for that all the joy and the peace of 
 his day's work were gone. 
 
 It was but a small space of it to one whose 
 ancestors had reigned over the stream from its 
 rise in the oak woods to its fall into the sea ; but 
 he thought that no one could dispute or diminish 
 or disregard his exclusive possession of the Edera 
 water where it ran through his fields. They could 
 not touch that, even if they seized it lower down, 
 where it ran through other communes. Were 
 they to take it above his land, above the bridge 
 of Ruscino, its bed here would be dried up, and 
 his homestead and the village both be ruined. 
 The clear, intangible right which he meant to 
 defend at any cost, in any manner, was his 
 right to have the river run untouched through 
 his fields. The documents which proved the 
 rights of the great extinct Seigneury might be 
 useless, but the limited, shrunken right of the 
 peasant ownership was as unassailable as his 
 mother's right to the three strings of pearls; 
 or so he believed. 
 
 The rights of the Lords of Euscino might be 
 but shadows of far-off things, things of tradition, 
 of history, of romance, but the rights of the 
 peasant proprietors of the Terra Vergine must, 
 he thought, be respected if there were any justice 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 147 
 
 upon earth, for they were plainly writ down in 
 the municipal registers of San Beda. To rouse 
 others to defend their equal rights in the same 
 way, from the source of the Edera to its union 
 with the Adriatic, seemed to him the first effort 
 to be made. He was innocent enough to believe 
 that it would suffice to prove that its loss would 
 be their ruin to obtain redress at once. 
 
 Whilst Don Silverio was still hesitating as to 
 what seemed to him this momentous and painful 
 journey to Rome his mind was made up by a 
 second letter received from the Superior of the 
 Certosa at San Beda, the friend to whom he had 
 confided the task of inquiring as to the project 
 for the Edera. 
 
 This letter was long, and in Latin. They were 
 two classics, who liked thus to refresh them- 
 selves and each other with epistles such as St. 
 Augustine or Tertullian might have penned. The 
 letter was of elegant scholarship, but its contents 
 were unwelcome. It said that the Most Honour- 
 able the Syndic of San Beda had enjoyed a con- 
 ference with the Prefect of the province, and it 
 had therein transpired that the project for the 
 works upon the river Edera had been long well 
 known to the Prefect, and that such project was 
 approved by the existing Government, and there- 
 
148 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 fore by all the Government officials, as was but 
 natural. It was not admitted that the Commune 
 of San Beda had any local interest or local right 
 sufficiently strong to oppose the project, as such 
 a claim would amount to a monopoly, and no 
 monopoly could exist in a district through which 
 a running river partially passed, and barely one- 
 fifth of the course of this stream lay through that 
 district known as the valley of the Edera. The 
 entire Circondario, except the valley, was believed 
 to be in favour of the project, which the Prefect 
 informed the Syndic could not be otherwise than 
 most favourable to the general interests of the 
 country at large. 
 
 " Therefore, most honoured and revered friend," 
 wrote the Superior of the Cistercians, " his most 
 esteemed worship does not see his way to him- 
 self suggest opposition to this course in our 
 Town Council, or in our Provincial Council, 
 and the Most "Worshipful the Assessors do not 
 either see theirs ; it being, as you know, an 
 equivocal and onerous thing for either council to 
 express or suggest in their assembly views an- 
 tagonistic to those of the Prefecture, so that I 
 fear, most honoured and reverend friend, it will 
 t not be in my power farther to press this matter, 
 and I fear also that your parish of Euscino, being 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 149 
 
 isolated and sparsely populated, and its chief 
 area uncultivated, will be possessed of but one 
 small voice in this matter, the interests of the 
 greater number being always in such a case pre- 
 ferred." 
 
 Don Silverio read the letter twice, its stately 
 and correct Latinity not serving to disguise the 
 mean and harsh fact of its truly modern logic. 
 " Because we are few and poor and weak we 
 have no rights ! " he said bitterly. " Because 
 the water comes from others, and goes to others, 
 it is not ours whilst in our land ! " 
 
 He did not blame his friend at San Beda. 
 
 Ecclesiastics existed only on sufferance, and 
 any day the Certosa might be closed if its inmates 
 offended the ruling powers. But the letter, never- 
 theless, lay like a stone on his heart. All the 
 harshness, the narrowness, the disregard of the 
 interests of the weak, the rude, rough, tyrannical 
 pressing onward of the strong to their own selfish 
 aims, all the characteristics of the modern world 
 seemed to find voice in it and jeer at him. 
 
 It was not for the first time in his life that he 
 had pressed against the iron gates of interest and 
 formula and oppression, and only bruised his 
 breast and torn his hands. 
 
 He had a little sum of money put by in *case 
 
150 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 of illness and for his burial ; that was the only 
 fund on which he could draw to take him to 
 Rome and keep him when there, and it was so 
 small that it would be soon exhausted. He passed 
 the best part of the night doubting which way 
 his duty pointed. He fasted, prayed, and com- 
 muned with his soul, and at length it seemed to 
 him as if a voice from without said to him, 
 " Take up your staff, and go." For the journey 
 appalled him, and where his inclination pointed 
 he had taught himself to see error. He shrank 
 inexpressibly from going into the noise and glare 
 and crowd of men ; he clung to his solitude as a 
 timid animal to its lair; and therefore he felt 
 persuaded that he ought to leave Ruscino on his 
 errand, because it was so acutely painful to him. 
 
 Whilst he should be gone Adone at least would 
 do nothing rash ; would of course await the issue 
 of his investigations. Time brings council, and 
 time, he hoped, would in this instance befriend 
 him. He had already obtained the necessary 
 permission to leave his parish ; he then asked 
 for a young friend from San Beda to take his 
 place in the village ; left his little dog to the care 
 of Nerina; took his small hoard in a leathern 
 bag strapped to his loins, and went on his way 
 at daybreak along the south-west portion of 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 151 
 
 the valley, to cover pn foot the long distance 
 which lay between him and the nearest place at 
 which a public vehicle went twice a week to 
 a railway station ; whence he could take the 
 train to Terni and so to Rome. 
 
 Adone accompanied him the first half of the 
 way, but they said little to one another ; their 
 hearts were full. Adone could not forget the 
 rebuke given to him, and Don Silverio was too 
 wise a man to lean heavily on a sore and aching 
 wound, or repeat counsels already given and 
 rejected. 
 
 At the third milestone he stopped and begged, 
 in a tone which was a command, the young man 
 to return home. 
 
 " Do not leave your land for me," he said. 
 " Every hour is of gold at this season. -Go back, 
 my son ! I pray that I may bring you peace." 
 
 " Give me your blessing," said Adone meekly, 
 and he knelt down in the dust of the roadside. 
 His friend gave it ; then their hands met in silent 
 farewell. 
 
 The sun had risen, and the cold clear air was 
 yielding to its rays. The young man reluctantly 
 turned back, and left the priest to go onward 
 alone, a tall, dark figure in the morning light ; 
 the river running between acacia thickets and 
 
152 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 rushes on his right. Before long he was forced 
 to leave the course of the stream, and ascend 
 a rugged and precipitous road which mounted 
 southward and westward through oak woods 
 into the mountains between the Leonessa and 
 Gran Sasso, until it reached a shrunken, desolate 
 village, with fine Etruscan and Koman remains 
 left to perish, and a miserable hostelry,, with 
 the miserable diligences starting from it on alter- 
 nate days, the only remains of its former posting 
 activity. There he arrived late in the evening, 
 and broke his fast on a basin of bean soup, then 
 rested on a bench, for he could not bring him- 
 self to enter the filthy bed which was alone to 
 be obtained, .and spent the following morning 
 examining the ancient ruins, for the conveyance 
 did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon. 
 When that hour came he made one of the 
 travellers, all country folks, who were packed 
 close as pigeons in a crate in the ramshackle, 
 noisy, broken-down vehicle, which lumbered on 
 its way behind its lean and suffering horses, 
 through woods and hills and along mountain 
 passes of a grandeur and a beauty on which the 
 eyes of educated travellers rarely looked. 
 
 The journey by this conveyance occupied seven 
 hours, and he was obliged to wait five more at 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 153 
 
 that village station which was the nearest point 
 at which he could meet the train which went 
 from Terni to Rome. Only parliamentary trains 
 stop at such obscure places ; and this one seemed 
 to him slower even than the diligence had been. 
 It was crammed with country lads going to the 
 conscription levy in the capital : some of them 
 drunk, some of them noisy and quarrelsome, some 
 in tears, some silent and sullen, all of them sad 
 company. The dusty, stinking, sun-scorched 
 waggons, open one to another, with the stench 
 of hot unwashed flesh, and the clouds of dust 
 driven through the unglazed windows, seemed to 
 Don Silverio a hell of man's own making, and in 
 remembrance his empty quiet room, with its vine- 
 hung window, at Kuscino, seemed by comparison 
 a lost heaven. 
 
 To think that there were thousands of men 
 who travelled thus, every day of every year, in 
 every country, many of them from no obligation 
 whatever, but from choice ! 
 
 "What lunatics, what raving idiots we should 
 look to Plato or to Socrates, could they see 
 us ! " he thought. Was what is called progress 
 anything else except increased insanity in human 
 life? 
 
 He leaned back in his corner, and bore the dust 
 
154 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 in his eyes and his throat as best he might, and 
 spoke a few kind words to the boys nearest to 
 him, and felt as if every bone in his body was 
 broken as the wooden and iron cage shook him 
 from side to side. The train stopped finally in 
 that area of bricks and mortar and vulgarity and 
 confusion where once stood the Baths of Diocle- 
 tian. It was late in the night when he heard the 
 name of Eome. 
 
 No scholar can hear that name without emotion. 
 On him it smote -with a keen personal pain, 
 awakening innumerable memories, calling from 
 their graves innumerable dreams. 
 
 He had left it a youth, filled with all the aspira- 
 tions, the fire, the courage, the faith, of a lofty 
 and spiritual temper. He returned to it a man 
 aged before his time, worn, weary, crushed, spirit- 
 less, with no future except death. 
 
 He descended from the waggon with the crowd 
 of jaded conscripts and mingled with that common 
 and cosmopolitan crowd which now defiles the 
 city of the Caesars. The fatigue of his body, and 
 the cramped pain of his aching spine, added to 
 the moral and the mental suffering which was 
 upon him as he moved a stranger and alone along 
 the new, unfamiliar streets where, alone here and 
 there, some giant ruin, some stately arch, some 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 155 
 
 marble form of god or prophet, recalled to him 
 the Urbs that he had known. 
 
 But he remembered the mission on which he 
 came; and he rebuked his self-indulgence in 
 mourning for his own broken fate. 
 
 " I am a faithless servant and a feeble friend," 
 he thought in self-reproach. " Let me not weaken 
 my poor remnant of strength in egotism and 
 repining. I come hither for Adone and the 
 Edera. Let me think of my errand only ; not of 
 myself, nor even of this desecrated city." 
 
IX 
 
 IT was now the season to plough the reapen 
 fields, and he had always taken pleasure in his 
 straight furrows ; as straight as though measured 
 by a rule on the level lands ; and of the skill with 
 which on the hilly ground Orlando and Rinaldo 
 moved so skilfully, turning in so small a space, 
 answering to every inflection of his voice, taking 
 such care not to break a twig of the fruit trees, or 
 bend a shoot of the vines, or graze a stem of the 
 olives. 
 
 " Good hearts, dear hearts, faithful friends and 
 trusty servants ! " he murmured to the oxen. He 
 leaned his bare arms on the great fawn-coloured 
 flanks of Orlando, and his forehead on his arms, 
 which grew wet with hidden tears. 
 
 The cattle stood motionless, breathing loudly 
 through their distended nostrils, the yokes on 
 
 their shoulders crinking, their hides twitching 
 
 156 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 157 
 
 under the torment of the flies. Nerina, who had 
 been washing linen in the Edera, approached 
 through the olives ; she hesitated a few minutes, 
 then put the linen down off her hea i on to the 
 grass, gathered some plumes of featherfew and 
 ferns, and brushed the flies off the necks of the 
 oxen. Adone started, looked up in displeasure at 
 being thus surprised, then, seeing the intruder 
 was only the little girl, he sat down on the side 
 of the plough, and made believe to break his 
 noon-day bread. 
 
 " You have no wine," said the child. " Shall 
 I run to the house for a flask ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, no. If I am athirst there is 
 water as yet there is water ! " he murmured 
 bitterly, for the menace of this impending horror 
 began to grow on him with the fixity and obses- 
 sion of a mania. 
 
 Nerina continued to fan the cattle and drive off 
 the flies from their necks. She looked at him 
 wistfully from behind the figures of the stately 
 animals. She was afraid of the sorrow which was 
 in the air. No one had told her what the evil 
 was which hung over the Terra Vergine; and she 
 never asked questions. The two elder women 
 never took her into their confidence on any 
 subject, and she had no communication with the 
 
158 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 few people in Kuscino. She had seen that some- 
 thing was wrong, but she could not guess what : 
 something which made Madonna Clelia's brows 
 dark, and Gianna's temper bad, and Adone himself 
 weary and ill at ease. 
 
 Seeing him sitting there, not eating, throwing 
 his bread to some wild pigeons which followed the 
 plough, she plucked up courage to speak ; he was 
 always kind to her, though he noticed her little. 
 
 "What is it that ails you all?" she asked. 
 " Tell me, Adone, I am not a foolish thing to 
 babble." 
 
 He did not answer. What use were words? 
 Deeds were wanted. 
 
 " Adone, tell me," she said in a whisper ; "what 
 is this that seems to lie like a stone on you all ? 
 Tell me why Don Silverio has gone away. I will 
 never tell again." 
 
 There was a pathetic entreaty in the words 
 which touched and roused him ; there was in it 
 the sympathy which would not criticise or doubt, 
 and which is to the sore heart as balm and 
 soothes it by its very lack of reason. 
 
 He told her ; told her the little that he knew, 
 the much that he feared ; he spent all the force 
 of his emotion in the narrative. 
 
 The child leaned against the great form of the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 159 
 
 ox and listened, not interrupting by a word or 
 cry. 
 
 She did not rebuke him as Don Silverio had 
 done, or reproach him as did his mother ; she only 
 listened with a world of comprehension in her eyes 
 more eloquent than speech, not attempting to 
 arrest the fury of imprecation or the prophecies of 
 vengeance which poured from his lips. Hers was 
 that undoubting, undivided, implicit faith which 
 is so dear to the wounded pride and impotent 
 strength of a man in trouble who is conscious 
 that what he longs to do would not be approved 
 by law or sanctioned by religion. That faith 
 spoke in her eyes, in her absorbed attention, in 
 the few breathless sentences which escaped her ; 
 there was also on her youthful face a set, stern 
 anger akin to h^s own. 
 
 " Could we not slay these men? " she said in a 
 low, firm voice; she came of a mountain race 
 by whom life was esteemed little and revenge 
 honour. 
 
 "We must not even say such a thing," said 
 Adone bitterly, in whose ears the rebuke of Don 
 Silverio still rang. " In these days everything is 
 denied us, even speech. If we take our rights we 
 are caged in their prisons." 
 
 " But what will you do, then ? " 
 
160 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " For the moment I wait to learn more. These? 
 things are done in the dark, or at least in no light 
 that we can see. To kill these men as you wish, 
 little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind 
 would fill their places. The seekers of gold are 
 like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands come 
 on ; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it 
 brings men in crowds from all parts, as the 
 smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think 
 of seizing the Edera it is because men of business 
 will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our 
 grain, our fruits, our health, our life ; but if it will 
 give money to the foreigner, the foreigner will 
 take it as he would take the stars and coin them 
 if he could. The brigand of the hills is caged or 
 shot; the brigand of the banks is allowed to 
 fatten and die in the odour of success. There 
 are two measures." 
 
 Nerina failed to understand, but her own mind 
 was busy with what seemed to her this monstrous 
 injustice. 
 
 " But why do they let them do it ? They take 
 and chain the men who rob a traveller or a house." 
 
 Adone cast his last atom of bread to the birds. 
 
 " There are two measures," he answered. " Kill 
 one, you go to the galleys for life. Kill half a 
 million, you are a hero in history, and you get in 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 161 
 
 your own generation titles, and money, and 
 applause." 
 
 "Baruffo was a good man and my father's 
 friend," Nerina said, following her own thoughts. 
 "Baruffo was in the oak woods always, far below 
 us, but he often brought us wine and game at 
 night, and sometimes money too. Baruffo was a 
 good man. He was so kind. Twice my father 
 aided him to escape. But one night they seized 
 him ; there was a whole troop of carabineers 
 against him, they took him in a trap, they could 
 never have got him else, and I saw him brought 
 down the mountain road and I ran and kissed him 
 before they could stop me ; and he never came 
 back they kept him." 
 
 " No doubt they kept him," said Adone bitterly . 
 " Baruffo was a peasant outlawed ; if he had been 
 a banker, or a minister, or a railway contractor, 
 he might have gone on thieving all his life, and 
 met only praise. They keep poor Baruffo safe in 
 their accursed prisons, but they will take care 
 never to keep, or take even for a day, law- 
 breakers whose sins are far blacker than his, 
 and whose victims are multitudes." 
 
 " If Baruffo were here he would help you," said 
 Nerina. " He was such a fine strong man and 
 had no fear." 
 
 12 
 
1 62 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Adone rose and put his hands on the handles of 
 the plough. 
 
 " Take up your linen, little one," he said to the 
 girl, "and go home, or my mother will be angry 
 with you for wasting time." 
 
 Nerina came close to him and her brown dog- 
 like eyes looked up like a dog's into his face. 
 
 " Tell me what you do, Adone," she said be- 
 seechingly, " I will tell no one. I was very little 
 when Baruffo came and went to and fro-in our hut ; 
 but I had sense ; I never spoke. Only when the 
 guards had him I kissed him, because then it did 
 not matter what they knew; there was no hope. 
 
 " Yes, I will tell you," said Adone. " Maybe 
 I shall end like Baruffo." 
 
 Then he called on Orlando and Einaldo by their 
 names, and they lowered their heads and strained 
 at their collars, and with a mighty wrench of 
 their loins and shoulders they forced the share 
 through the heavy earth. 
 
 Nerina stood still and looked after him as he 
 passed along under the vine-hung trees. 
 
 " Baruffo may have done some wrong," she 
 thought, " but Adone, he .has done none, he is as 
 good as if he were a saint of God, and if he should 
 be obliged to do evil it will be no fault of his, but 
 because other men are wicked." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 163 
 
 Then she put the load of linen on her head, and 
 went along the grassy path homeward, and she 
 saw the rosy gladioli, and the golden tansy, by 
 which she passed through tears. Yet she was 
 glad because Adone had trusted her ; and because 
 she now knew as much as the elder women in his 
 house, who had put no confidence in her. 
 
X 
 
 I SHALL not write," Don Silverio had said 
 to Adone. "As soon as I know anything 
 for certain I shall return. Of that you may be 
 sure." 
 
 For he knew that letters took a week or more 
 to find their slow way to Ruscino, and he 
 hoped to return in less than that time ; having no 
 experience of " what hell it is in waiting to abide," 
 and of the endless doublings and goings to earth 
 of that fox-like thing, a modern speculation ; he 
 innocently believed that he would only have to 
 ask a question to have it answered. 
 
 Day after day Adone mounted to the bell-tower 
 roof, and gazed over the country in vain. Day 
 after day the little dog escaped from the custody 
 of Nerina, trotted over the bridge, pattered up 
 the street, and ran whining into his master's 
 study. Every night the people of Kuscino hung 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 165 
 
 up a lantern on a loophole of the belfry, and 
 another on the parapet of the bridge, that 
 their pastor might not miss his way if he were 
 coming on foot beside the river ; and every night 
 Adone himself watched on the river bank or by 
 the town wall, sleepless, longing for, yet dreading 
 that which he should hear. But more than a 
 week passed, and the priest did not return. The 
 anxiety of Adone consumed him like fire. He 
 strove to dull his anxiety by incessant work, but 
 it was too acute to be soothed by physical fatigue. 
 He counted the days and the hours, and he could 
 not sleep. The women watched him in fear and 
 silence ; they dared ask nothing, lest they should 
 wound him. Only Nerina whispered to him once 
 or twice in the fields, " Where is he gone ? When 
 will he come back? " 
 
 " God knows ! " he answered. Every evening 
 that he saw the sun set beyond the purple line 
 of the mountains which were heaped in their 
 masses of marble and snow between him and the 
 Patrimonium Petrus, he felt as if he could never 
 bear another night. He could hear the clear, 
 fresh sound of the running river, and it seemed 
 to him like the voice of some friend crying aloud 
 to him in peril. Whilst these summer days and 
 nights sped away what was being done to save it ? 
 
1 66 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 He felt like a coward ; like one who stands by 
 and sees a comrade murdered. In his solitude and 
 apprehension he began to lose all self-control ; he 
 imagined impossible things ; he began to see in 
 his waking dreams, as in a nightmare, the dead 
 body of Don Silverio lying with a knife in its 
 breast in some cut-throat alley of Rome. For 
 two weeks passed, and there was no sign of his 
 return, and no message from him. 
 
 The poor people of Euscino also were troubled. 
 Their vicar had never left them before. They 
 did not love him ; he was too unlike them ; but 
 they honoured him, they believed in him ; he was 
 always there in their sickness and sorrow ; they 
 leaned on his greater strength in all their penury 
 and need ; and he was poor like them, and stripped 
 himself still barer for their sakes. 
 
 Through the young friar who had replaced him 
 they had heard something of the calamity which 
 threatened to befall them through the Edera. It 
 was all dark to them ; they could understand 
 nothing. Why others should want their river and 
 why they should lose it, or in what manner a 
 stream could be turned from its natural course 
 all these things were to them incomprehensible. 
 In the beginning of the world it had been set 
 running there, Who would be impious enough 
 to meddle with it ? 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 167 
 
 Whoever tried to do so would be smitten with 
 the vengeance of Heaven. Of that they were 
 sure. Nevertheless, to hear the mention of such 
 a thing tormented them ; and when they opened 
 their doors at dawn they looked out in terror lest 
 the water should have been taken away in the 
 night. 
 
 Their stupidity irritated Adone so greatly that 
 he ceased altogether to speak to them of the* 
 impending calamity. " They are stocks and 
 stones. They have not the sense of sheep nor 
 the courage of goats," he said, with the old scorn 
 which his forefathers had felt for their rustic 
 vassals stirring in him. 
 
 " I believe that they would dig sand and carry 
 wood for the engineers and the craftsmen who 
 would build the dykes ! " he said to his mother. 
 
 Clelia Alba sighed. "My son, hunger is a 
 hard master ; it makes the soul faint, the heart 
 hard, the belly ravenous. We have never known 
 it. We cannot judge those who know nothing 
 else." 
 
 "Even hunger need not make one vile," he 
 answered. 
 
 But he did not disclose all his thoughts to his 
 mother. 
 
 He was so intolerant of these poor people of 
 
168 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Ruscino because he foresaw the hopelessness of 
 forging their weak tempers into the metal 
 necessary for resistance. As well might he hope 
 to change a sword-rush of the river into a steel 
 sabre for combat. Masaniello, Rienzi, Garibaldi, 
 had roused the peasantry and led them against 
 their foes ; but the people they dealt with must, 
 he thought, have been made of different stuff than 
 these timorous villagers, who could not even be 
 made to comprehend the magnitude of the wrong 
 which was plotted against them. 
 
 " Tell them," he said to old Trizio : " tell them 
 their wells will run dry ; their fish will rot on the 
 dry bed of what was once the river ; their canes, 
 their reeds and rushes, their osiers, will all fail them ; 
 when they shall go out into their fields nothing 
 which they sow or plant will grow, because the 
 land will be cracked and parched ; there will be 
 no longer the runlets and rivulets to water the 
 soil; birds will die of thirst, and thousands of 
 little river creatures will be putrid carcases in the 
 sun ; for the Edera, which is life and joy and health 
 to this part of the country, will be carried far 
 away, imprisoned in brick walls, drawn under 
 ground, forced to labour like a slave, put to vile 
 uses, soiled and degraded. Cannot you tell them 
 this, and make them see ? " 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 169 
 
 The old man shook his white head. " They 
 would never believe. It is too hard for them. 
 Where the river runs, there it will always be. 
 So they think." 
 
 " They are dolts, they are mules, they are 
 swine ! " said Adone. " Nay, may the poor beasts 
 forgive me ! The beasts cannot help themselves, 
 but men can if they choose." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Trizio doubtfully. " My lad, 
 you have not seen men shot down by the hundred. 
 I have long ago, long ago." 
 
 " There is no chance of their being shot," he 
 said with contempt, almost with regret. " All 
 that is wanted of them are common sense, union, 
 protestation, comprehension of their rights." 
 
 " Aye, you all begin with that," said the old 
 Garibaldino. " But, my lad, you do not end there, 
 for it is just those things which are your right which 
 those above you will never hear of ; and then up 
 come the cannon thundering, and when the smoke 
 clears away there are your dead and that is all 
 you get." 
 
 The voice of the old soldier was thin and 
 cracked and feeble, but it had a sound in it 
 which chilled the hot blood of his hearer. 
 
 Yet surely this was no revolutionary question, 
 no socialistic theory, no new or alarming demand ; 
 
i yo THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 it was only a claim old as the hills, only a 
 resolve to keep what the formation of the earth 
 had given to this province. 
 
 As well blame a father for claiming his own 
 child as blame him and his neighbours for claim- 
 ing their own river ! 
 
 They were tranquil and docile people, poor and 
 patient, paying what they were told to pay, letting 
 the fiscal wolf gnaw and glut as it chose unop- 
 posed, not loving their rulers indeed, but never 
 moving or speaking against them, accepting the 
 snarl, the worry, the theft, the greed, the malice 
 of the State without questioning. 
 
 Were they to stand by and see their river 
 ruined, and do nothing, as the helpless fishermen 
 of Fuscino have accepted the ruin of their lake ? 
 
 To all young men of courage and sensibility 
 and enthusiasm the vindication of a clear right 
 seems an act so simple that it is only through 
 long and painful experience that they realise that 
 there is nothing under the sun which is so hard 
 to compass, or which is met by such strong an- 
 tagonism. To Adone, whose nature was unspoilt 
 by modern influences, and whose world was com- 
 prised in the fields and moors around Euscino, it 
 seemed incredible that such a title as that of his 
 native soil to the water of Edera could be made 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 171 
 
 clear to those in power without instant ratification 
 of it. 
 
 " Whether you do aught or naught it comes to 
 the same thing," said the old Garibaldino, who 
 was wiser. " We did much ; we spent our blood 
 like water, and what good has it been ? For one 
 devil we drove out before our muskets, a thousand 
 worse devils have entered since." 
 
 "It is different," said Adone, impatient. "All 
 we have to do is to keep out the stranger. You 
 had to drive him out. No politics or doctrines 
 come into our cause ; all we mean, all we want, is 
 to be left alone, to remain as we are. That is all. 
 It is simple and just." 
 
 " Aye, it is simple ; aye, it is just," said the old 
 man ; but he sucked his pipe-stem grimly : he had 
 never seen these arguments prosper ; and in his 
 own youth he had cherished such mistakes him- 
 self, to his own hindrance. 
 
 Had he not sung in those glorious days of hope 
 aod faith, 
 
 " Fratelli d'ltalia 1 
 L'ltalia s'& desta 1 " 
 
 In the night which followed on the fourteenth 
 day of the Vicar's absence, Adone, unable either to 
 rest or to labour, went into his cattle-stalls and fed 
 and watered all the animals, then he crossed the 
 
i;2 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 river and went along its north bank by the same 
 path which he had followed with Don Silverio 
 two weeks earlier. He had passed to and fro that 
 path often since his friend's departure, for by it 
 the priest must return ; there was no other way 
 to and from the west. 
 
 Rain had fallen in the night, and the river was 
 buoyant, and the grass sparkled, the mountains 
 were of sapphire blue, and above the shallows 
 clouds of flies and gnats were fluttering, water- 
 lilies were blossoming where the water was still, 
 and in the marshes buffaloes pushed their dark 
 forms amongst the nymphoea and the nuphar. 
 
 He had no longer any eyes to see these things ; 
 he only strained his sight to catch the first 
 glimpse of a tired traveller. The landscape here 
 was level for many miles of moor and pasture 
 and a human form approaching could be seen 
 from a great distance. It was such a dawn as he 
 had used to love beyond all other blessings of 
 nature ; but now the buffaloes in the pools and 
 swamps were not more blind to its charm 
 than he. 
 
 The sun rose behind him out of the unseen 
 Adrian waves, and a rosy light spread itself over 
 the earth ; and at that moment he saw afar off a 
 dark form moving slowly. With a loud cry he 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 173 
 
 sprang forward and ran with the 'fleetness of a 
 colt the hundred yards which were between him 
 and that familiar figure. 
 
 " My son! my dear son!" cried Don Silverio, 
 as Adone reached him and fell on his knees on 
 the scorched turf. 
 
 "At last !" he murmured, choked with joy and 
 fear. " Oh, where have you been ? We are half 
 dead, your people and I. What tidings do you 
 bring ? What comfort ? " 
 
 "Kise up, and remember that you are a man," 
 said Don Silverio ; and the youth, gazing upwards 
 keenly into his face, suddenly lost all hope, 
 seeing no ray of hope on that weary countenance. 
 
 " You cannot save us ? " he cried, with a scream 
 like a wounded hare's. 
 
 " I cannot, my dear son," answered Don 
 Silverio. 
 
 Adone dropped backward as if a bullet had 
 struck him ; his head smote the dry ground ; he 
 had lost consciousness, his face was livid. 
 
 Don Silverio raised him and dragged him into 
 the shade of a bay-tree and dashed water on him 
 from the river. In a few minutes he was roused 
 and again conscious, but on his features there was 
 a dazed, stunned look. 
 
 " You cannot save us ? " he repeated. 
 
174 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Neither you nor I have millions," said Don 
 Silverio with bitterness. "It is with no other 
 weapon that men can fight successfully now." 
 
 Adone had risen to his feet ; he was pale as a 
 corpse, only the blood was set in his forehead. 
 
 "Is it true, then?" he muttered. "Po they 
 mean to come here ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Who are they ? Jews ? " 
 
 " Jews and Gentiles. There is no difference 
 between those races now ; they have a common 
 Credo greed; they adore one Jehovah gold. 
 My boy, I am very tired, and you are ill. Let 
 us get home as quickly as we can." 
 
 " I am not ill. It was nothing. It is passed. 
 Tell me the worst." 
 
 " The worst, in a word, is that a foreign com- 
 pany, already established for several years in this 
 country, has obtained a faculty to turn this water 
 out of its course and use it as the nlotive power 
 of an electric railway and of an acetylene manu- 
 factory, and of other enterprises." 
 
 " And this cannot be undone ? " 
 
 " I fear not ; they are rich and powerful. What 
 are we? Let me get home. There you shall 
 hear all, and judge." 
 
 Adone asked and said no more. He turned and 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 175 
 
 went backward. His steps were slow and un- 
 steady, his head was hung down. The dry, hot 
 air was like fire around them; the sun, though 
 still low, darted fierce rays upon them, like 
 spears thrown with a sure aim. He had not 
 known how much and how strongly he had 
 hoped until now that he heard that there was 
 no hope left. 
 
 Don Silverio, though he did not speak of him- 
 self, was faint with fatigue ; the return journey 
 had tried him more cruelly than the first, since 
 on his way to Rome he had been sustained by the 
 hope to find the project abandoned, or at the least 
 uncertain. He had spent all his scanty earnings, 
 so hardly and tediously collected through a score 
 of years, and he had brought back to his poor 
 people, and to the youth he loved, nothing except 
 the confirmation of their worst fears. It was with 
 difficulty that he could drag his aching feet over 
 the burnt grass back to his parish. 
 
 When they reached the bridge they were on 
 the village side of the stream. Adone, with an 
 effort, raised himself from the trance into which 
 he had fallen. 
 
 " Forgive me, sir ; you are overtired, you must 
 rest. I will come to you later.'* 
 
 "No, no," said Don Silverio quickly, for he 
 
176 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 thought the youth in no state to be alone. " I 
 will wash and take a cup of coffee, then I will tell 
 you all. Wait in my book-room." 
 
 They went together to his house. There was 
 no one in the street or on the walls except some 
 children gathering dandelion leaves in the ditch. 
 They reached the priest's house unobserved ; only 
 the little dog, who was making his diurnal search 
 there, rushed out of the entrance in a frenzy of 
 rapture. 
 
 " Poor little man ! Dear Signorino ! " mur- 
 mured Don Silverio, and he took the little 
 creature in his arms. Then he opened the door 
 of his study. " Wait there," he said to Adone. 
 " I will soon come downstairs. I will only wash 
 off the dust of this journey." 
 
 Adone obeyed. 
 
 The room was dusky, cool, silent ; he sat down 
 in it and waited ; he could hear the loud, uneven 
 beating of his own heart in the stillness. 
 
 As he felt now, so, he thought, must feel men 
 who have heard their own death-sentence, and 
 are thrust alone into a cell. 
 
 If Don Silverio could do nothing, to whom 
 could he turn? 
 
 Could he induce the people to rise ? It would 
 be their ruin as well as his, this rape of the river. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 177 
 
 Would they bear it as they bore taxation, neglect, 
 conscription, hunger? 
 
 It was not half an hour, although it seemed to 
 him half a day, which passed before Don Silverio 
 came down the stone stair, his little dog running 
 and leaping about him. He seated himself before 
 Adone, by the shuttered window, through which, 
 by chinks and holes in the wood, there came rays 
 of light and tendrils of vine. 
 
 Then detail by detail, with lucidity and brevity, 
 he narrated all he had heard and done in Rome, 
 and which it was exceeding hard to bring home 
 to the comprehension of a mind wholly ignorant 
 of such things. 
 
 " When I reached Koine," he explained, " I 
 was for some days in despair. The deputy of San 
 Beda was not at the Chamber. He was in Sicily. 
 Another deputy, a friend of the Prior at San 
 Beda, to whom I had a letter, was very ill with 
 typhoid fever. I knew not where to turn. I 
 could not knock at the doors of strangers without 
 credentials. Then I remembered that one with 
 whom I had been friends, great friends, when we 
 were both seminarists, had become a great man 
 at the Vaticano. It was scarcely possible that he, 
 in his great elevation, would recollect one unseen 
 for a quarter of a century. But I took courage 
 
 13 
 
1 78 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and sent in my name. Imagine my surprise and 
 emotion when I was admitted at once to his 
 presence, and was received by him with the 
 uttermost kindness. He assisted me in every 
 way. He could not of course move ostensibly in 
 a matter of the government, himself, but he gave 
 me letters to those who could obtain me the 
 information and the interviews which I desired. 
 He was goodness itself, and through him I was 
 even received by his Holiness. But from all 
 those political and financial people whom I saw 
 I learned but the same thing. The matter is far 
 advanced, is beyond any alteration. The company 
 is formed. The concurrence of parliament is not 
 to be, but has long been, given. The ministry 
 favours the project. They all repeated to me the 
 same formula : public works are to the public 
 interest. They babbled commonplaces. They 
 spoke of great advantages to the province. I 
 pleaded as forcibly as I could in the interests of 
 this valley, and I opposed fact to formula. But 
 my facts were not those which they wanted ; and 
 they told me, politely but unmistakably, that a 
 churchman should not seek to interfere with civil 
 matters. The promoters are masters of the 
 position. They are all of accord : the foreign 
 bankers, the Italian bankers ; the foreign engineers, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 179 
 
 the Italian engineers ; the Technical office, the 
 President of Council, the dicastero of Hygiene, of 
 Agriculture, of Public Works, all of them. Our 
 poor little valley seems to them a desirable prey ; 
 they have seized it, they will keep it. They 
 were all courteous enough. They are polite, and 
 even unwilling to cause what they call un- 
 necessary friction. But they will not give an 
 inch. Their talons are in our flesh as an eagle's 
 in a lamb's. One thinks fondly that what a man 
 possesses is his own, be it land, house, stream 
 what not! But we mistake. There is a thing 
 stronger, higher, more powerful than any poor 
 title of property acquired by heritage, by purchase, 
 or by labour. It is what they call expropriation. 
 You think the Edera cannot be touched : it can 
 be expropriated. You think the Terra Vergine 
 cannot be touched : it can be expropriated. 
 Against expropriation no rights can stand. It is 
 the concentration and crystallisation of Theft legi- 
 timatised by Government ; that is by Force. A 
 vagrant may not take a sheaf of your wheat, a 
 fowl from your hen-house : if he do so, the law 
 protects you and punishes him. A syndicate of 
 rich men, of powerful men, may take the whole 
 of your land, and the State will compel you to 
 accept any arbitrary price which it may choose to 
 
i8o THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 put upon your loss. According as you are rich or 
 poor yourself, so great or so small will be the 
 amount awarded to you. All the sub-prefects, all 
 the syndics, all the officials in this province, will be 
 richly rewarded ; the people defrauded of the soil 
 and the river will get what may be given them 
 by an enforced valuation. I have conversed with 
 all kinds and conditions of men; and I have 
 heard only one statement in the mouths of all : 
 the matter is beyond all alteration. There is 
 money in it ; the men whose trade is money will 
 not let it go. My son, my dearest son, be calm, 
 be prudent. Violence can only injure yourself, 
 and it can save nothing." 
 
 He had for the moment spoken as he had been 
 speaking for the last two weeks to men of educa- 
 tion and of the world. 
 
 He was recalled to the fact that his present 
 auditor did not reason, did not comprehend, only 
 felt, and was drunk with his own force of feeling. 
 The look on Adone's face appalled him. 
 
 The youth seemed almost to have no in- 
 telligence left, almost as if all which had been 
 said to him had reached neither his ear nor his 
 brain. 
 
 Don Silverio had been in the world of men, and 
 unconsciously he had adopted their phraseology 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 181 
 
 and their manner. To Adone, who had expected 
 some miracle, some rescue almost archangelic, 
 some promise of immediate and divine interposi- 
 tion, these calm and rational statements conveyed 
 scarcely any sense, so terrible was the destruction 
 of his hopes. All the trust and candour and 
 sweetness of his nature turned to gall. 
 
 He listened, a sullen, savage darkness stealing 
 over his countenance. 
 
 " And our rights? Theirs? mine?" he said 
 as Don Silverio paused. 
 
 " For all rights taken away they will give legal 
 compensation." 
 
 " You dare repeat that, sir ? " 
 
 Don Silverio controlled his indignation with 
 difficulty. 
 
 " I dare do whatever I deem right to do. You 
 should know that by this time." 
 
 1 'You think this right?" 
 
 "I think it right to repeat exactly what has 
 been said to me. I do not of necessity approve 
 because I repeat." 
 
 " You know no compensation is possible ! " 
 
 " Morally, none. I speak of but what law 
 allows." 
 
 " The law of pirates, of cut-throats ! " 
 
 " The law of the State, alas ! " 
 
1 8i THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Adone laughed. His hearer had heard such 
 laughter as that in madhouses. 
 
 " The State kills a soldier, and gives his family 
 a hundred francs ! That is the compensation of 
 the State. If they emptied their treasuries, could 
 they give the soldier back his life? If they 
 emptied their treasuries, could they give us back 
 what they will take from us ? " 
 
 " My dear son, do not doubt my sympathy. 
 All my heart is with you. But what can be done ? 
 Can a poor village, a poor commune, struggle with 
 any chance of success against a rich company and 
 a government ? Can a stalk of wheat resist the 
 sickle? Can an ear of wheat resist the thresh- 
 ing-flail? I have told you the story of Don 
 Quixote della Mancha. "Would you fight the 
 empty air like him?" 
 
 Adone did not reply. 
 
 His beautiful face grew moody, dark, fierce ; 
 in his eyes flamed passions which had no voice 
 upon his lips; his white teeth ground against 
 one another. 
 
 " Believe me, Adone," said his friend, " we 
 are in evil days, when men babble of liberty, and 
 are so intent on the mere empty sound of their 
 lips that they perceive not the fetters on their 
 wrists and feet. There was never any time when 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 183 
 
 there was so little freedom and so little justice as 
 in ours. Two gigantic dominions now rule the 
 human race ; they are the armies and the money- 
 makers. Science serves them turn by turn, and 
 receives from each its wage. The historian 
 Mommsen has written that we are probably 
 inferior both in intelligence and in humanity, in 
 prosperity and in civilisation, at the close of 
 this century to what the human race was under 
 Severus Antoninus; and it is true." 
 
 Adone did not seem to hear. What were these 
 abstract reasonings to him ? All he cared for 
 were his river and his fields. 
 
 " I sought for an old friend of mine in Home," 
 said .Don Silverio, endeavouring to gain his atten- 
 tion and divert his thoughts, " one Pamfilio Scoria. 
 He was a learned scholar; he had possessed a 
 small competence and a house of his own, small 
 too, but of admirable architecture, a Quattro- 
 centisto house. I could not find this house in 
 Eome. After long search I learned that it had 
 been pulled down to make a new street. Pamfilio 
 Scoria had in vain tried to preserve his rights. The 
 city had turned him out and taken his property, 
 paying what it chose. His grief was so great to 
 see it destroyed, and to be turned adrift with his 
 books and manuscripts, that he fell ill and died not 
 
1 84 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 long afterwards. On the site of the house there 
 is a drinking-place kept by Germans ; a street 
 railway runs before it. This kind of theft, of 
 pillage, takes place every week. It is masked 
 as public utility. We are not alone sufferers 
 from such a crime." 
 
 Adone was still silent. 
 
 His thoughts were not such as he could utter 
 aloud in the priest's presence; and he heard 
 nothing that was said; he heard only little 
 Nerina's voice saying : " Could we not kill 
 these men ? " That flutelike whisper seemed 
 to him to sigh with the very voice of the river 
 itself. 
 
 Don Silverio rose, his patience, great as it was, 
 exhausted. 
 
 " My son, as you do not give ear to me it is 
 useless for me to speak. I must go to my office. 
 The friar from San Beda desires to return this 
 evening. I have done all I can. I have told you 
 the facts as they stand. Take courage. Be 
 peaceable for your mother's sake and restrain 
 yourself for your own. It is a frightful calamity 
 which hangs over us all. But it is our duty to 
 meet it like men." 
 
 " Like men! " muttered Adone as he rose to his 
 feet ; had not the child from the Abruzzo rocks a 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 185 
 
 better sense of men's duty than this priest so 
 calm and wise? 
 
 " Men resist," he said very low. 
 
 " Men resist," repeated Don Silverio. " They 
 resist when their resistance serves any purpose, 
 but when it can only serve to crush them uselessly 
 under a mass of iron they are not men if they 
 resist, but madmen." 
 
 " Farewell, sir," said Adone. 
 
 And with an obeisance he went out of the 
 chamber. 
 
 "Poor boy! Poor, passionate, dear youth!" 
 thought Don Silverio as the door closed. "He 
 thinks me cold and without emotion ; how little 
 he knows ! He cannot suffer as I suffer for him 
 and for my poor wretched people. What will 
 they do when they shall know? They will 
 mourn like starved sheep bleating in a field of 
 stones, and I, their shepherd, shall not have a 
 blade of grass wherewith to comfort them ! " 
 
XI 
 
 AD ONE'S sight was troubled as soon as he 
 passed out of the dusky room into the blaze 
 of noonday sunshine. His eyes seemed filled 
 with blood. His brain was dizzy. That which 
 had been his sheet-anchor in all doubts and 
 contrition, his faith in and his reverence for 
 Don Silverio, availed him nothing now. A blind 
 sympathy with his most violent instincts was the 
 only thing which could now content or console 
 him. 
 
 He was in that state to which all counsels of 
 moderation appear but so much treason and un- 
 kindness. As he went out of the priest's house 
 in that dazzling light, a hand caught his sleeve 
 and that young flutelike voice of which he had 
 thought murmured to him 
 
 "Adone! what tidings? What has he told 
 you?" 
 
 1 86 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 187 
 
 Nerina, having run across the bridge and up 
 the street after the little dog, had seen him and 
 Don Silverio enter, and had waited for Adone to 
 come out of the house. Adone pushed her aw ay. 
 
 " Let me be ! " he said impatiently. " It is all 
 bad bad bad. Bad as ill-blood. Bad as crime." 
 
 She clung to his arm nevertheless. 
 
 " Come into the church and tell me. No one 
 cares as I do." 
 
 " Poor little soul ! " 
 
 He let her draw him into the great porch of the 
 church and thence into the church itself ; it was 
 dark, as it always was, cold as an autumn evening, 
 damp even in the canicular heat. 
 
 " No one will hear ; tell me ! " said the child. 
 
 He told her. 
 
 "And what are you to do?" she asked, her 
 eyes dilated with horror. 
 
 "According to him," said Adone bitterly, "I 
 am to be meek and helpless as the heifer which 
 goes to the slaughter. Men must not resist what 
 the law permits." 
 
 Nerina was mute. To dispute what Don Silverio 
 said was like blasphemy to her ; she honoured him 
 with all her soul, but she loved Adone. 
 
 She loved the Edera water too ; that fair green 
 rippling water, on whose bank she had sat naked 
 
1 88 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 under the dock leaves the day the two rams 
 had fought. That which was threatened was an 
 unholy, wicked, cruel robbery. Was it indeed 
 necessary to yield to it in submission ? 
 
 She remembered a saying of Baruffo's : "If 
 a man stand up to me I leave him some coins 
 in his pocket, some life in his body ; but if 
 he crouch and cringe I stick him in the throat. 
 He is a craven." 
 
 The doctrine of Baruffo seemed to her the more 
 sound. It warmed the blood of the little Abruzzo- 
 born maiden to recall it. In the high mountaina 
 and forests the meeker virtues are not greatly 
 honoured. 
 
 She stood by Adone's side, knitting her brows 
 under her auburn curling locks, clenching her 
 hands. 
 
 " Is there one who does this evil most of all? " 
 she said at length. " One we could reach ? " 
 
 "You are a brave child, Nerina! " said Adone, 
 and his words made her proud. " I fear there is a 
 crowd. Such men are like locusts ; they come in 
 swarms. But the first man who touches the 
 water " 
 
 " Shall sup of it and drown ! " 
 
 The little girl added the words with a fierce joy 
 in her great bright eyes. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 189 
 
 " Hush ! " said Adone, " and get you home- 
 ward, and tell my mother that Don Silverio has 
 returned, and that I will come back to my work 
 in a little while. Tell her he says there is no 
 hope." 
 
 Nerina obeyed him instantly, her bare feet flying 
 over the stones of the street. He was left alone 
 in the sombre church, with the great winged angels 
 of stone above his head. 
 
 He was grateful for its gloom. He shrank from 
 the light of the morning. Every drop of blood in 
 his body, and in his brain, and in his limbs, seemed 
 to him to turn to fire a fire which all the waters 
 of the Edera would never quench. 
 
 How could they be accused of rebellion or 
 wrong-doing because they wanted to keep the 
 water running in the channel which it had 
 made for itself in the very beginning of the 
 world ? 
 
 The Edera was ancient as its neighbours, the 
 Eiumicino which heard the voice of Caesar, or 
 the Marecchia which was bridged by Augustus; 
 ancient as the fountain of Arethusa, as the lake 
 of Diana Nemorensis. What sacrilege could be 
 more heinous than to chase it from its chosen 
 course ? No Lucumon of Etruria, or Esarch of 
 Eavenna, or Pope of Home, had ever dared to 
 
190 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 touch it. Bevolutionists ! they, who only sought 
 to preserve it? The revolutionists were those 
 who with alien hands and vampire's greed would 
 seek to disturb its peace. 
 
XII 
 
 ALL that day the people of Kuscino crowded 
 round the Presbytery. 
 
 "What of the Edera water, sir?" they asked 
 him a hundred times in the shrill cries of the 
 women, in the rude bellow of the men, in the 
 high-pitched, dissonant clamour of angry speakers. 
 And all the day his patience and kindness were 
 abused, and his nerves racked and strained, in the 
 effort to persuade them that the river which ran 
 beneath their walls was no more theirs than the 
 stars which shone above it. 
 
 It w 7 as hopeless to bring home to their intelli- 
 gence either the invalidity of their claim, or the 
 peril which would lie in their opposition. 
 
 " 'Twas there in the beginning of time," they 
 said. " There it must be for our children's 
 children." 
 
 He talked nonsense, they thought ; who should 
 
 191 
 
i 9 2 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 be able to stop a river which was for ever running? 
 The Edera water was carried in the womb of 
 the Leonessa : Leonessa gave it fresh birth every 
 day. 
 
 Yes ! thought Don Silverio, as he walked by the 
 river after sunset, and watched its bright, impetuous 
 current dash over the stones and shingle whilst 
 two kingfishers flashed along its surface. Yes, 
 truly Nature would pour it forth every day from 
 her unfailing breast so long as man did not do it 
 outrage. But how long would that be ? A year, 
 two years, three years, at most ; then its place 
 would know it no more, and its song would be 
 silent. The water-pipet would make its nest no 
 more in its sedges, and the blue porphyrion would 
 woo his mate no more on its bosom. As one of 
 the rich men in Borne had said to him with a 
 cynical smile, " The river will be there always, 
 only it will be dry! " 
 
 In the gloaming he went and spoke to Adone's 
 mother. She was at her spinning-wheel, but her 
 hands moved mechanically; her face was dark 
 and her eyelids swollen. 
 
 "My friend," he said, as he sat down on the 
 bench beneath the rose-tree, " I have brought you 
 ill-tidings." 
 
 "It is true then, sir?" 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 193 
 
 "Alas!" 
 
 " I do not believe it. God will not let it be. 
 
 " Would that I could think so." 
 
 " 'Tis you, sir, who should think so, and not I." 
 
 " My good Clelia," he said, with some impatience, 
 " it is no use to dream dreams. Try and persuade 
 your son to accept the inevitable. My words seem 
 harsh. They are not so. But I dare not let you 
 cherish your illusions like this ; blind yourself 
 to fact, you expect some supernatural interces- 
 sion. They will take your river ; they will take 
 your lands. Your house will be yours no more. 
 If you do not go peaceably they will have you 
 turned out, as if you were a debtor. This may 
 take some time, for it will be done with all due 
 legal forms, but it will be done. They will pay 
 you and your son some value by appraisement, but 
 they will take your land and your house and all 
 that is yours and his ; I have seen the plans in 
 Rome. Can you think that I should invent this to 
 torture you? There will be a process, a sentence, 
 an award ; the money the law allots to you will be 
 strictly paid to you ; but you will be driven away 
 from the Terra Vergine. Realise this. Try and 
 keep your reason and save your son from madness. 
 Surely, where there is great love between two 
 people, and bonds of memory and mutual duty, 
 
 H 
 
1 94 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and strong faith, there a home may be made 
 anywhere, even over seas?" 
 
 Clelia Alba snapped with violence the thread 
 she span. " They have talked you over, sir," she 
 said curtly. "When you went away you were 
 with us." 
 
 "With you!" he echoed. "In heart, in pity, 
 in sympathy, yes; never could I be otherwise. 
 But were I to see you struck with lightning, 
 should I save you by telling you that lightning 
 did not kill ? I did not know that the enterprise 
 was as mature as I found it to be when I saw the 
 promoters of it in Rome. But I know now that 
 it has been long in incubation ; you must remem- 
 ber that every bend and runlet of the water is 
 marked on the ordnance maps; every stream, 
 however small, is known to the technical office, 
 and the engineers civil and military. I abhor the 
 project. It is to me a desecration, an infamy, a 
 robbery ; it will ruin the Valdedera from every 
 point of viev/ ; but we can do nothing ; this is 
 what I implore you to realise. We are as help- 
 less as one of your fowls when you cut its throat. 
 Violence can only hurry your son into the grip of 
 the law. His rights are morally as plain as 
 yonder snow on those mountains; but because 
 they will buy his rights at what will be publicly 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 195 
 
 estimated as a fair price, the law will not allow 
 him to consider himself injured. My dear friend, 
 you are a woman of sense and foresight ; try to 
 see this thing as it is." 
 
 "I will hear what Adone says, sir," replied 
 Clelia Alba doggedly. "If he bids me burn the 
 house, I shall burn it." 
 
 Don Silverio was heart-sick and impatient. 
 What use was it to argue with such minds as 
 these? As well might he waste his words on 
 the trunks of the olives, on the oxen in their 
 stalls. 
 
 They were wronged. 
 
 That the wrong done them was masked under 
 specious pretences, arjd was protected by all the 
 plate armour of law and government, made the 
 outrage little the worse to them. The brigand 
 from the hills who used to harry their cattle and 
 pillage their strong-box looked to them a hero, a 
 saint, a Christ, compared to these modern thieves 
 who were environed with all the defences and 
 impunity which the law and the State could give. 
 When an earth-shock makes the soil under your 
 feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that 
 unnatural forces are being hurled against you, 
 you feel that you are the mere sport and jest of 
 an unjust deity. This was what they felt now. 
 
196 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Nay," said Clelia Alba, "if the earth opened, 
 and took us, it would be kinder ; it would bury us 
 at least under our own roof tree." 
 
 What use was it to speak to such people as 
 these of the right of expropriation granted by 
 parliament, of the authority of a dicastero, and of 
 a prefecture, of the sophistries and arguments of 
 lawyers, of the adjudication of values, of the 
 appraisement of claims ? They were wronged : 
 and they came of a race and of a soil in which 
 the only fitting redresser of wrong was revenge. 
 
 " Mother," cried Adone, " my father would not 
 have given up his land as meekly as a sheep 
 yields up her life." 
 
 "No," said Clelia Alba; "whether he came 
 from those war-lords of old I know not, but he 
 would have fought as they fought." 
 
XIII 
 
 THE autumn and winter passed without more 
 being heard in the Valdedera of the new 
 invasion. The peasantry generally believed that 
 such silence was favourable to their wishes ; but 
 Don Silverio knew that it was otherwise. The 
 promoters of the work did not concern themselves 
 with the local population, they dealt with greater 
 folks; with those who administered the various 
 communes, and who controlled the valuation of 
 the land through which the course of the Edera 
 ran; chiefly those well-born persons who con- 
 stituted the provincial council. A great deal of 
 money would change hands, but it was intended, 
 by all through whose fingers those heavy sums 
 would pass, that as little of the money as possible 
 should find its way to the owners of the soil. A 
 public work is like a fat hog; between the 
 
 slaughterers, the salesmen, the middlemen, and 
 
 197 
 
198 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the consumers, little falls to the original holder 
 of the hog. The peasants of the Valdedera were 
 astonished that no one came to treat with them ; 
 but they did not understand that they dwelt 
 under a paternal government, and the first care 
 of a paternal government is to do everything for 
 its children which is likely to promise any profit 
 to itself. 
 
 The men of business whom Don Silverio had 
 seen in Rome "did not trouble themselves with the 
 rustic proprietors of either water or land; they 
 treated with the great officials of the department, 
 with the deputies, the prefects, and sub-prefects, 
 the syndics and assessors ; so a perfect silence on 
 the question reigned from the rise of the river to 
 its mouth, and many of the men said over their 
 wood-fires that they had been scared for nothing. 
 The younger men, however, and those who were 
 under Adone's influence, were more wary ; they 
 guessed that the matter was being matured with- 
 out them; that when the hog should be bacon, 
 should be cut up and cured and eaten, the 
 smallest and rustiest flitch would then be 
 divided amongst them. Agents, such agents as 
 were ministerial instruments of these magnates 
 in. election time, went amongst the scattered 
 people and spoke to them of the great public 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 199 
 
 utility of the contemplated works, and made them 
 dispirited and doubtful of the value of their 
 holdings, and uncertain of the legality of their 
 tenures. But these agents were cautious and 
 chary of promises, for they knew that in this 
 district the temper of men was proud and hot 
 and revengeful; and they knew also that when 
 these rural owners should be brought into the 
 courts to receive their price they would be dealt 
 with just as the great men chose. One by one, 
 so that each should be unsupported by his 
 neighbours, the men of the valley were sum- 
 moned, now to this town, now to the other, 
 and were deftly argued with, and told that what 
 was projected would be their salvation, and 
 assured that the delegates who would be sent 
 in their name by their provincial council to the 
 capital would defend all their dearest interests. 
 
 The rich man, the man of business, the man of 
 cities, may receive in such transactions com- 
 pensation, which is greatly to their advantage, 
 because traffic is their trade, because to buy and 
 sell, and turn and re-turn, and roll the ball of 
 gold so that it grows bigger every hour, is their 
 custom and interest. But the poor man, the 
 rustic, the man with the one ewe lamb, loses 
 always, whether he assents to the sale or has it 
 
200 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 forced upon him. These people of the valley 
 might have a little ready money given them on 
 valuation, but it would be money clipped and 
 cropped by the avarice of intermediates until little 
 of it would remain, and they would be driven out 
 to begin life anew ; away from their old rooftree 
 and the fruits of long years of labour. 
 
 From far and near men came to Euscino to 
 take counsel of its vicar ; his wisdom being 
 esteemed and his intelligence known in the 
 valley beyond the confines of his parish : and 
 what advice could he give them ? He could but 
 tell them that it was useless to kick against the 
 pricks. He knew so well the cold, curt, in- 
 flexible official answer; the empty, vapouring 
 regrets, false, simpering, pharisaical ; the parrot- 
 phrases of public interests, public considerations, 
 public welfare ; the smile, the sneer, the self- 
 complacent shrug of those whose bribe is safely 
 pocketed and who know that only the people 
 whom they profess to serve will suffer. To 
 him, as to them, it seemed a monstrous thing 
 to take away the water from its natural channel 
 and force the men who lived on it and by it 
 to alter all their ways of life and see their 
 birthplace changed into a desert in order that 
 aliens might make money. But he could not 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 201 
 
 counsel them to resist ; no resistance was possible. 
 It was like any other tyranny of the State : like 
 the fiscal brutality which sold up a poor man's 
 hayrick or clothing because he could not pay the 
 poll-tax. If the poor man resisted, if he fired his 
 old fowling-piece, or used his knife on the minions 
 of the State, what use was such resistance ? He 
 went to rot in prison. 
 
 His calling, his conscience, his good sense, his 
 obedience to law, all alike compelled him to urge 
 on them patience, submission, and inaction before 
 the provocation of a great wrong. He dared not 
 even let them see one tithe of the sympathy he 
 felt, lest if he did so they should draw from it an 
 incentive to illegal action. 
 
 The part which he was obliged to take in thus 
 persuading the people to be tranquil under 
 injustice estranged him farther and farther from 
 Adone Alba, who found it a cowardice and a 
 treachery, although he dared not say so in 
 words. Had he retained the coolness of reason 
 the youth would have known and acknowledged 
 that in the position of Don Silverio no other 
 course would have been possible or decent. But 
 reason had long left him, and inaction and impulse 
 alone remained. He would not allow that a wrong 
 might be condemned, and yet endured. To him 
 
202 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 all endurance had in it the meanness of condo- 
 nation. 
 
 He ceased to have any faith in his friend and 
 teacher ; and gradually grew more and more 
 alienated from him ; their intimate affection, 
 their frequent intercourse, their long walks and 
 evening meetings were over ; and even as his 
 spiritual director the vicar had no longer power 
 over him. Most of his actions and intentions 
 were concealed ; except in the younger men of 
 the district, who saw as he saw, he had now no 
 confidence in any one. The impending loss of 
 the land and the water turned all the sweetness 
 of his nature to gall. He thought that never in 
 the history of the world had any wrong so black 
 been done. He, himself, flung broadcast the fires 
 sf burning incitation without heeding or caring 
 whither the flames might reach. Riots had been 
 successful before this : why not now ? He was 
 young enough and innocent enough to believe in 
 the divine right of a just cause. If that were 
 denied, what remained to the weak? 
 
 If he could, he would have set the valley in 
 flames from one end to the other rather than 
 have allowed the foreigners to seize it. Had not 
 his forefathers perished in fire on yonder hill 
 rather than cede to the Borgia? 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 203 
 
 Evening after evening he looked at the sun 
 setting behind the Eocca and felt the black rage 
 in him gnaw at 'his heart like, a vulture. 
 
 They would offer him money for this dear earth, 
 for this fair, beloved stream ! the mere thought 
 choked him as a man who loved his wife would 
 be choked at the thought of her dishonoured sale. 
 
 Some were half persuaded that it would be a 
 fine thing to get some crisp banknotes in exchange 
 for waste ground which yielded little, or a cabin 
 which was falling to pieces, or a strip of woodland 
 which gave them fuel, but not much more. But 
 the majority were angry, irreconcilable, furious to 
 lose the water, full of their wrongs. These were 
 glad to find in Adone Alba a spokesman and a 
 leader : they were tow which caught fire at his 
 torch. They comprehended little, but they knew 
 *that they were wronged ; and they agreed with 
 him that the labourers who should come from 
 over the border to meddle with them should be 
 made to rue it bitterly. 
 
 The Italian goes over seas, indeed ; huddled 
 under the hatches of emigrant ships ; miserable, 
 starved, confined; unable to move, scarce able 
 to breathe, like the unhappy beasts carried with 
 him. But he never goes willingly; he never 
 wrenches himself from the soil without torn 
 
204 TH E WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 nerves and aching heart ; if he live and make a 
 little money in exile he comes back to the 
 shadow of the village church, to the sound of 
 the village bell which he knew in his boyhood, 
 to walk in the lanes where he threw his wooden 
 quoit as a lad, and to play dominoes under the 
 green bough of the winehouse where as a child he 
 used to watch his elders and envy them. 
 
 Most of these people dwelling on the Edera 
 water had not been five miles away from the river 
 in all their lives. The moorland birds and beasts 
 went farther afield than they. They had no 
 interest in what was beyond their own freehold ; 
 they did not even know or care whither the water 
 went, or whence it came. Where it was, they 
 owned it. That was enough for them. 
 
 " Sir, what is it Adone does? " said Clelia Alba, 
 one dusky and stormy eve after vespers. "At night- 
 fall out he goes ; and never a word to me, only 
 ' Your blessing, mother,' he says, as if he might 
 lose his life where he goes. I thought at first it 
 was some love matter, for he is young; but 
 it cannot be that, for he is too serious, and he 
 goes fully armed, with his father's pistols in his 
 belt and his own long dagger in his stocking. 
 True, they go so to a love tryst, if it be a 
 dangerous one ; if the woman be wedded ; only 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 205 
 
 I think it is not that, for men in love are dif- 
 ferent. I think that he broods over some 
 act." 
 
 " Neither you nor I can do aught. He is of 
 age to judge for himself," said Don Silverio ; 
 " but, like you, I do not think a woman is the 
 cause of his absence." 
 
 " Can you not speak to him, sir ? " 
 
 " I have spoken. It is useless. He is moved 
 by a motive stronger than any argument we can 
 use. In a word, good Clelia, this coming seizure 
 of the water is suffering so great to him that he 
 loses his reason. He is trying to make the men 
 of the commune see as he sees. He wants to 
 rouse them, to arm them. He might as well set 
 the calves in your stalls to butt the mountain 
 granite." 
 
 "Maybe, sir," said Clelia Alba, unwillingly; 
 but her eyes gleamed, and her stern, proud face 
 grew harder. " But he has the right to do it if he 
 can. If they touch the water they are thieves, 
 worse than those who came down from the hills 
 in the years of my girlhood." 
 
 "You would encourage him in insurrection, 
 then?" 
 
 " Nay, I would not do that ; but neither would 
 I blame him. Every man has a right to defend 
 
206 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 his own. Neither his father nor mine, sir, were 
 cowards." 
 
 "This is no question of cowardice. It is a 
 question of common sense. A few country lads 
 cannot oppose a government. With what 
 weapons can they do so ? Courage I honour ; 
 without it all active virtues are supine ; but it 
 is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead 
 the ignorant to death or worse." 
 
 " Of that my son must judge, sir," said 
 Adone's mother, inflexible to argument. "I 
 shall not set myself against him. He is master 
 now. If he bid me fire the place I shall do it. 
 For four-and-twenty years he obeyed me like 
 a little child ; never a murmur, never a frown. 
 Now he is his own master, and master of the 
 land. I shall do as he tells me. It is his turn 
 now, and he is no fool, sir, Adone." 
 
 " He is no fool ; no. But he is beside himself. 
 He is incapable of judgment. His blood is on fire 
 and fires his brain." 
 
 " I think not, sir. He is quiet. He speaks 
 little- 
 
 " Because he meditates what will not bear 
 speech. Were he violent I should be less alarmed. 
 He shuns me me his oldest friend." 
 
 " Because no doubt, sir, he feels you are against 
 him." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 207 
 
 " Against him ! How can I, being what I am, 
 be otherwise? Could you expect me to foment 
 insurrection, and what less than that can opposi- 
 tion such as he intends become? " 
 
 "You speak as you feel bound to speak, sir, 
 no doubt." 
 
 "But think of the end ? Must not every action 
 be weighed and considered and judgment passed 
 on it by what will be its issue ? No rising of our 
 poor people can effect anything except their own 
 destruction. It is only a demagogue who would 
 urge them on to it. Adone is not a demagogue. 
 He is a generous youth frantic from sorrow, but 
 helpless. Can you not see that ? " 
 
 "I do not see that he is helpless," said his 
 mother with obstinacy. " The thing they are 
 about to do us is unjust. I would load a gun 
 myself against them, and if money be what is 
 wanted I would give Adone my pearls. He asks 
 me for nothing, but when he does I will strip 
 myself to my shift to aid him." 
 
 " It is a terrible madness ! " cried Don Silverio. 
 " What can your fowling-piece or your necklace 
 do against all the force these speculators and 
 contractors will employ ? It is a great, a heinous 
 wrong which will be done to you; that no one 
 can feel more strongly than I. But there are 
 
208 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 wrongs to which we must submit when we are 
 weak ; and, my good Clelia, against this we poor 
 folks in the Vale of Edera are as weak as the 
 teal in the marshes against the swivel guns of the 
 sportsmen's punts." 
 
 But he argued in vain ; logic and persuasion are 
 alike useless when opposed to the rock of ignor- 
 ance and obstinacy. She held him in deep 
 reverence; she brought her conscience to his 
 judgment; she thought him beyond ordinary 
 humanity : but when he endeavoured to persuade 
 her that her son was wrong he failed. 
 
 " Sir, you know that this crime against the river 
 will ruin us," she said doggedly. " Why then 
 should you try to tie our hands ? I do not know 
 what Adone does ; his mind is hid from me, but 
 if, as you say, he wants a rising of our people, it is 
 natural and just." 
 
 When the mind of the peasant man or 
 woman be made up in its stubbornness, all learn- 
 ing, wisdom, experience, even fact, speak in vain ; 
 it opposes to all proofs the passive resistance of 
 a dogged incredulity : to reason with it is as 
 useless as to quarry stone with a razor. 
 
 Many and many a time had he given up in 
 exhaustion and nausea his endeavours to con- 
 vince the rural mind of some simple fact, some 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 209 
 
 clear cause, some elementary principle. He knew 
 that Clelia Alba would never believe in the exile 
 which would be her certain fate until the armed 
 and liveried creatures of the State should drive 
 her from her home by order of the State. He 
 had seen in Eome that there was no possible 
 chance of opposing this enterprise against the 
 Edera water. It had been decided on by men of 
 money who had the ear of ministers, the pre- 
 cedence in ante-chambers, the means of success in 
 political departments and in commercial centres. 
 A few scattered provincial owners of land and 
 labourers on land might as well try to oppose 
 these men as the meek steinbok in the mountain 
 solitudes to escape the expanding bullet of a 
 prince's rifle. Yet he also saw how impossible it 
 was to expect a young man like Adone, with his 
 lineage, his temperament, his courage, and his 
 mingling of ignorance and knowledge, to accept 
 the inevitable without combat. As well might 
 he be bidden to accept dishonour. 
 
 The remorse in his soul was keen, inasmuch as 
 without him Adone would never have known of 
 his descent from the lords of Euscino, and never, 
 probably, have acquired that "little learning" 
 which a poet of the north has said is a 
 dangerous thing. 
 
 15 
 
210 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Better," thought Don Silverio, with torment- 
 ing self-reproach, "better have left him to his 
 plough, to his scythe, to his reaping-hook; better 
 have left him in ignorance of the meaning of 
 art and of study; better have left him a mere 
 peasant to beget peasants like himself. Then 
 he would have suffered less, and might possibly 
 have taken peaceably such compensation as the 
 law would have allowed him for the loss to his 
 land, and have gone away to the West, as so 
 many go, leaving the soil they were born on to 
 pass out of culture." 
 
 Would Adone ever have done that ? No ; he 
 would not; he was wedded to the soil like the 
 heaths that grew out of it. He might be violently 
 dragged away, but he would never live elsewhere ; 
 his heart had struck its roots too deeply into the 
 earth which nurtured him. 
 
 " Why did you tell him of all the great men 
 that lived?" Clelia Alba had often said to him. 
 "Why did you fill his soul with that hunger 
 which no bread that is baked can content ? We, 
 who work to live, have no time to do aught except 
 work, and sleep awhile to get strength for more 
 work ; and so on, always the same, until age ties 
 knots in our sinews, and makes our blood thin and 
 slow. What use is it to open gates to him which 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 211 
 
 he must never pass, to make his mind a tangled 
 skein that can never be undone ? When you 
 work hard you want to rest in your resting hours, 
 not to dream. Dreaming is no rest. He is always 
 dreaming, and now he dreams of blood and fire." 
 
 Don Silverio's heart was with them, and by all 
 the obligations of his calling was forced to be 
 against them. He was of a militant temper; he 
 would gladly have led them into action as did 
 the martial priests of old ; but his sense, his duty, 
 his conscience, all forbade him to even show 
 them such encouragement as would lie in sym- 
 pathy. Had he been rich he would have taken 
 their cause into the tribunals and contested this 
 measure inch by inch, however hopelessly. But 
 who would plead for a poor parish, for a penniless 
 priest? What payment could he offer, he who 
 could scarcely find the coins to fill his salt-box 
 or to mend his surplice ? 
 
 A great anxiety consumed him. He saw no 
 way out of this calamity. The people were 
 wronged, grossly wronged, but how could they 
 right that wrong? Bloodshed would not alter 
 it, or even cure it. What was theirs, and the 
 earth's, was to be taken from them ; and how 
 were they to be persuaded that to defend their 
 own would be a crime ? 
 
212 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " There is nothing, then, but for the people to 
 lie down and let the artillery roll over them ! " 
 said Adone once, with bitter emphasis. 
 
 "And the drivers and the gunners are their 
 own brothers, sons, nephews, who will not check 
 their gallop an instant for that fact; for the 
 worst thing about force is that it makes its 
 human instruments mere machines like the guns 
 which they manoeuvre," thought Don Silverio, 
 as he answered aloud : " No ; I fear there will 
 be nothing else for them to do under any tyranny, 
 until all the nations of the earth shall cease to 
 send their children to be made the janissaries of 
 the State. No alteration of existing dominions 
 will be possible so long as the Armies exist." 
 
 Adone was silent; convinced against his will, 
 and therefore convinced without effect or adhesion. 
 
 He dared not tell his friend of the passionate 
 propaganda which he had begun up and down the 
 course of the Edera, striving to make these stocks 
 and stones stir, striving to make the blind see, 
 the deaf hear, the infirm rise and leap. 
 
 "Let us go and make music," said the priest 
 at last. " That will not harm any one, and will 
 do our own souls good. It is long since I heard 
 your voice." 
 
 "It will be longer," thought Adone, as he 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 213 
 
 answered : " Excuse me, sir ; I cannot think of 
 any other thing than this great evil which hangs 
 over us. There is not one of our country people 
 who does not curse the scheme. They are 
 frightened and stupid, but they are angry and 
 miserable. Those who are their spokesmen, or 
 who ought to be, do not say what they wish, 
 do not care what they wish, do not ask what 
 they wish. They are the sons of the soil, 
 but they count for nothing. If they met to try 
 and do anything for themselves, guards soldiery 
 would come from a distance, they say, and 
 break up the meetings, and carry those who 
 should speak away to some prison. The Govern- 
 ment approves the theft of the water : that is to 
 be enough." 
 
 " Yet public meeting has been a right of the 
 people on the Latin soil ever since the Caesars." 
 
 " What matter right, what matter wrong ? No 
 one heeds either." 
 
 " What can be done then ? " 
 
 "We must help ourselves." 
 
 He spoke sullenly and under his breath. He 
 did not dare to say more clearly what was in his 
 thoughts. 
 
 " By brute force ? " said Don Silverio. " That 
 were madness. What would be the number of 
 
214 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the able-bodied men of all three communes ? 
 Let us say two thousand ; that is over the mark. 
 What weapons would they have ? Old muskets, 
 old fowling-pieces, and not many of those ; their 
 scythes, their axes, their sticks. A single battalion 
 would cut them down as you mow grass. You 
 have not seen rioters dispersed by trained troops. 
 I have. I have seen even twenty carabineers 
 gallop down a street full of armed citizens, the 
 carabineers shooting right and left without selec- 
 tion ; and the street, before they had ridden two 
 hundred yards, was empty except for a few fallen 
 bodies which the horses trampled. You can 
 never hope to succeed in these days with a mere 
 jacquerie. You might as well set your wheat- 
 sheaves up to oppose a field battery." 
 
 " Garibaldi," muttered Adone, " he had naught 
 but raw levies! " 
 
 " Garibaldi was an instinctive military genius, 
 like Aguto, like Ferruccio, like Gian delle Bande 
 Neri, like all the great Condottieri. But he 
 would probably have rotted in the Spielberg, or 
 been shot in some fortress of the Quadrilateral, 
 if he had not been supported by that proclama- 
 tion of Genoa and campaign of Lombardy, which 
 were Louis Napoleon's supreme errors in French 
 policy." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 215 
 
 Adone was silent, stung by that sense of dis- 
 comfiture and mortification which comes upon 
 those who feel their own inability to carry on an 
 argument. To him Garibaldi was superhuman, 
 fabulous, far away in the mists of an heroic 
 past, as Ulysses to Greek youths. 
 
 "You, sir, may preach patience," he said sullenly. 
 "It is no doubt your duty to preach it. But I 
 cannot be patient. My heart would choke in my 
 throat." 
 
 Don Silverio looked him straight in the face. 
 
 " What is it you intend to do ? " 
 
 " I shall do what I may, what I can." 
 
 " I tell you that you can do nothing, my son." 
 
 "How know you that, reverend? You are a 
 priest, not a man." 
 
 A faint red colour came over Don Silverio's 
 colourless face. 
 
 "One may be both," he said simply. "You 
 are distraught, my son, by a great calamity. Try 
 and see yourself as others see you, and do not 
 lead the poor and ignorant into peril. Will the 
 Edera waters be freer because your neighbours 
 and you are at the galleys ? The men of gold, 
 who have the men of steel behind them, will be 
 always stronger than you." 
 
 " God is over us all," said Adone. 
 
216 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Don Silverio was silent. He could not refute 
 that expression of faith, but in his soul he could 
 not share it ; and Adone had said it, less in faith 
 than in obstinacy. He meant to rouse the 
 country if he could, let come what might of the 
 rising. 
 
 Who could tell the issue ? A spark from a poor 
 man's hearth had set a city in flames before now. 
 
 "How can you think me indifferent?" said 
 Don Silverio. "Had I no feeling for you should 
 I not feel for myself? Almost certainly my life 
 will be doomed to end here. Think you that 
 I shall see with callousness the ruin of this fair 
 landscape, which has been my chief consolation 
 through so many dreary years ? You, who deem 
 yourself so wholly without hope, may find solace 
 if you choose to take it. You are young, you are 
 free, all the tenderest ties of life can be yours if 
 you choose ; if this home be destroyed you may 
 make another where you will. But I am bound 
 here. I must obey; I must submit. I cannot 
 move ; I cannot alter or renew my fate ; and to 
 me the destruction of the beauty of the Edera 
 valley will be the loss of the only pleasure of my 
 existence. Try and see with my eyes, Adone ; it 
 may help you to bear your burden." 
 
 But he might as well have spoken to the water 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 217 
 
 itself, or to the boulders of its rocks, or to the 
 winds which swept its surface. 
 
 ''It is not yours," said Adone, almost brutally. 
 " You were not born here. You cannot know ! 
 Live elsewhere ? My mother and I ? Sooner a 
 thousand times would we drown in Edera ! " 
 
 The water was golden under the reflections of 
 the sun as he spoke ; the great net was swaying 
 in it, clear of the sword rush and iris ; a king- 
 fisher like a jewel was threading its shallows ; 
 there was the fresh smell of the heather and 
 the wild tulips on the air. 
 
 "You do not know what it is to love a 
 thing! how should you? you, a priest!" said 
 Adone. 
 
 Don Silverio did not reply. He went on down 
 the course of the stream. 
 
XIV 
 
 ONE morning in early April Adone received a 
 printed invitation to attend in five days' time 
 at the Muncipality of San Beda to hear of some- 
 thing which concerned him. It was brought by 
 the little old postman who went the rounds of 
 the district once a week on his donkey; the five 
 days had already expired before the summons was 
 delivered. Adone' s ruddy cheeks grew" pale as he 
 glanced over it ; he thrust it into the soil and 
 drove his spade through it. The old man waiting,, 
 in hopes to get a draught of wine, looked at him 
 in dismay. 
 
 "Is that a way to treat their Honours' com- 
 mands?" he said aghast. 
 
 Adone did not answer or raise his head; he 
 went on with his digging ; he was turning and 
 trenching the soil to plant potatoes ; he flung 
 spadefuls of eartri over the buried summons. 
 
 218 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 219 
 
 " What's amiss with you, lad ? " said the old 
 follow, who had known him from his infancy. 
 
 " Leave me," said Adone, with impatience. 
 "Go to the house if you want to drink and to 
 bait your beast." 
 
 " Thank ye," said the old man. "But you will 
 go, won't you, Adone? It fares ill with those 
 who do not go." 
 
 " Who told you to say that ? " 
 
 "Nobody; but I have lived a' many years, 
 and I have carried those printed papers a' many 
 years, and I know that those who do not go 
 when they are called rue it. Their Honours 
 don't let you flout them." 
 
 "Their Honours be damned!" said Adone. 
 " Go to the house." 
 
 The little old man, sorely frightened, dropped 
 his head, and pulling his donkey by its bridle 
 went away along the grass path under the vines. 
 
 Adone went on delving, but his strong hands 
 shook with rage and emotion as they grasped the 
 handle of the spade. He knew as well as if he 
 had been told by a hundred people that he was 
 called to treat of the sale of the Terra Vergine. 
 He forced himself to go on with his forenoon's 
 labour, but the dear familiar earth swam and 
 spun before his sight. 
 
220 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "What?" he muttered to it, " I who love you 
 am not j^our owner ? I who was born on you am 
 not your lawful heir? I who have laboured on 
 you ever since I was old enough to use a tool at 
 all am now in my manhood to give you up to 
 strangers ? I will make you run red with blood 
 first ! " 
 
 It wanted then two hours of noon. When twelve 
 strokes sounded from across the river, tolled slowly 
 by the old bronze bell of the church tower, he went 
 for the noonday meal and rest to the house. 
 
 The old man was no longer there, but Clelia 
 Alba said to him 
 
 "Dario says they summon you to San Beda, 
 and that you will not go? " 
 
 ' 'He said right." 
 
 "But, my son," cried his mother, "go you 
 must ! These orders are not to be shirked. Those 
 who give them have the law behind them. You 
 know that." 
 
 " They have the villainy of the law behind 
 them : the only portion of the law the people are 
 ever suffered to see." 
 
 "But how can you know what it is about if 
 you do not go?" 
 
 "There is only one thing which it can be. 
 One thing that I will not hear." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 221 
 
 " You mean for the river for the land ? " 
 
 " What else ? " 
 
 Her face grew as stern as his own. " If that 
 be so ... Still you should go, my son; you should 
 go to hold your own." 
 
 " I will hold my own," said Adone ; and in his 
 thoughts he added, " but not by words." 
 
 " What is the day of the month for which they 
 call you? " asked his mother. 
 
 " The date is passed by three days. That is a 
 little jest which authority often plays upon the 
 people." 
 
 They went within. The meal was eaten in 
 silence ; the nut-brown eyes of Nerina looked 
 wistfully in their faces, but she asked nothing ; 
 she guessed enough. 
 
 Adone said nothing to Don Silverio of the 
 summons, for he knew that the priest would 
 counsel strongly his attendance in person at 
 San Beda, even although the date was already 
 passed. 
 
 But the Vicar had heard of it from the post- 
 man, who confided to him the fears he felt that 
 Adone would neglect the summons, and so get 
 into trouble. He perceied at once the error which 
 would be committed if any sentence should be 
 allowed to go by default through absence of the 
 
222 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 person cited. By such absence the absentee 
 discredits himself ; whatsoever rnay be the justice 
 of his cause, it is prejudiced at the outset. 
 But how to persuade of this truth a man 
 so blind with pain and rage and so dogged in 
 self-will as Adone had become, Don Silverio 
 did not see. He shrank from renewing useless 
 struggles and disputes which led to no issue. He 
 felt that Adone and he would only drift farther 
 and farther apart with every word they spoke. 
 
 The young man viewed this thing through a red 
 mist of hatred and headstrong fury ; it was im- 
 possible for his elder to admit that such views 
 were wise or pardonable, or due to anything 
 more than the heated visions evoked by a great 
 wrong. 
 
 That evening at sunset he saw the little girl 
 Nerina at the river. She had led two cows to 
 the water, and they and she were standing knee 
 deep in the stream. The western light shone on 
 their soft, mottled, dun hides and on her ruddy 
 brown hair and bright young face. The bearded 
 bulrushes were round them; the light played on 
 the broad leaves of the docks and the red spikes 
 of great beds of willow-herb ; the water reflected 
 the glowing sky, and close to its surface numbers 
 of newly-come swallows whirled and dipped and 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 223 
 
 darted, chasing gnats, whilst near at hand on a 
 spray a little woodlark sang. 
 
 The scene was fair, peaceful, full of placid and 
 tender loveliness. 
 
 "And all this is to be changed and ruined 
 in order that some sons of the mammon of 
 unrighteousness may set up their mills to grind 
 their gold," he thought to himself as he passed 
 over the stepping-stones, which at this shallow 
 place could be crossed dryfoot. 
 
 " Where is Adone? " he called to the child. 
 
 " He is gone down the river in the punt, most 
 reverend." 
 
 "And his mother?" 
 
 " Is at the house, sir." 
 
 Don Silverio went through the pastures under 
 the great olives. When he reached the path 
 leading to the house he saw Clelia Alba seated 
 before the doorway spinning. The rose-tree 
 displayed its first crimson buds above her head ; 
 on the roof sparrows and starlings were busy. 
 
 Clelia Alba rose and dropped a low courtesy 
 to him, then resumed her work at the wheel. 
 
 " You have heard, sir? " she said in a low tone. 
 " They summon him to San Beda." 
 
 " Old Dario told me ; but Adone will not go? " 
 
 " No, sir; he will never go." 
 
224 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " He is in error." 
 
 " I do not know, sir. He is best judge of that." 
 
 " I fear he is in no state of mind to judge 
 calmly of anything. His absence will go against 
 him. Instead of an amicable settlement the 
 question will go to the tribunals, and if he be 
 unrepresented there he will be condemned in 
 contumacium." 
 
 "Amicable settlement? " repeated his mother, 
 her fine face animated and stern, and her deep, 
 dark eyes flashing. " Can you, sir, dare you, sir, 
 name such a thing? What they would do is 
 robbery, vile robbery, a thousand times worse 
 than aught the men of night ever did when 
 they came down from the hills to harass our 
 homesteads." 
 
 "I do not say otherwise ; but the law is with 
 those who harass you now. We cannot alter the 
 times, good Clelia; we must take them as they 
 are. Your son should go to San Beda and urge 
 his rights, not with violence but with firmness 
 and lucidity; he should also provide himself 
 with an advocate, or he will be driven out of his 
 home by sheer force, and with some miserable 
 sum as compensation." 
 
 Clelia Alba's brown skin grew ashen grey, and 
 its heavy lines deepened. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 225 
 
 "You mean . . . that is possible ?" 
 
 " It is more than possible. It is certain. These 
 things always end so. My poor dear friend ! do 
 you not understand, even yet, that nothing can 
 save your homestead? " 
 
 Clelia Alba leaned her elbows on her knees and 
 bowed her face upon her hands. She felt as 
 women of her race had felt on some fair morn 
 when they had seen the skies redden with baleful 
 fires, and the glitter of steel corslets shine under 
 the foliage, and had heard the ripe corn crackle 
 under the horses' hoofs, and had heard the shriek- 
 ing children scream, "The lances are coming, 
 mother! Mother ! save us ! " 
 
 Those women had had no power to save home- 
 stead or child ; they had seen the pikes twist in 
 the curling locks, and the daggers thrust in the 
 white young throats, and the flames soar to 
 heaven, burning rooftree and clearing stack- 
 yard, and they had possessed no power to stay 
 the steel or quench the torch. She was like 
 them. 
 
 She lifted her face up to the light. 
 
 "He will kill them." 
 
 "He may kill one man two men he will have 
 blood on his hands. What will that serve? I 
 have told you again and again. This thing is 
 
 16 
 
226 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 inevitable frightful, but inevitable, like war. In 
 war do not millions of innocent and helpless 
 creatures suffer through no fault of their own, 
 no cause of their own, on account of some king's 
 caprice or statesman's blunder? You are just 
 such victims here. Nothing will preserve to you 
 the Terra Vergine. My dear old friend, have 
 courage." 
 
 "I cannot believe it, sir; I cannot credit it. 
 The land is ours ; this little bit of the good and 
 solid earth is ours ; God will not let us be robbed 
 of it." 
 
 " My friend ! no miracles are wrought now. I 
 have told you again and again and again you 
 must lose this place." 
 
 "I will not believe it! " 
 
 " Alas ! I pray that you may not be forced to 
 believe; but I know that I pray in vain. Tell me, 
 you are certain that Adone will not answer that 
 summons? " 
 
 "I am certain." 
 
 " He is mad." 
 
 " No, sir, he is not mad. No more than I, his 
 mother. We have faith in Heaven." 
 
 Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him 
 to tell them that such faith was a feeble staff. 
 
 " I must not tarry," he said, and rose. " The 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 227 
 
 night is near at hand. Tell your son what I have 
 said. My dear friend, I would almost as soon stab 
 you in the throat as say these things to you ; but 
 as you value your son's sanity and safety make 
 him realise this fact, which you and he deny : 
 the law will take your home from you, as it will 
 take the river from the province." 
 
 " No, sir ! " said Clelia Alba fiercely. " No, no, 
 no ! There is a God above us ! " 
 
 Don Silverio bade her sadly farewell, and in- 
 sisted no more. He went through the odorous 
 grasslands, where the primrose and wild hyacinth 
 grew so thickly and the olive branches were 
 already laden with small green berries, and his 
 soul was uneasy, seeing how closed is the mind 
 of the peasant to argument or to persuasion. 
 Often had he seen a poor beetle pushing its ball 
 of dirt up the side of a sandhill only to fall back, 
 and begin again, and again fall ; for any truth to 
 endeavour to penetrate the brain of the rustic is 
 as hard as for the beetle to climb the sand. He 
 was disinclined to seek the discomfiture of 
 another useless argument, but neither could he 
 be content in his conscience to let this matter 
 wholly alone. 
 
 Long and dreary as the journey was to San 
 Beda, he undertook it again, saying nothing to 
 
228 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 any one of his purpose. He hoped to be able 
 to put Adone's contumacy in a pardonable light 
 before the Syndic, and perhaps to plead his 
 cause better than the boy could plead it for him- 
 self. To Don Silverio he always seemed a boy 
 still, and therefore excusable in all his violences 
 and extravagances. 
 
 The day was fine and cool, and walking was 
 easier and less exhausting than it had been at 
 the season of his first visit ; moreover, his journey 
 to Borne had braced his nerves and sinews to 
 exertion, and restored to him the energy and self- 
 possession which the long, tedious, monotonous 
 years of solitude in Euscino had weakened. 
 There was a buoyant wind coming from the 
 sea with rain in its track, and a deep blue sky 
 with grand clouds drifting past the ultramarine 
 hues of the Abruzzo range. The bare brown 
 rocks grew dark as bronze, and the forest-clothed 
 hills were almost black in the shadows, as the 
 clustered towers and roofs of the little city came 
 in sight. He went, fatigued as he was, straight 
 to the old ducal palace, which was now used 
 as the municipality, without even shaking the 
 dust off his feet. 
 
 " Say that I come for the affair of Adone 
 Alba," he said to the first persons he saw in 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 229 
 
 the ante-room on the first floor. In the little 
 ecclesiastical town his calling commanded respect. 
 They begged him to sit down and rest, and in a few 
 minutes returned to say that the most illustrious 
 the Count Corradini would receive him at once in 
 his private room ; it was a day of general council, 
 but the council would not meet for an hour. 
 The Syndic was a tall, spare, frail man, with a 
 patrician's face and an affable manner. He ex- 
 pressed himself in courteous terms as flattered 
 by the visit of the Vicar of Euscino, and inquired 
 if in any way he could be of the slightest service. 
 
 "Of the very greatest, your Excellency," said 
 Don Silverio. " I have ventured to come hither 
 on behalf of a young parishioner of mine, Adone 
 Alba, who, having received the summons of your 
 Excellency only yesterday, may, I trust, be 
 excused for not having obeyed it on the date 
 named. He is unable to come to-day. May 
 I offer myself for his substitute as amicus 
 curice ? " 
 
 "Certainly, certainly," said Corradini, relieved 
 to meet an educated man instead of the boor he 
 had expected. "If the summons were delayed 
 by any fault of my officials, the delay must be 
 inquired into. Meanwhile, most reverend, have 
 you instructions to conclude the affair ? " 
 
230 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " As yet, I venture to remind your Excellency, 
 we do not even know what is the affair of which 
 you speak." 
 
 " Oh no ; quite true. The matter is the sale of the 
 land known under the title of the Terra Vergine." 
 
 " Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone," 
 thought Don Silverio. 
 
 Aloud he answered, "What sale? The pro- 
 prietor has heard of none." 
 
 " He must have heard. It can be no news to 
 you that the works about to be made upon the 
 river Edera will necessitate the purchase of the 
 land known as the Terra Vergine." 
 
 Here the Syndic put on gold spectacles, drew 
 towards him a black portfolio filled by plans 
 and papers, and began to move them about, 
 muttering, as he searched, little scraps of phrases 
 out of each of them. At last he turned over the 
 sheets which concerned the land of the Alba. 
 
 " Terra Vergine Commune of Euscino 
 owners Alba from 1620 family of good report 
 regular taxpayers sixty hectares land produc- 
 tive; value just so humph, humph, humph!" 
 
 Then he laid down the documents and looked at 
 Don Silverio from over his spectacles. 
 
 " I conclude, most reverend, that you come 
 empowered by this young man to treat with us?" 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 231 
 
 " I venture, sir," replied Don Silverio respect- 
 fully, " to remind you again that it is impossible I 
 should be so empowered, since Adone Alba was 
 ignorant of the reason for which he was sum- 
 moned here." 
 
 Corradini shuffled his documents nervously with 
 some irritation. 
 
 "This conference, then, is mere waste of 
 time? I hold council to-day " 
 
 "Pardon me, your Excellency," said Don 
 Silverio blandly. " It will not be waste of time 
 if you will allow me to lay before you certain 
 facts, and, first, to ask you one question : Who is, 
 or are, the buyer or buyers of this land ? " 
 
 The question was evidently unwelcome to the 
 Syndic ; it was direct, which every Italian con- 
 siders ill-bred, and it was awkward to answer. 
 He was troubled for personal reasons, and the 
 calm and searching gaze of the priest's dark eyes 
 embarrassed him. After all, he thought, it would 
 have been better to deal with the boor himself. 
 
 "Why do you ask that ?" he said irritably. 
 " You are aware that the National Society for the 
 Improvement of Land and the foreign company of 
 the Teramo-Tronto Electric Kailway combine in 
 these projected works? " 
 
 " To which of these two societies, then, is Adone 
 
232 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 Alba, or am I, as his locum tenens, to address our- 
 selves ? " 
 
 " To neither. This commune deals with you." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Count Corradini took off his glasses, put them 
 on again, shifted the papers and plans in his 
 imposing portfolio. 
 
 " May I ask again why ? " said Don Silverio 
 in the gentlest tones of his beautiful voice. 
 
 "Because, because," answered the Syndic irri- 
 tably, " because the whole affair is in treaty 
 between our delegates and the companies. 
 Public societies do not deal with private indi- 
 viduals directly, but by proxy." 
 
 " Pardon my ignorance," said Don Silverio, 
 " but why does the commune desire to substitute 
 itself for the owner? " 
 
 "It is usual." 
 
 "Ah! It is usual." 
 
 Corradini did not like the repetition of his 
 phrase, which would not perhaps bear very close 
 examination. He looked at his watch. 
 
 "Excuse me, Reverend Father, but time 
 presses." 
 
 " Allow me to crave of your bounty a little more 
 time, nevertheless. I am not habituated to busi- 
 ness, but I believe, if I understand your worshipful 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 233 
 
 self aright, the commune contemplates purchas- 
 ing from the individuals, with power and intent 
 to sell to the companies." 
 
 What an unmannerly ecclesiastic ! thought 
 Corradini ; for indeed, put thus bluntly and crudely, 
 what the commune, as represented by himself, was 
 doing did not look as entirely correct as could be 
 desired. 
 
 "I was in Kome, most illustrious," said Don 
 Silverio, " in connection with this matter some 
 months ago." 
 
 " In Kome?" 
 
 To hear this was unpleasant to the Syndic; 
 it had never occurred to him that his rural, 
 illiterate, and sparsely populated district would 
 have contained any person educated enough to 
 think of inquiring in Rome about this local 
 matter. 
 
 " To Rome ! Why did you go to Rome ? " 
 
 " To acquire information concerning this 
 scheme." 
 
 " You are an owner of land ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I am a poor, very poor, priest." 
 
 " It cannot concern you, then." 
 
 " It concerns my people. Nothing which con- 
 cerns them is alien to me." 
 
 " Humph, humph ! Most proper, most praise- 
 
234 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 worthy. But we have no time for generalities. 
 You came to treat of the Terra Vergine ? " 
 
 "Pardon me, sir; I came to hear why you 
 summoned Adone Alba, one of my flock." 
 
 "Could he not have come himself? It had 
 been but his duty." 
 
 "He could not, sir; and, to say truth, he 
 would not. He does not intend to sell his land." 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 Corradini half rose from his chair, leaning both 
 hands on the table, and staring through his 
 glasses across the mass of portfolios and papers 
 at the priest. 
 
 " He will have no choice allowed him," he said 
 with great anger. " To the interests of the State 
 all minor interests must bend. What ! a mere 
 peasant stand in the way of a great enterprise ? " 
 
 "You intend expropriation then? " 
 
 The voice of Don Silverio was very calm and 
 sweet, but his countenance was stern. 
 
 Corradini was irritated beyond measure. He 
 did not desire to play that great card so early in 
 the game. 
 
 " I do not say that," he muttered. " There 
 must be parliamentary sanction for any forced 
 sale. I spoke in general terms. Private interest 
 must cede to public." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 235 
 
 " There is parliamentary sanction already given 
 to the project for the Valley of Edera," said Don 
 Silverio, " expropriation included." 
 
 Count Corradini threw himself back in his 
 chair with an action expressive at once of wrath 
 and of impotence. He had an irritating sense 
 that this priest was master of the position, and 
 knew much more than he said. In reality Don 
 Silverio knew very little, but he had skill and tact 
 enough to give a contrary impression to his 
 auditor. He followed up his advantage. 
 
 " Expropriation is to be permitted to enforce 
 sales on recalcitrant landowners," he continued. 
 " But that measure, even though conceded in 
 theory, will take time to translate into practice. 
 I fear, sir, that if it be ever put into execution 
 we shall have trouble in your commune. Your 
 council has been over hasty in allying itself with 
 these speculators. You and they have not taken 
 into account the immense injury which will be 
 done to the valley and to my own village or town, 
 call it as you will, of Kuscino. The people are 
 quiet, patient, meek, but they will not be so if 
 they are robbed of the water of the Edera. It 
 is the source of all the little the very little 
 good which comes to them. So it is with Adone 
 Alba. He has been God-fearing, law-abiding, a 
 
236 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 good son, excellent in all relations ; but he will 
 not recognise as law the seizure of his land. Sir, 
 you are the elected chief of this district ; all these 
 people look to you for support in their emergency. 
 What are these foreign speculators to you that 
 you should side with them ? You say this com- 
 mune will purchase from its peasant proprietors 
 in the interests of these foreigners. Was it to do 
 this that they elected you? Why should the 
 interests of the foreigners be upheld by you to the 
 injury of those of your own people ? Speaking 
 for my own parish, I can affirm to you that, 
 simple souls as they are, poor in the extreme, and 
 resigned to poverty, you will have trouble with 
 them all if you take it on you to enforce the 
 usurpation of the Edera water." 
 
 Count Corradini, still leaning back in his large 
 leathern chair, listened as if he were hypnotised ; 
 he was astounded, offended, enraged, but he 
 was fascinated by the low, rich, harmonious 
 modulations of the voice which addressed 
 him, and by the sense of mastery which the 
 priest conveyed without by a single word 
 asserting it. 
 
 "You would threaten me with public dis- 
 order?" he said feebly, and with consciousness 
 of feebleness. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 237 
 
 "No, sir; I would adjure you, in God's name, 
 not to provoke it." 
 
 " It does not rest with me." 
 
 He raised himself in his chair ; his slender, 
 aristocratic hands played nervously with the 
 strings of the portfolio, his eyelids flickered, and 
 his eyes avoided those of his visitor. 
 
 " I have no voice in this matter. You mistake." 
 
 " Surely your Excellency speaks with the voice 
 of all your electors ? " 
 
 "Of my administrative council, then? But 
 they are all in favour of the project; so is his 
 Excellency the Prefect, so is the Deputy, so is 
 the Government. Can I take upon myself in my 
 own slender personality to oppose these ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, because you are 4;he mouthpiece of 
 those who cannot speak for themselves." 
 
 " Euh ! Euh ! That may be true in a sense. 
 But you mistake ; my authority is most limited. 
 I have but two votes in Council. I am as wholly 
 convinced as you can be that some will suffer 
 for the general good. The individual is crushed 
 by the crowd in these days. We are in a period 
 of immense and febrile development; of wholly 
 unforeseen expansion; we are surrounded by 
 the miracles of science; we are witnesses of 
 an increase of intelligence which will lead to 
 
238 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 results whereof no living man can dream ; 
 civilisation in its vast and ineffable benevolence 
 sometimes wounds, even as the light and heat of 
 the blessed sun " 
 
 " Pardon me, sir," said Don Silverio, " at any 
 other moment it would be my dearest privilege 
 to listen to your eloquence. But time passes. I 
 came here on a practical errand. I desire to take 
 back some definite answer to Adone and Clelia 
 Alba. Am I to understand from you that the 
 municipality, on behalf of these foreign com- 
 panies, desires to purchase his land, and even 
 insists upon its right" to do so?," 
 
 The Syndic, accustomed to seek shelter from all 
 plain speaking in the cover of flowery periods 
 such as those in which he had been arrested, was 
 driven from his usual refuge. He could not 
 resume the noble and enlightened discourse which 
 had been thus recklessly cut in two. He tied 
 the strings of the portfolio into a bow, and undid 
 them, and tied them again. 
 
 " I have received you, sir, ex officio," he replied 
 after a long silence. ' ' You address me as if I 
 possessed some special individual power. I have 
 none. I am but the mouthpiece, the repre- 
 .esntative of my administrative council. You, a 
 learned ecclesiastic, cannot want to be taught 
 what are the functions of a Syndic." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 239 
 
 " I am to understand then that I must address 
 myself on behalf of my people to the Prefect ? " 
 
 Corradini was silent. The last thing he desired 
 was for this importunate priest to see the 
 Prefect. 
 
 " I must go into council at once," he said, 
 again looking at his watch. " Could you return ? 
 Are you remaining here ? " 
 
 " Some hours, sir." 
 
 " Will you dine with me at my house at three ? 
 You will give me much pleasure, and the Countess 
 Corradini will be charmed." 
 
 " I am grateful for so much offered honour, but 
 I have promised to make my noonday meal with 
 an old friend, the superior of the Cistercians." 
 
 " An excellent, a holy person," said Corradini, 
 with a bend of his head. " Be at my house, 
 reverend sir, at five of the clock. I shall then 
 have spoken with the assessors of your errand, 
 and it will be dealt with probably in council." 
 
 Don Silverio made a low bow, and left him 
 free to go to his awaiting councillors, who were 
 already gathered round a long table covered by 
 green cloth, in a vaulted and stately chamber, 
 with frescoes losing their colour on its walls, and 
 stories from Greek mythology carved on its oaken 
 doors and stone cornices. 
 
240 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Pray excuse me, gentlemen," said the courtly 
 mayor to his assessors, taking his seat on an old 
 walnut- wood throne at the head of the table. " I 
 have been detained by this matter of the Val- 
 dedera. I fear the people of that valley will show 
 an ungrateful and refractory temper. How hard 
 it is to persuade the ignorant where their true 
 interests lie ! But let us to business." 
 
 " It will be a hard matter," said the Prior to 
 Don Silverio as they walked together in the little 
 burial-ground of the monastery between its lines 
 of rose-trees and its lines of crosses, after the 
 frugal noonday meal had been eaten in the 
 ref rectory. " It will be a hard matter. You 
 will fail, I fear. The municipalities here smell 
 money. That is enough to make them welcome 
 the invasion. What can you do against the force 
 of gold?" 
 
 " Would it avail anything to see the Prefect ? " 
 " Nothing. He is cousin to the Minister of 
 Agriculture, whose brother is chairman of the 
 Teramo-Fermo Company. We are governed 
 solely by what the French call tripotage." 
 11 What character does this Syndic bear ? " 
 " A good one. He is blameless in his domestic 
 relations, an indulgent landlord, a gentleman, 
 respectful of religion, assiduous in his duties ; 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 241 
 
 but he is in debt ; his large estates produce little ; 
 he has no other means. I would not take upon 
 me to say that he would be above a bribe." 
 
 At five of the clock, as the Syndic had told him 
 to do, Don Silverio presented himself at the 
 Palazzo Corradini. He was shown with much 
 deference by an old liveried servant into a fine 
 apartment with marble busts in niches in the 
 walls, and antique bookcases of oak, and door- 
 hangings of Tuscan tapestry. The air of the 
 place was cold, and had the scent of a tomb. It 
 was barely illumined by two bronze lamps in 
 which unshaded oil wicks burned. Corradini 
 joined him there in five minutes' time, and wel- 
 comed him to the house with grace and warmth 
 of courtesy. 
 
 "What does he want of me?" thought Don 
 Silverio, who had not been often met in life by 
 such sweet phrases. "Does he want me to be 
 blind?" 
 
 "Dear and reverend sir," said the mayor, placing 
 himself with his back to the brass lamps, " tell 
 me fully about this youth whom you protect, who 
 will not sell the Terra Vergine. Here we can 
 speak at our ease ; yonder at the municipality, 
 there may be always some eavesdropper." 
 
 " Most worshipful, what I said is matter well 
 '7 
 
242 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 known to the whole countryside ; all the valley 
 can bear witness to its truth," replied Don 
 Silverio, and he proceeded to set forth all that 
 he knew of Adone and Clelia Alba, and of their 
 great love for their lands ; he only did not men- 
 tion what he believed to be Adone's descent, 
 because he feared that it might sound fantastical 
 or presumptuous. Nearly three hundred years of 
 peasant ownership and residence were surely titles 
 enough for consideration. 
 
 " If land owned thus, and tilled thus by one 
 family, can be taken away from that family by 
 Act of Parliament to please the greedy schemes 
 of strangers, why preserve the eighth command- 
 ment in the Decalogue? It becomes absurd. 
 There cannot be a more absolute ownership than 
 this of the Alba to the farm they live on and 
 cultivate. So long as there is any distinction at 
 all between meum et tuum, how can its violent 
 seizure be by any possibility defended ? " 
 
 " There need be no violent seizure," said 
 Corradini. " The young man will be offered a 
 good price ; even, since you are interested in him, 
 a high price." 
 
 " But he will take no price no price, if he were 
 paid millions ; they would not compensate him 
 for his loss." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 243 
 
 " He must be a very singular young man." 
 
 "His character is singular, no doubt, in an age 
 in which money is esteemed the sole goal of 
 existence, and discontent constitutes philosophy. 
 Adone Alba wants nothing but what he has ; he 
 only asks to be left alone." 
 
 " It is difficult to be left alone in a world full of 
 other people ! If your hero want a Thebaid, he 
 can go and buy one in La Plata, or the Argentine, 
 with the price we shall give for his land." 
 
 " We ? " repeated Don Silverio witTi significant 
 emphasis. 
 
 Corradini reddened a little. " I use the word 
 because I am greatly interested in the success of 
 this enterprise, being convinced of its general 
 utility to the province. Being cognisant as I am 
 of the neighbourhood, I hoped I could prevent 
 some friction." 
 
 " The shares are, I believe, already on the 
 market?" 
 
 It was a harmless remark, yet it was a dis- 
 agreeable one to the Syndic of San Beda. 
 
 " What would be the selling price of the Terra 
 Vergine?" he said abruptly. "It is valued at 
 twelve thousand francs." 
 
 " It is useless to discuss its price," replied Don 
 Silverio, " and the question is much wider than 
 
H4 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 the limits of the Terra Vergine. In one word, 
 is the whole of the Valdedera to be ruined 
 because a Minister has a relation who desires to 
 create an unnecessary railway ? " 
 
 " Ruined is a large word. These constructions 
 appear to all, except primitive and ignorant people, 
 to be improvements, acquisitions, benefits. In 
 our province we are so aloof from all movement, 
 so remote in our seclusion, so moss-grown in our 
 antiquity, so wedded to the past, to old customs, 
 old habits, old ways of act and thought, that 
 the modern world shocks us as impious, odious, 
 and intolerable." 
 
 " Sir," said Don Silverio with his most caustic 
 smile, "if you are here to sing the praises of 
 modernity, allow me to withdraw from the duet. 
 I venture to ask you, as I asked you this morning, 
 one plain question. To whom is Adone Alba, to 
 whom are my people of Ruscino, to appeal against 
 this sequestration? " 
 
 "To no one. The Prefect approves ; the 
 Minister approves ; the local deputies approve ; 
 I and my municipal and provincial councils 
 approve ; Parliament has approved and authorised. 
 Who remain opposed ? A few small landowners 
 and a mob of poor persons living in your village 
 of Euscino and in similar places." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 245 
 
 " Who can create grave disorders and will do so." 
 
 "Disorders, even insurrections, do not greatly 
 alarm authority nowadays ; they are easily re- 
 pressed since the invention of quick-firing guns. 
 The army is always on the side of order." 
 
 Don Silverio rose. 
 
 " Most honourable Corradini ! your views and 
 mine are so far asunder that no amount of dis- 
 cussion can assimilate them. Allow me to salute 
 you." 
 
 "Wait one instant, reverence," said the Syndic. 
 " May I ask how it is that an ecclesiastic of your 
 appearance and your intellect can have been 
 buried so long in such an owls' nest as Kuscino ? " 
 
 " Sir," replied Don Silverio very coldly, " ask 
 my superiors: I am but one of the least of the 
 servants of the Church." 
 
 " You might be one of her greatest servants, if 
 influence " 
 
 " I abhor the word influence. It means a bribe 
 too subtle to be punished, too gilded to alarm." 
 
 "Nay, sometimes it is but a word in season, a 
 pressure in the right place." 
 
 " It means that which cannot serve the poor 
 man without degrading him." 
 
 " But but if as a reward for duty, advance- 
 paent came to you ? " 
 
246 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " I fail to understand." 
 
 " Let me speak frankly. With your superiority 
 to them you must easily rule the embryo rioters of 
 the Valdedera. If, to your efforts it should be 
 owing that the population remain quiet, and that 
 this Adone Alba and others in a similar position 
 come to me in an orderly manner and a pliant 
 spirit, I will engage that this service to us on your 
 part shall not be forgotten." 
 
 He paused ; but Don Silverio did not reply. 
 
 "It is lamentable and unjust," continued the 
 mayor, " that any one of your evident mental 
 powers and capacity for higher place should be 
 wasting your years and wasting your mind in a 
 miserable solitude like Ruscino. If you will aid 
 us to a pacific cession of the Valdedera I will 
 take upon myself to promise that your translation 
 to a higher office shall be favoured by the 
 Government ' ' 
 
 He paused again, for he did not see upon Don 
 Silverio's countenance that flattered and rejoiced 
 expression which he expected; there was even 
 upon it a look of scorn. He regretted that he 
 had said so much. 
 
 " I thank your Excellency for so benevolent an 
 interest in my poor personality," said Don Silverio. 
 " But with the King's government I have nothing 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 247 
 
 to do. I am content in the place whereto I have 
 been called, and have no disposition to assist the 
 speculations of foreign companies. I have the 
 honour to bid your Excellency good evening." 
 
 He bowed low, and backed out of the apartment 
 this time. Count Corradini did not endeavour to 
 detain him. 
 
 When he got out into the air the strong 
 mountain wind was blowing roughly down the 
 steep and narrow street. He felt it with pleasure 
 smite his cheeks and brows. 
 
 " Truly only from nature can we find strength 
 and health," he murmured. " In the houses of 
 men there are but fever and corruption, and 
 uncleanliness." 
 
XV 
 
 TO neglect no possible chance, he resolved to 
 see the Prefect, if the Prefect consented to 
 see him. This great official dwelt in a seaport 
 city, whence he ruled the province, for such a 
 period at least as his star should be in the 
 ascendant, that is, whilst his political group 
 should be in power. It was scarcely likely 
 that a government official would be accessible 
 to any arguments which a poor country priest 
 could bring forward against a government project. 
 Still, he resolved to make the effort, for at the 
 Prefect's name apprehension, keen and quaking, 
 had leapt into Count Corradini's faded eyes. 
 
 From San Beda to the seaport city there 
 stretched some forty miles of distance ; the first 
 part a descent down the spurs of the Apennines, 
 the latter half through level sandy country, with 
 pine woods here and there. The first half he 
 
 covered on foot, the second by the parliamentary 
 
 248 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 249 
 
 train, which drew its long black line snake-like 
 and slow, through the dunes and the stagnant 
 waters. He had but a few francs in his waist- 
 band, and could ill afford to expend those. 
 
 When he reached his destination it was evening; 
 too late for him to present himself at the Prefec- 
 ture with any chance of admittance. The Prior 
 at San Beda had given him a letter to the vicar 
 of the church of Sant Anselmo in the city, and 
 by this gentleman he was warmly received and 
 willingly lodged for the night. 
 
 " A government project a project approved by 
 ministers and deputies? " said his host on hearing 
 what was the errand on which he came there. 
 " As well, my brother, might you assail the Gran 
 Sasse d'ltalia ! There must be money in it, much 
 money, for our Conscript Fathers." 
 
 "I suppose so," said Don Silverio, "but I 
 cannot see where it is to come from." 
 
 "From the pockets of the taxpayers, my 
 friend ! " replied the incumbent of Sant Anselmo, 
 with a smile as of a man who knows the world 
 he lives in. " The country is honeycombed by 
 enterprises undertaken solely to this end to pass 
 the money which rusts in the pockets of fools 
 into those of wise men who know how to make 
 it run about and multiply. In what other scope 
 
250 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 are all our betterments, our hygiene, our useless 
 railway lines, our monstrous new streets, all 
 our modernisation, put in the cauldron and kept 
 boiling like a witch's supper?" 
 
 "I know, I know," said Don Silverio wearily. 
 " The whole land is overrun by affaristi, like red 
 ants." 
 
 "Do not slander the ants ! " replied his host; 
 "I would not offend the name of any honest, 
 hard-working little insect by giving it to the men 
 through whom this country is eaten up by selfish 
 avarice and unscrupulous speculation ! But tell 
 me, what do you hope for from our revered 
 Prefect?" 
 
 " I hope nothing, but I wish to leave no stone 
 unturned. Tell me of him." 
 
 " Of his Excellency, Giovacchino Gallo, senator, 
 Grand Cross, and whatnot ? There is much to tell; 
 though there is nothing which could not be also 
 told of many another gentleman in high place. It 
 is the usual story : the supple spine, the sharp eye, 
 the greased foot. He was a young lawyer, useful 
 to deputies. He married a lovely woman whom 
 a prince had admired beyond him. He asked 
 no questions; her dower was large. To do him 
 justice, he has always behaved very well to her. 
 He entered Parliament early, and there was useful 
 
THE WATEP.S OF EDERA 251 
 
 also, to existing institutions. He was instru- 
 mental in carrying many railway and canal bills 
 through the chamber. He has been always 
 successful in his undertakings, and he knows that 
 nothing succeeds like success. I am told that 
 he and his wife are persone gratissime at the 
 Quirinale, and that her jewels are extremely fine. 
 When he was named Senator two years ago the 
 Press, especially the Press of the Eight, saluted 
 his nomination as strengthening the Senate by 
 the accession to it of a person of impeccable 
 virtue, of enlightened intellect, and of a character 
 cast in antique moulds of noble simplicity and 
 Spartan courage. You think, my brother, that 
 this favourite of fortune is likely to favour your 
 plea for your parishioners ? " 
 
 "Dear and revered brother," replied Don 
 Silverio, " I came hither with no such illusions. 
 If I had done, your biography of this functionary 
 would have dispelled them." 
 
 Nevertheless, although without hope, at two 
 o'clock of that day he went to the audience 
 which was granted him at the intervention of 
 the bishop of the city, obtained by means of 
 the vicar of Sant Anselmo. 
 
 The Prefecture was situated in a palace of six- 
 teenth century architecture, a noble and stately 
 
252 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 place of immense size, greatly injured by telegraph 
 and telephone wires stretching all round it, the 
 post-office and the tax offices being situated on the 
 ground floor, and the great central court daubed 
 over with fresh paint and whitewash. Some 
 little soldiers in dingy uniforms, ill-cut and ill- 
 fitting, stood about gates and doors. On the 
 first floor were the apartments occupied by his 
 Excellency. Don Silverio was kept waiting for 
 some time in a vestibule of fine proportions 
 painted by Diotisalvi, with a colossal marble 
 group in its centre of the death of Caesar. 
 
 He looked at it wistfully. 
 
 " Ah, Giulio ! " he murmured, " what use were 
 your conquests, what use was your genius, the 
 greatest perchance the world has ever seen? 
 What use ? You were struck in the throat like 
 a felled ox, and the land you ruled lies bleeding 
 at every pore ! " 
 
 In a quarter of an hour he was ushered through 
 other large rooms into one of great architectural 
 beauty, where the Prefect was standing by a 
 writing-table. 
 
 Giovacchino Gallo was a short, stout person 
 with a large stomach, a bald head, bright restless 
 eyes, and a high, narrow forehead ; his face was 
 florid, like the face of one to whom the pleasures 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 253 
 
 of the table are not alien. His address was cour- 
 teous but distant, stiff, and a little pompous ; he 
 evidently believed in himself as a great person, 
 and only unbent to other greater persons, when 
 he unbent so vastly that he crawled. 
 
 "What can I do for your Keverence?" he 
 asked, as he seated himself behind the writing- 
 table and pointed to a chair. 
 
 The words were polite but the tone was curt ; it 
 was officialism crystallised. 
 
 Don Silverio explained the purpose of his visit, 
 and urged the prayers of his people. 
 
 "I am but the vicar of Euscino," he said in 
 explanation, " but in this matter I plead for 
 all the natives of the Valdedera. Your Excel- 
 lency is Governor of this province, in which 
 the Edera takes its rise and has its course. My 
 people, and all those others who are not under my 
 ministry, but whose desires and supplications I 
 represent, venture to look to you for support in 
 their great distress, and intercession for them 
 against this calamity." 
 
 The face of the Prefect grew colder and sterner, 
 his eyes got an angry sparkle, his plump, rosy hands 
 closed on a malachite paper-knife ; he wished the 
 knife were of steel, and the people of the Val- 
 dedera had but one head. 
 
254 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Are you aware, sir," he said impatiently, 
 " that the matter of which you speak has had the 
 ratification of Parliament ? " 
 
 " But it has not had the ratification of the 
 persons whom it most concerns." 
 
 '* Do you suppose, then, when a great public 
 work is to be accomplished the promoters are to 
 go hat in hand for permission to every peasant 
 resident on the area ? " 
 
 "A great public work seems to me a large ex- 
 pression : too large for this case. The railway is 
 not needed. The acetylene works are a private 
 speculation. I venture to recall to your Excel- 
 lency that these people, whom you would ignore, 
 own the land, or, where they do not own it, 
 have many interests both in the land and the 
 water." 
 
 "Their interests are considered and will be 
 compensated," said the Prefect. " I do not admit 
 that any of them can claim more." 
 
 "Pardon me, your Excellency, but that is a 
 phrase : it is not a fact. You could not, if you 
 gave them millions, compensate them for the 
 seizure of their river and their lands. These 
 belong to them and to their descendants by natural 
 right. They cannot be deprived of these by Act 
 of Parliament without gross injury and injustice." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 255 
 
 " There must be suffering for the individual in 
 all benefit of the general ! " 
 
 " And doubtless, sir, when one is not the indi- 
 vidual the suffering appears immaterial ! " 
 
 "What an insolent priest!" thought Giovac- 
 chino Gallo, and struck the paper-knife with 
 anger on the table. 
 
 " Take my own parishioners alone," pursued 
 Don Silverio. " Their small earnings depend 
 entirely upon the Edera water ; it gives them 
 their food, their bed, their occupation ; it gives 
 them health and strength ; it irrigates their little 
 holdings, extra murus, on which they and their 
 families depend for grain and maize and rice. If 
 you change their river-bed into dry land they will 
 starve. Are not your own countrymen dearer to 
 you than the members of a foreign syndicate? " 
 
 ." There will be work for them at the acetylene 
 factory." 
 
 " Are they not free men ? Are they to be driven 
 like slaves to a work which would be hateful to 
 them ? These people are country born and country 
 bred. They labour in the open air, and have done 
 so for generations. Pardon me, your Excellency, 
 but every year the King's Government forces into 
 exile thousands, tens of thousands, of our hard- 
 working peasants with their families. The taxa- 
 
256 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 tion of the land and of all its products lays waste 
 thousands of square miles in this country. The 
 country is being depleted and depopulated, and 
 the best of its manhood is being sent out of it by 
 droves to Brazil, to La Plata, to the Argentines, 
 to anywhere and everywhere, where labour is cheap 
 and climate homicidal. The poor are packed on 
 emigrant ships and sent with less care than crates 
 of fruit receive. They consent to go because they 
 are famished here. Is it well for a country to 
 lose its labouring classes, its frugal, willing, and 
 hard-working manhood ? to pack them off across 
 the oceans by contract with other states? The 
 Government has made a contract with a Pacific 
 island for five thousand Italians ? Are they free 
 men or are they slaves? Can your Excellency 
 call my people free who are allowed no voice 
 against the seizure of their own river, and to 
 whom you offer an unwholesome and indoor labour 
 as compensation for the ruin of their lives ? Now, 
 they are poor indeed, but they are contented; 
 they keep body and soul together, they live on 
 their natal soil, they live as their fathers lived. Is 
 it just, is it right, is it wise to turn these people 
 into disaffection and despair by an act of tyranny 
 and spoliation through which the only gainers will 
 be foreign speculators abroad and at home the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 257 
 
 gamblers of the Bourses? Sir, I do not believe 
 that the world holds people more patient, more 
 long-suffering, more pacific under dire provocation, 
 or more willing to subsist on the poorest and 
 hardest conditions than Italians are ; is it right 
 or just or wise to take advantage of that national 
 resignation to take from half a province the natural 
 aid and the natural beauty with which God Him- 
 self has dowered it in the gift of the mountain- 
 born stream ? You are powerful, sir, you have 
 the ear of the Government ; will you not try to 
 stop this infamous theft of the Edera water whilst 
 there is still time ? " 
 
 Don Silverio spoke with that eloquence and 
 with that melody of voice which few could bear 
 unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard 
 heart of the official who heard him were for one 
 brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song 
 sung by some great tenor. 
 
 But that moment was very brief. Over the 
 face of Giovacchino Gallo a look passed at once 
 brutal and suspicious. " Curse this priest ! " he 
 thought; "he will give us trouble." 
 . He rose, stiff, cold, pompous, with a frigid 
 smile upon his red, full, bon viveur's lips. 
 
 " If you imagine that I should venture to 
 
 attack, or even presume to criticise, a matter 
 
 18 
 
258 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 which the Most Honourable the Minister of 
 Agriculture has in his wisdom approved and 
 ratified, you must have a strange conception of 
 my fitness for my functions. As regards yourself, 
 Keverend Sir, I regret that you appear to forget 
 that the chief duty of your sacred office is to 
 inculcate to your flock unquestioning submission 
 to Governmental decrees." 
 
 " Is that your Excellency's last word?" 
 
 "It is my first, and my last, word." 
 
 Don Silverio bowed low. 
 
 " You may regret it, sir," he said simply, and 
 left the writing-table and crossed the room. But 
 as he approached the door the Prefect, still 
 standing, said, "Wait!" 
 
 Gallo opened two or three drawers in his table, 
 searched for some papers, looked over them, 
 leaving the priest always standing between him 
 and the door. Don Silverio was erect ; his tall, 
 frail form had a great majesty in it ; his pallid 
 features were stern. 
 
 " Return a moment," said Gallo. 
 
 "I can hear your Excellency where I am," 
 replied Don Silverio, and did not stir. 
 
 "I have here reports from certain of my 
 agents," said Gallo, fingering his various papers, 
 " that there is and has been for some time a 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 259 
 
 subversive movement amongst the sparse popula- 
 tion of the Valdedera." 
 
 Don Silverio did not speak or stir. 
 
 " It is an agrarian agitation," continued Gallo, 
 ''limited in its area, with little probability of 
 spreading, but it exists; there are meetings by 
 night, both open-air and secret meetings ; the latter 
 take place now in one farmhouse, now in another. 
 The leader of this noxious and unlawful movement 
 is one Adone Alba. He is of your parish." 
 
 He lifted his eyelids and flashed a quick, 
 searching glance at the priest. 
 
 "He is of my parish," repeated Don Silverio, 
 with no visible emotion. 
 
 " You know of this agitation? " 
 
 "If I did, sir, I should not say so. But I am 
 not in the confidence of Adone Alba." 
 
 "Of course I do not ask you to reveal the 
 secrets of the confessional, but " 
 
 " Neither in the confessional nor out of it have 
 I heard anything whatever from him concerning 
 any such matter as that of which you speak." 
 
 " He is a young man? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And owner of the land known as the Terra 
 Vergine?" 
 
 " Yes," 
 
2 6o THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " And his land is comprised in that which will 
 be taken by the projected works? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Are you sure that he has not sent you here ? ' ' 
 
 " My parishioners are not in the habit of 
 ' sending ' me anywhere. You reverse our re- 
 spective positions." 
 
 "Humility is not one of your ecclesiastical 
 virtues, Most Keverend." 
 
 " It may be so." 
 
 Gallo thrust his papers back into their drawer 
 and locked it with a sharp click. 
 
 " You saw the Syndic of San Beda? " 
 
 "I did." 
 
 " What did he say to you? " 
 
 "Much what you say. Official language is 
 always limited and learned by rote." 
 
 Gallo would willingly have thrown his bronze 
 inkstand at the insolent ecclesiastic ; his temper 
 was naturally choleric, though years of sycophancy 
 and State service had taught him to control it. 
 
 "Well, Keverend Sir!" he said, with ill-con- 
 cealed irritation, " this conversation is, I see, 
 useless. You protect and screen your people. 
 Perhaps I cannot blame you for that, but you will 
 allow me to remind you that it is my duty to see 
 that the order and peace of this district are not in 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 261 
 
 any manner disturbed ; and that any parish priest 
 if he fomented dissatisfaction or countenanced 
 agitation in his district, would be much more 
 severely dealt with by me than any civilian would 
 be in the same circumstances. We tolerate and 
 respect the Church so long as she remains strictly 
 within her own sphere, but so long only." 
 
 " We are all perfectly well aware of the con- 
 ditions attached to the placet and the exequatur 
 at all times, and we are all conscious that even 
 the limited privileges of civilians are denied to 
 us ! " replied Don Silverio. " I have the honour 
 to wish your Excellency good morning." 
 
 He closed the door behind him. 
 
 " Damnation ! " said Giovacchino Gallo ; " that 
 is a strong man ! Is Mother Church blind that 
 she lets such an one rust and rot in the miserable 
 parish of Kuscino? " 
 
 When Don Silverio rejoined the Vicar of Sant 
 Anselmo the latter asked him anxiously how his 
 errand had sped. 
 
 "It was waste of breath and of words," he 
 answered. " I might have known that it would 
 be so with any Government official." 
 
 "But you might have put a spoke in Count 
 Corradini's wheel. If you had told Gallo that 
 the other is trafficking " 
 
*6 2 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Why should I betray a man who received me 
 in all good faith ? And what good would it have 
 accomplished if I had done so? " 
 
 And more weary than ever in mind and body 
 he returned to Ruscino. 
 
 As he had left the Prefect's presence that 
 eminent person had rung for his secretary. 
 
 " Brandone, send me Sarelli." 
 
 In a few moments Sarelli had appeared ; he was 
 the usher of the Prefecture by appointment ; by 
 taste and in addition he was its chief spy. He 
 was a native of the city, and a person of consider- 
 able acumen and excellent memory ; he never 
 needed to make memoranda there is nothing so 
 dangerous to an official as written notes. 
 
 " Sarelli, what are the reports concerning the 
 vicar of Kuscino? " 
 
 Sarelli stood respectfully at attention ; he had 
 been a non-commissioned officer of artillery ; and 
 answered in rapid but clear tones 
 
 " Great ability great eloquence disliked by 
 superiors ; formerly great preacher in Borne ; 
 supposed to be at Ruscino as castigation ; learned 
 benevolent correct. ' ' 
 
 " Humph ! " said Gallo, disappointed. " Not 
 likely then to cause trouble or disorder? to 
 necessitate painful measures?" 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 263 
 
 Sarelli rapidly took his cue. 
 
 "Hitherto, your Excellency, uniformly correct; 
 except in one instance " 
 
 " That instance ? " 
 
 "Your Excellency will have heard of Ulisse 
 Ferrero, a great robber of the lower Abruzzo 
 Citeriore Primo ? " 
 
 "I have: continue." 
 
 "Ulisse Ferrero was outlawed; his band had 
 been killed or captured, every one ; he had lost 
 his right arm ; he hid for many years in the lower 
 woods of the Abruzzo ; he came down at night to 
 the farmhouses, the people gave him food and 
 drink, and aided him " 
 
 " Their criminal habit always : continue." 
 
 " Sometimes - in one district, sometimes in 
 another, he was often in the macchia of the 
 Valdedera. The people of the district, and 
 especially of Euscino, protected him. They 
 thought him a saint, because once when at the 
 head of his band, which was then very strong, he 
 had come into Euscino and done them no harm, 
 but only eaten and drunk, and left a handful of 
 silver pieces to pay for what he and his men had 
 taken. So they protected him now, and often- 
 times for more than a year he came out of the 
 macchia, and the villagers gave him all they 
 
264 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 could, and he went up and down Euscino as if he 
 were a king ; and this lasted for several seasons, 
 and, as we learned afterwards, Don Silverio 
 Frascara had cognisance of this fact, but did 
 nothing. When Ulisse Ferrero was at last cap- 
 tured (it is nine years ago come November, and it 
 was not in Euscino but in the woods above), 
 and brought to trial, many witnesses were sum- 
 moned, and amongst them this Don Silverio ; 
 and the judge said to him, * You had knowledge 
 that this man came oftentimes into your parish?' 
 and Don Silverio answered, ' I had.' * You knew 
 that he was an outlaw, in rupture with justice ? ' 
 * I did,' he answered. Then the judge struck his 
 fist with anger on his desk. ' And you a priest, a 
 guardian of order, did not denounce him to the 
 authorities ? ' Then Don Silverio, your Excel- 
 lency, quite quietly, but with a smile (I was 
 there close to him), had the audacity to answer 
 the judge. ' I am a priest,' he said, * and I study 
 my breviary, but I do not find in it any command 
 which authorises me to betray my fellow- 
 creatures.' That made a -terrible stir in the 
 tribunal, your Excellency. They talked of com- 
 mitting him to gaol for contempt of court and 
 for collusion with the outlaw. But it took place 
 at San Beda, where they are all papalini, as 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 265 
 
 your Excellency knows, and nothing was done, 
 sir." 
 
 " That reply is verily like this priest ! " thought 
 Giovacchino Gallo. "A man of ability, of intel- 
 lect, of incorruptible temper, but a man as like 
 as not to encourage and excuse sedition." 
 
 Aloud he said, "You may go, Sarelli. Good 
 morning." 
 
 " May I be allowed a word, sir ? " 
 
 " Speak." 
 
 "May it not well be, sir, that Don Silverio's 
 organisation or suggestion is underneath this 
 insurrectionary movement of the young men in 
 theValdedera?" 
 
 " It is possible ; yes. See to it." 
 
 "Your servant, sir." 
 
 Sarelli withdrew', elated. He loved tracking, 
 like a bloodhound, for the sheer pleasure of the 
 " cold foot chase." The official views both 
 layman and priest with contempt and aversion; 
 both are equally his prey, both equally his profit : 
 he lives by them and on them, as the galleruca 
 does on the elm-tree, whose foliage it devours, 
 but he despises them because they are not 
 officials, as the galleruca doubtless, if it can 
 think, despises the elm. 
 
XVI 
 
 OF course his absence could not be hidden 
 from any in his parish. The mere pres- 
 ence of the rector of an adjacent parish, who 
 had taken his duties, sufficed to reveal it. 
 For so many years he had never stirred out 
 of Buscino in winter cold or summer heat, that 
 none of his people could satisfactorily account to 
 themselves for his now frequent journeys. The 
 more sagacious supposed that he was trying 
 to get the project for the river undone ; but they 
 did not all have so much faith in him. Many 
 had always been vaguely suspicious of him; he 
 was so wholly beyond their comprehension. 
 They asked Adone what he knew, or, if he knew 
 nothing, what he thought. Adone put them aside 
 with an impatient, imperious gesture. " But 
 you knew when he went to Kome?" they 
 persisted. Adone swung himself loose from them 
 
 with a movement of anger. It hurt him to speak 
 
 266 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 267 
 
 of the master he had renounced, of the friend he 
 had forsaken. His conscience shrank from any 
 distrust of Don Silverio ; yet his old faith was no 
 more alive. He was going rapidly down a steep 
 descent, and in that downward rush he lost all 
 his higher instincts ; he was becoming insensible 
 to everything except the thirst for action, for 
 vengeance. 
 
 To the man who lives in a natural state away 
 from cities it appears only virile and just to 
 defend himself, to avenge himself, with the 
 weapons which nature and art have given him; 
 he feels no satisfaction in creeping and crawling 
 through the labyrinths of the law, and he cannot 
 see why he, the wronged, should be forced to 
 spend, and wait, and humbly pray, while the 
 wrongdoer may go, in the end, unchastised. Such 
 a tribunal as St. Louis held under an oak-tree, 
 or the Emperor Akbar in a mango grove, would 
 be intelligible to him ; but the procedure, the em- 
 barrassments, the sophistries, the whole machinery 
 of modern law are abhorrent to him. 
 
 He yearned to be the Tell, the Massaniello, the 
 Andreas Hofer, of his province ; but the apathy 
 and supineness and timidity of his neighbours 
 tied his hands. He knew that they were not 
 made of the stuff with which a leader could hope 
 
263 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 to conquer. All his fiery appeals fell like shooting 
 stars, brilliant but useless ; all his vehement 
 excitations did little more than scare the peasants 
 whom he sought to rouse. A few bold spirits like 
 his own seconded his efforts and aided his 
 propaganda ; but these were not numerous 
 enough to leaven the inert mass. 
 
 His plan was primitive and simple : it was to 
 oppose by continual resistance every attempt 
 which should be made to begin the projected 
 works upon the river; to destroy at night all 
 which should be done in the day, and so harass and 
 intimidate the workmen who should be sent there 
 that they should, in fear and fatigue, give up their 
 labours. They would certainly be foreign work- 
 men; that is, workmen from another province; 
 probably from the Puglie. It was said that three 
 hundred of them were coming that week from 
 the Terra d'Otranto to work above Buscino. He 
 reckoned that he and those he led would have the 
 advantage of local acquaintance with the land and 
 water, and could easily, having their own homes as 
 base, carry on a guerilla warfare for any length of 
 time. No doubt, he knew, the authorities would 
 send troops to the support of the labourers, but 
 he believed that when the resolve of the district 
 to oppose at all hazards any interference with 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 269 
 
 the Edera should be made clear, the Government 
 would not provoke an insurrection for the sake 
 of favouring a foreign syndicate. So far as he 
 reasoned at all, he reasoned thus. 
 
 But he forgot, or rather he did not know, that 
 the lives of its people, whether soldiers or 
 civilians, matter very little to any Government, 
 and that its own vanity, which it calls dignity, 
 and the financial interests of its supporters, matter 
 greatly ; where the Executive has been defied 
 there it is inexorable and unscrupulous. 
 
 Both up and down the river there was but one 
 feeling of bitter rage against the impending ruin 
 of the water; there was but one piteous cry of 
 helpless desperation. But to weld this, which 
 was mere emotion, into that sterner passion of 
 which resistance and revolt are made, was a task 
 beyond his powers. 
 
 "No one will care for us; we are too feeble, 
 we are too small," they urged; they were willing 
 to do anything were they sure it would succeed, 
 but 
 
 "But who can be sure of anything under 
 heaven ? " replied Adone. " You are never sure of 
 your crops until the very last day that they are 
 reaped and carried ; yet you sow." 
 
 Yes, they granted that ; but sowing grain was 
 
270 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 a safe, familiar labour; the idea of sowing lead 
 and death alarmed them. Still there were some, 
 most of them those who were dwellers on the 
 river, or owners of land abutting on it, who were 
 of more fiery temper, and these thought as Adone 
 thought, that never had a rural people juster cause 
 for rebellion ; and these gathered around him in 
 those meetings by night of which information had 
 reached the Prefecture, for there are spies in 
 every province. 
 
 Adone had changed greatly; he had grown 
 thin and almost gaunt ; he had lost his beautiful 
 aspect of adolescence ; his eyes had no longer their 
 clear and happy light ; they were keen and fierce, 
 and looked out defiantly from under his level 
 brows. 
 
 He worked on his own land usually, by day, to 
 stave off suspicion ; but by night he scoured the 
 country up and down the stream wherever he be- 
 lieved he could find proselytes or arms. He had 
 no settled plan of action ; he had no defined 
 project ; his only idea was to resist, to resist, to 
 resist. Under a leader he would have been an 
 invaluable auxiliary, but he had not knowledge 
 enough of men, or of the way to handle them, to 
 direct a revolt ; and he had no knowledge what- 
 ever of stratagem, or manoeuvre, or any of the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 271 
 
 manifold complications of guerilla warfare. His 
 calm and dreamy life had not prepared him to be 
 all at once a man of action : action was alien 
 alike to his temperament and to his habits. All 
 his heart, his blood, his imagination, were on fire ; 
 but behind them there was not that genius of 
 conception and command which alone makes the 
 successful chief of a popular cause. 
 
 His mother said nothing to disturb or deter him 
 on his course, but in herself she was sorely afraid. 
 She kept her lips shut because she would have 
 thought it unworthy to discourage him, and she 
 could not believe in his success, try how she 
 might to compel her faith to await miracles. 
 
 Little Nerina alone gave him that unquestion- 
 ing, unhesitating, blind belief which is so dear 
 to the soul of man. Nerina was convinced that 
 at his call the whole of the Yaldedera would 
 rise full-armed, and that no hostile power on 
 earth would dare to touch the water. To her 
 any miracle seemed possible. Whatever he 
 ordered, she did. She had neither fear nor hesi- 
 tation. She would slip out of her room unheard, 
 and speed over the dark country on moonless 
 nights on his errands; she would seek for 
 weapons and bring them in and distribute them ; 
 she would take his messages to those on whom 
 
272 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 he could rely, and rouse to his cause the hesi- 
 tating and half-hearted by repetition of his words. 
 Her whole young life had caught fire at his ; and 
 her passionate loyalty accepted without compre- 
 hending all he enjoined on her or told to her. 
 
 The danger which she ran and the concealment 
 of which she was guilty, never disturbed her for 
 an instant. What Adone ordained was her law. 
 Had he not taken pity on her in her misery that 
 day by the river ? Was she not to do anything 
 and everything to serve him and save the river ? 
 This was her sole creed ; but it sufficed to fill her 
 still childish soul. If, with it, there were mingled 
 a more intense and more personal sentiment, she 
 was unconscious of, and he indifferent to, it. He 
 sent her to do his bidding as he would have sent 
 a boy, because he recognised in her that leal and 
 fervent fidelity to a trust of which he was not 
 sure in others. 
 
 Although she was a slender brown thing, like 
 a nightingale, she was strong, elastic, untiring ; 
 nothing seemed to fatigue her ; she always looked 
 as fresh as the dew, as vigorous as a young 
 cherry-tree. Her big hazel eyes danced under 
 their long lashes, and her pretty mouth was like 
 one of the four-season roses which bloomed on 
 the house wall. She was not thought much to 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 273 
 
 look at in a province where the fine Eoman type 
 is blended with the Venetian colouring in the 
 beauty of its women ; but she had a charm and a 
 grace of her own ; wild and rustic, like that of a 
 spray of grass or a harvest mouse swinging on a 
 stalk of wheat. 
 
 She was so lithe, so swift, so agile ; so strong 
 without effort, so buoyant and content, that she 
 carried with her the sense of her own perfect 
 health and happiness, as the east wind blowing 
 up the Edera water bore with it the scent of the 
 sea. 
 
 But of any physical charm in her Adone saw 
 nothing. A great rage filled his soul, and a black 
 cloud seemed to float between him and all else 
 which was not the wrong done to him and his 
 and the water of Edera. Until he should have 
 lifted off the land and the stream this coming 
 curse which threatened them, life held nothing 
 for him which could tempt or touch him. 
 
 He used the girl for his own purposes and did 
 not spare her ; but those purposes were only those 
 of his self-imposed mission, and of all which was 
 youthful, alluring, feminine, in her he saw nothing : 
 she was to him no more than a lithe, swift, hardy 
 filly would have been which he should have 
 ridden over the moors and pastures to its death 
 
 '9 
 
274 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 in pursuit of his end. He who had been always 
 so tender of heart had grown cruel ; he would 
 have flung corpse upon corpse into the water if 
 by such holocaust he could have reached his 
 purpose. What had drawn him to Nerina had 
 been that flash of ferocity which he had seen in 
 her ; that readiness to go to the bitter end in the 
 sweet right of vengeance ; instincts which formed 
 so singular a contrast to the childish gaiety and 
 the sunny goodwill of her normal disposition. 
 
 He knew that nothing which could have been 
 done to her would have made her reveal any 
 confidence he placed in her. That she was often 
 out all the hours of the night on errands to the 
 widely scattered dwellings of the peasants did 
 not prevent her coming at dawn into the cattle 
 stalls to feed and tend the beasts. 
 
 And she was so dexterous, so sure, so silent ; 
 even the sharp eyes of old Gianna never detected 
 her nocturnal absence, even the shrewd observa- 
 tion of Clelia Alba never detected any trace of 
 fatigue in her or any negligence in her tasks. 
 She was always there when they needed her, did 
 all that she was used to do, was obedient to every 
 word or sign ; they did not know that as she 
 carried the water pails, or cut the grass, or swept 
 the bricks, or washed the linen, her heart sung 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 275 
 
 proudly within her a joyous song because she 
 shared a secret a perilous secret of which the 
 elder woman knew nothing. Any night a stray 
 shot might strike her as she ran over the moors, 
 or through the heather ; any night a false step 
 might pitch her headlong into a ravine or a pool ; 
 any night, returning through the shallows of the 
 ford, she might miss her footing and fall into one of 
 the bottomless holes that the river hid in its depths : 
 but the danger of it only endeared her errand the 
 more to her ; made her the prouder that she was 
 chosen for it. 
 
 "I fear nothing," she said to him truthfully; 
 "I fear only that you should not be content." 
 
 And as signal fires run from point to point, 
 or hill to hill, so she ran from one farmhouse 
 to another, bearing the messages which organised 
 those gatherings whereof Giavacchino Gallo had 
 the knowledge. The men she summoned and spoke 
 with were rough peasants, for the most part, rude 
 as the untanned skins they wore at their work, 
 but not one of them ever said a gross word or 
 gave a lewd glance to the child. 
 
 She was la bimba to them all; a brave little 
 soul and honest ; they respected her as if she were 
 one of their own children, or one of their own 
 sisters, and Nerina coming through the starlight, 
 
276 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 with an old musket slung at her back, which 
 Adone had taught her to use, and her small, 
 bronzed feet leaping over the ground like a 
 young goat's, was a figure which soon became 
 familiar and welcome to the people. She seemed 
 to them like a harbinger of hope; she had 
 few words, but those words reverberated with 
 courage and energy; she moved the supine, she 
 braced the timid ; she brought the wavering firm- 
 ness, and the nervous strength ; she said what 
 Adone had taught her to say, but she put into 
 it all her own immense faith in him, all her own 
 innocent and undoubting certainty that his cause 
 was just and would be blessed by heaven. 
 
 The Edera water belonged to them. Would 
 they let it be turned away from their lands and 
 given to strangers ? 
 
 As a little spaniel or beagle threshes a covert, 
 obedient to his master's will and working only 
 to please him, so she scoured the country-side and 
 drove in, by persuasion, or appeal, or threat, all 
 those who would lend ear to her, to the midnight 
 meetings on the moors, or in the homesteads, 
 where Adone harangued them, with eloquence 
 ever varied, on a theme which was never stale, 
 because it appealed at once to the hearts and to 
 the interests of his hearers. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 277 
 
 But many of them, though fascinated, remained 
 afraid. 
 
 "When all is said, what can we do?" they 
 muttered. "Authority has a long arm." 
 
 The people of the district talked under their 
 breath of nothing else than of this resistance 
 which was being preached as a holy war by the 
 youth of the Terra Vergine. They were secret 
 and silent, made prudent by many generations 
 which had suffered from harsh measures and brutal 
 reprisals, but the league he proclaimed fascinated 
 and possessed them. Conspiracy has a seduction 
 subtle and irresistible as gambling for those who 
 have once become its servants. It is potent as 
 wine, and colours the brain which it inflames. 
 To these lowly, solitary men, who knew nothing 
 beyond their own fields and coppices and waste- 
 lands, its excitement came like a magic philter to 
 change the monotony of their days. They were 
 most of them wholly unlettered ; knew not their 
 ABC; had only learned the law of the seasons, 
 and the earth, and the trees which grew, and the 
 beasts which grazed ; but they had imagination ; 
 they had the blood of ancient races; they were 
 neither dolts nor boors, though Adone in his wrath 
 called them so. They were fascinated by the call 
 to rise and save their river. A feeling, more 
 
278 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 local than patriotism, but more noble than inte- 
 rest, moved them to share in his passionate 
 hatred of the intruders, and to hearken to his 
 appeals to them to arm and rise as one man. 
 
 But, on the other hand, long years of servitude 
 and hardship had made them timid as gallant 
 dogs are made so by fasting or the whip. 
 "What are we?" some of them said to him. 
 " We are no more than the earthworms in the 
 soil." For there is a pathetic humility in these 
 descendants of the ancient rulers of the world ; it 
 it is a humility born of hope deferred, of the 
 sense of every change being but a change of 
 masters, of the knowledge that the sun rises and 
 sets upon their toil, as it did on that of their 
 fathers, as it will do on that of their children, 
 and will never see it lessened, nor see the fruits 
 thereof given to themselves or to their sons. It 
 is a humility which is never ignoble, but is 
 infinitely, because hopelessly, sad. 
 
 The river was their own, surely, yes ; but, like 
 so much else that was their own, the State 
 claimed it. 
 
 "What can be more yours than the son you 
 beget, the fruit of your loins, the child for whom 
 you have laboured through long years?" said an 
 old man to him once. "Yet the State, as soon 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 279 
 
 as he is of use to you, the State takes him, 
 makes a beast of burden of him, kills his youth 
 and his manhood ; sends him, without a word to 
 you, to be maimed and slaughtered in Africa, his 
 very place of death unknown to you ; his body 
 the body you begat and which his mother bore in 
 her womb and nourished and cherished is de- 
 voured by the beasts of the desert and the birds 
 of the air. They take all ; why shall they not 
 take the river also?" 
 
 The glowing faith of Adone was flung, as the 
 sunlit salt spray of the ocean is cast on a cliff 
 of basalt, against the barrier of that weary and 
 prostrate despair which the State dares to tell the 
 poor is their duty and their portion upon earth. 
 
 But the younger men listened to him more 
 readily, being less bent and broken by long labour, 
 and poor food, and many years of unanswered 
 prayers. Of these some had served their time 
 in regiments, and aided him to give some know- 
 ledge of drill and of the use of weapons to those 
 who agreed with him to dispute by force the claim 
 of strangers to the Edera water. 
 
 These gatherings took place on waste lands or 
 bare heaths, or in clearings or hollows in the 
 woods, and the tramp of feet and click of weapons 
 scared the affrighted fox and the astounded badger. 
 
280 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 They dared not fire lest the sound should betray 
 their whereabouts to some unfriendly ear; but 
 they went through all other military exercises as 
 far as it lay in their power to do so. 
 
 The extreme loneliness of the Edera valley was 
 in their favour. Once in half a year, perhaps, 
 half a troop of carabineers might ride through the 
 district, but this was only if there had been any 
 notable assassination or robbery; and of police 
 there was none nearer than the town of San 
 Beda. 
 
 It was to arrange these nightly exercises, and 
 summon to or warn off men from them, as might 
 be expedient, that Nerina was usually sent upon 
 her nocturnal errands. One night when she had 
 been bidden by Adone to go to a certain hamlet 
 in the woods to the north, the child, as she was 
 about to slip back the great steel bolts which 
 fastened the house door, saw a light upon the 
 stairs which she had just descended, and turning 
 round, her hand upon the lock, saw Clelia Alba. 
 
 " Why are you out of your bed at this hour ? " 
 said the elder woman. Her face was stern and 
 dark. 
 
 Nerina did not answer ; her gay courage for- 
 sook her; she trembled. 
 
 " Why ? " asked Adone's mother. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 281 
 
 " I was going out," answered the child. Her 
 voice shook. She was clothed as usual in the 
 daytime, but she had over her head a woollen 
 wrapper. She had not her musket, for she kept 
 it in the hen-house, and was accustomed to take 
 it as she passed that place. 
 
 " Going out ! At the fourth hour of the night ? 
 Is that an answer for a decent maiden ? " 
 
 Nerina was silent. 
 
 " Go back to your room, and I will lock you in 
 it ; in the morning you will account to me." 
 
 Nerina recovered her self-possession, though 
 she trembled still. 
 
 " Pardon me, Madama Clelia," she said humbly, 
 "I must go out." 
 
 She did not look ashamed, and her small brown 
 face had a resolute expression. 
 
 A great anguish seized and wrung the heart of 
 Clelia Alba. She knew that Adone was not in 
 the house. Did he, "the soul of purity and 
 honour, seduce a girl who dwelt under his own 
 roof ? carry on an intrigue with a little beggar, 
 to his own shame and the outrage of his mother ? 
 Was this the true cause of his frequent absence, 
 his many nights abroad ? Her dark brows con- 
 tracted, her black eyes blazed. 
 
 " Go to your room, wanton ! " she said in tones 
 
282 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 of thunder. " In the morning you will answer 
 to me." 
 
 But Nerina, who had before this slipped the 
 bolts aside, and who had always kept her grasp 
 upon the great key in the lock, suddenly turned 
 it, pushed the oak door open, and before the elder 
 woman was conscious of what she was doing, had 
 dashed out into the air, and slammed the door 
 behind her. The rush of wind had blown out the 
 lamp in Clelia Alba's hand. 
 
 When, after fumbling vainly for some minutes 
 to find the door, and bruising her hands against 
 the wall and an oaken chair, she at last found 
 it and thrust it open, the night without was 
 moonless and starless and stormy, and in its 
 unillumined blackness she saw no trace of the 
 little girl. She went out on to the doorstep 
 and listened, but there was no sound. The 
 wind was high ; the perfume of the stocks and 
 wallflowers was strong ; far away the sound of 
 the river rushing through the sedges was audible 
 in the intense stillness, an owl hooted, a nightjar 
 sent forth its sweet, strange, sighing note. Of 
 Nerina there was no trace. Clelia Alba came 
 within and closed the door, and locked and 
 bolted it. 
 
 The old woman Gianna had come downstairs 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 283 
 
 with a lighted rush candle in her hand ; she was 
 scared and afraid. 
 
 " What is it ? What is it, madama ? " 
 
 Clelia Alba dropped down on the chair by the 
 door. 
 
 "It is it is that the beggar's spawn you 
 would have me shelter is the leman of my son ; 
 and he has dishonoured his house and mine." 
 
 Gianna shook her grey head in solemn denial 
 and disbelief. 
 
 " Sior'a, Clelia, do not say such words or think 
 such thoughts of your son or of the child. She 
 is as harmless as any flower that blows out there 
 in the garden, and he is a noble youth, though 
 now, by the wickedness of men, distraught and 
 off his head. What makes you revile them so ? " 
 
 " They are both out this night. Is not that 
 enough? " 
 
 Gianna was distressed ; from her chamber 
 above she had heard the words which had passed 
 between Adone's mother and Nerina, and knew 
 the girl was gone. 
 
 " I would condemn others, but not Adone and 
 the child," she returned. " For sure they do not 
 do right to have secrets from you, but they are 
 not such secrets as you think." 
 
 "Enough!" said Clelia Alba sternly. "The 
 
284. THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 morning will show who is right. It suffices for 
 me that the son of Valeria Albo, my son, has 
 forgot his duty to his mother and his respect for 
 himself." 
 
 Clelia Alba rose with effort from her chair, 
 relighted her lamp at the o]d woman's rush 
 candle, and went slowly and heavily up the 
 stairs. She felt stunned and outraged. Her son ! 
 hers ! to lie out of nights with a little nameless 
 vagrant ! 
 
 Gianna caught hold of her skirt. " Madama 
 listen. I saw him born that day by the Edera 
 water, and I have seen him every day of his life 
 since till now. He would never do a base thing. 
 Do not you, his mother, disgrace him by thinking 
 of it for an hour. This thing is odd, is ugly, 
 is strange, but wait to judge it ' 
 
 Clelia Alba released her skirt from her old 
 servant's grasp. 
 
 " You mean well, but you are crazed. Get you 
 gone." 
 
 Gianna let go her hold and crept submissively 
 down the stair. She set her rushlight on the 
 floor and sat down in the chair by the door, and 
 told her beads with shaking fingers. One or 
 other of them, she thought, might come home 
 either soon or late, for she did not believe that 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 285 
 
 any amorous intimacy was the reason that they 
 were both out God knew where in this windy, 
 pitch-dark night. 
 
 "But he doe? wrong, he does wrong," she 
 thought. "He sends the child on his errands 
 perhaps, but he should remember a girl is like 
 a peach, you cannot handle it ever so gently but 
 its bloom goes ; and he leaves us alone, two old 
 women here, and we might have our throats cut 
 before we should be able to wake old Ettore in 
 the stable." 
 
 The night seemed long to her in the lone 
 stone entrance, with the owls hooting round the 
 house, and the winds blowing loud and tearing 
 the tiles from the roof. Above, in her chamber, 
 Adone's mother walked to and fro all night sleep- 
 less. 
 
XVII 
 
 IANNA before it was dawn went out in the 
 hope that she might meet Adone on his 
 return, and be able to speak to him before he could 
 see his mother. She was also in extreme anxiety 
 for Nerina, of whom she had grown fond. She 
 did not think the little girl would dare return 
 after the words of Clelia Alba. She knew the 
 child was courageous, but timid, like an otter or 
 a swallow. 
 
 She went to the edge of the river and waited ; 
 he must cross it to come home ; but whether 
 he would cross higher up or lower down she 
 could not tell. There was the faint light which 
 preceded the rising of the sun. A great peace, 
 a great freshness, were on the water and the 
 land. 
 
 " Oh Lord, what fools we are ! " thought the 
 old woman. "The earth makes itself anew for 
 
 us with every dawn, and our own snarling, and 
 
 286 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 287 
 
 fretting, and mourning cloud it all over for us, 
 and we only see our own silly souls ! " 
 
 Soon, before the sun was rising, Adone came in 
 sight, passing with firm, accustomed step across 
 the undressed trunks of trees which w r ere here 
 thrown across the river to make a passage lower 
 down the stream than the bridge of Ruscino. 
 He was walking with spirit and ease, his head 
 was erect, his belt was filled with arms, his eyes 
 had sternness and command in them; he came 
 from one of the military drillings in the woods, 
 and had been content with it. Seeing old Gianna 
 waiting there he understood that something must 
 have happened, and his first fears were for his 
 mother. 
 
 " Is she ill ? " he cried, as he reached the bank 
 of his own land. 
 
 c 
 
 " No ; she is well in health," answered Gianna, 
 "but she is sorely grieved and deeply angered; 
 she found the girl Nerina going out at the dead of 
 night." 
 
 Adone changed colour. He was silent. Gianna 
 came close to him. 
 
 " The child and you both out all night, heaven 
 knows where ! What but one thing can your 
 mother think?" 
 
 "If she thinks but one thing, that thing is false." 
 
288 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Maybe. I believe so myself, but, Sior' Clelia 
 will not. Why do you send the child out at such 
 hours?" 
 
 " What did she say to my mother ? " 
 
 " Nothing ; only that she had to go." 
 
 ' 'Faithful little soul!" 
 
 " Aye ! And it is when little maids are faithful 
 like this that men ruin them. I do not want to 
 speak without respect to you, Adone, for I have 
 eaten your bread and been sheltered by your roof 
 through many a year ; but for whatever end you 
 send that child out of nights, you do a bad thing, 
 a cruel thing, a thing unworthy of your stock; 
 and if I know Clelia Alba and who should know 
 her if not I? she will never let Nerina enter 
 her house again." 
 
 Adone 's face grew dark. 
 
 " The house is mine. Nerina shall not be 
 turned out of it." 
 
 " Perhaps it is yours; but it is your mother's 
 too, and you will scarce turn out your mother for 
 the sake of a little beggar-girl? " 
 
 Adone was silent ; he saw the dilemma ; he 
 knew his mother's nature; he inherited it. 
 
 "Go you," he said at last; "go you and tell 
 her that the child went out on my errands, indeed, 
 but I have not seen her; there is no collusion 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 289 
 
 with her, and she is not and never will be dama 
 of mine." 
 
 " I will take her no such message, for she 
 would not listen. Go you ; say what you choose ; 
 perhaps she will credit you, perhaps she will not. 
 Anyhow, you are warned. As for me, I will go 
 and search for Nerina." 
 
 " Do you mean she has not returned ? " 
 
 "Certainly she has not. She will no more 
 dare to return than a kicked dog. You forget she 
 is a young thing, a creature of nothing; she 
 thinks herself no more than a pebble or a twig. 
 Besides, your mother called her a wanton. That 
 is a word not soon washed out. She is humble 
 as a blade of grass, but she will resent that. You 
 have made much trouble with your rebellious 
 work. You have done ill ill ill ! " 
 
 Adone submitted mutely to the upbraiding ; he 
 knew he had done selfishly, wrongfully, brutally, 
 that which had seemed well to himself with no 
 consideration of others. 
 
 " Get you gone and search for the child," he 
 said at last. " I will go myself to my mother." 
 
 " It is the least you can do. But you must not 
 forget the cattle. Nerina is not there to see to 
 them." 
 
 She pushed past him and went on to the foot- 
 
 20 
 
290 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 bridge; but midway across it she turned and 
 called to him : " I lit the fire, and the coffee is on 
 it. Where am I to look for the child? In the 
 heather ? in the woods ? up in Euscino ? down 
 in the lower valley? or may be at the pres- 
 bytery?" 
 
 "Don Silverio is absent," Adone called back 
 to her ; and he passed on under the olive-trees 
 towards his home. Gianna paused on the bridge 
 and watched him till he was out of sight ; then 
 she went back herself by another path which led 
 to the stables. A thought had struck her : Nerina 
 was too devoted to the cattle to have let them 
 suffer ; possibly she was even now attending to 
 them in their stalls. 
 
 " She is a faithful little thing as he said ! " the 
 old servant muttered. " Yes ; and such as she are 
 born to labour and to suffer, and to eat the bread 
 of bitterness." 
 
 " Where is she, Pierino? " she said to the old 
 white dog ; he was lying on the grass ; if the girl 
 were lost, she thought, Pierino would be away 
 somewhere looking for her. 
 
 Gianna's heart was hard against Adone; in a 
 dim way she understood the hopes and the schemes 
 which occupied him, but she could not forgive 
 him for sacrificing to them his mother and this 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 291 
 
 friendless child. It was so like a man, she said 
 to herself, to tear along on what he thought a 
 road to glory,"and never heed what he trampled 
 down as he went never heed any more than the 
 mower heeds the daisies. 
 
 In the cattle stalls she found the oxen and the 
 cows already watered, brushed, and content, with 
 their pile of fresh grass beside them ; there was 
 no sound in the stables but of their munching 
 and breathing, and now and then the rattle of the 
 chains which linked them to their mangers. 
 
 " Maybe she is amongst the hay," thought 
 Gianna, and painfully she climbed the wide rungs 
 of the ladder which led to the hay loft. There, 
 sure enough, was Nerina, sound asleep upon the 
 fodder. She looked very small, very young, very 
 innocent. 
 
 The old woman thought of the first day that 
 she had seen the child asleep on the stone bench 
 by the porch ; and her eyes grew dim. 
 
 " Who knows where you will rest to-morrow? " 
 she thought ; and she went backwards down the 
 ladder noiselessly so as not to awaken a sleeper, 
 whose awaking might be so sorrowful. 
 
 Gianna went back to the house and busied 
 herself with her usual tasks ; she could hear the 
 voices of Adone and Clelia Alba in the chamber 
 
292 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 above; they sounded in altercation, but their 
 words she could not hear. 
 
 It was at dawn that same day that Don Silverio 
 returned from his interviews with Count Corra- 
 dini and Senatore Gallo. When he reached Kus- 
 cino the little rector of the village in the woods 
 had already celebrated mass. Don Silverio 
 cleansed himself from the dust of travel, entered 
 his church for his orisons, then broke his fast 
 with bread and a plate of lentils, and whilst the 
 day was still young took the long familiar way 
 to the Terra Vergine. Whatever the interview 
 might cost in pain and estrangement he felt that 
 he dared not lose an hour in informing A done of 
 what was so dangerously known at the Prefecture. 
 
 "He will not kill me," he thought; "and 
 if he did, it would not matter much; except 
 for you, my poor little man," he added to his 
 dog Signorino, who was running gleefully in his 
 shadow. Gianna saw him approaching as she 
 looked from the kitchen window, and cried her 
 thanks to the saints with passionate gratitude. 
 Then she went out and met him. 
 
 " Praise be to the Madonna that you have come 
 back, reverendissimo ! " she cried. " There are 
 sore trouble and disputes under our roof." 
 
 " I grieve to hear that," he answered ; and 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 293 
 
 thought, "I fear I have lost my power to cast 
 oil on the troubled waters." 
 
 He entered the great vaulted kitchen and sat 
 down, for he was physically weary, having walked 
 twenty miles in the past night. 
 
 " What you feel at liberty to tell me, let me 
 hear," he said to the old servant. 
 
 Gianna told him in her picturesque, warmly- 
 coloured phrase what had passed between Sior' 
 Clelia and the little girl in the night ; and what 
 she had herself said to Adone at dawn ; and how 
 Nerina was lying asleep in the hay-loft, being 
 afraid, doubtless, to come up to the house. 
 
 Don Silverio listened with pain and indignation. 
 
 "What is he about to risk a female child on 
 such errands? And why is his mother in such 
 vehement haste to say cruel words and think 
 unjust and untrue things ? " 
 
 "They are unjust and untrue, sir, are they 
 not ? " said Gianna. " But it looked ill, you see ; 
 a little creature going out in the middle of the 
 night, and to be sure she was but a vagrant when 
 she came to us." 
 
 " And now how does the matter stand ? Has 
 Adone convinced his mother of the girl's inno- 
 cence? " 
 
 "Whew! That I cannot say, sir. They are 
 
294 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 upstairs ; and their voices were loud an hour ago. 
 Now they are still. I had a mind to go up, but 
 I am afraid." 
 
 " Go up ; and send Adone to me." 
 
 " He is perhaps asleep, sir ; he came across the 
 water at dawn." 
 
 " If so, wake him. I must speak to him without 
 delay." 
 
 Gianna went and came down quickly. 
 
 "He is gone out to work in the fields, sir. 
 Madama told me so. If he does not work, the 
 land will go out of cultivation, sir." 
 
 " He may have gone to Nerina? " 
 
 " I do not think so, sir. But I will go back to 
 the stable and see." 
 
 " And beg Sior' Clelia to come down to me." 
 
 He was left alone a few minutes in the great 
 old stone chamber, with its smell of dried herbs 
 hanging from its rafters and of maize leaves 
 baking in the oven. 
 
 The land would go out of cultivation yes ! 
 and the acetylene factories would take the place 
 of the fragrant garden, the olive orchards, the 
 corn lands, the pastures. He did not wonder 
 that Adone was roused to fury ; but what fury 
 would avail aught ? What pain, what despair, 
 what tears, would stay the desecration for an 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 295 
 
 hour ? The hatchet would hew it all down, and 
 the steam plough would pass over it all, and then 
 the stone and the mortar, the bricks and the iron, 
 the engines, and the wheels, and the cauldrons, 
 would be enthroned on the ruined soil : the gods 
 of a soulless age. 
 
 " Oh, the pity of it ! The pity of it I " thought 
 Don Silverio, as the blue sky shone through the 
 grated window and against the blue sky a rose 
 branch swung and a swallow circled. 
 
 "Your servant, Reverendissimo," said the voice 
 of Clelia Alba, and Don Silverio rose from his 
 seat. 
 
 "My friend," he said to her, "I find you in 
 trouble, and I fear that I shall add to it. But 
 tell me first, what is this tale of Nerina?" 
 
 " It is but this, sir; if Nerina enter here, I go." 
 
 " You cannot be serious ! " 
 
 " If you think so, look at me." 
 
 He did look at her; at her severe aquiline 
 features, at her heavy eyelids drooping over eyes 
 of implacable wrath, at her firm mouth and 
 jaw, cold as if cut in marble. She was not a 
 woman to trifle or to waver ; perhaps she was one 
 who having received offence would never forgive. 
 
 "But it is monstrous!" he exclaimed; "you 
 cannot turn adrift a little friendless girl you 
 
296 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 cannot leave your own house, your dead husband's 
 house neither is possible you rave ! " 
 
 " It is my son's house. He will harbour whom 
 he will. But if the girl pass the doorstep I go. 
 I am not too old to labour for myself." 
 
 " My good woman my dear friend it is in- 
 credible ! I see what you believe, but I cannot 
 pardon you for believing it. Even were it what 
 you choose to think which is not possible 
 surely your duty to a motherless and destitute 
 girl of her tender years should counsel more 
 benevolence?" 
 
 The face of Clelia Alba grew chillier and harder 
 still. 
 
 " Sir, leave me to judge of my own duties, 
 as the mother of Adone, and the keeper of this 
 house. He has told me that he is master here. 
 I do not deny it. He is over age. He can 
 bring her here if he chooses, but I go." 
 
 "But you must know the child cannot live 
 here with a young man ! " 
 
 "Why not?" said Clelia Alba, and a cruel 
 smile passed over her face. "It seems to me 
 more decent than lying out in the fields together 
 night after night." 
 
 "Silence!" said Don Silverio in that tone 
 which awed the boldest. " Of what avail is your 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 297 
 
 own virtue if it make you thus harsh, thus 
 unbelieving, thus ready to condemn ? " 
 
 " I claim no more virtue than any clean-living 
 woman should possess ; but Valerio Alba would 
 not have brought his leman into my presence, 
 neither shall his son do so." 
 
 " In your present mood, words are wasted on 
 you. Go to your chamber, Sior' Clelia, and 
 entreat Heaven to soften your heart. There is 
 sorrow enough in store for you without your 
 creating misery out of suspicion and unbelief. 
 This house will not long be either yours or 
 Adone's." 
 
 He left the kitchen and went out into the air ; 
 Clelia Alba was too proud, too dogged, in her 
 obstinacy to endeavour to detain him or to ask 
 him what he meant. 
 
 "Where is Adone?" he asked of the old 
 labourer Ettore, who was carrying manure in a 
 great skip upon his back. 
 
 "He is down by the five apple-trees, sir," 
 answered Ettore. 
 
 The five apple-trees were beautiful old trees, 
 gnarled, moss-grown, hoary, but still bearing 
 abundant blossom ; they grew in a field which 
 was that year being trenched for young vines, 
 a hard, back-breaking labour ; the trenches were 
 
298 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 being cut obliquely, so as not to disturb the 
 apple-trees or injure some fine fig-trees which 
 grew there. Adone was at work, stripped to his 
 shirt and hidden in the delved earth to his 
 shoulders. 
 
 He looked up from the trench and lifted his 
 hat as he saw the priest enter the field; then 
 he resumed his labour. 
 
 " Come out of your ditch and hearken to me. I 
 will not weary you with many words." 
 
 Adone, moved by long habit of obedience and 
 deference, leapt with his agile feet on to the 
 border of the trench and stood there, silent, sullen, 
 ready to repel reproof with insolence. 
 
 " Is it worthy of you to ruin the name of a girl 
 of sixteen by sending her on midnight errands to 
 your fellow-rebels ? " 
 
 Don Silverio spoke bluntly; he spoke only on 
 suspicion, but his tone was that of a direct 
 charge. 
 
 Adone did not doubt for a moment that he was 
 in possession of facts. 
 
 "Has the girl played us false?" he said 
 moodily. 
 
 " I have not seen the girl," replied Don Silverio. 
 " But it is a base thing to do, to use that child for 
 errands of which she cannot know either the 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 299 
 
 danger or the illegality. You misuse one whose 
 youth and helplessness should have been her 
 greatest protection." 
 
 " I had no one else that I could trust." 
 
 "Poor little soul ! You could trust her, so you 
 abused her trust ! No : I do not believe you are 
 her lover. I do not believe you care for her more 
 than for the clod of earth you stand on. But to 
 my thinking that makes what you have done 
 worse ; colder, more cruel, more calculating. Had 
 you seduced her, you would at least feel that you 
 owed her something. She has been a mere little 
 runner and slave to you no more. Surely your 
 knowledge that she depends on you ought to have 
 sufficed to make her sacred ? " 
 
 Adone looked on the ground. His face was red 
 with the dull flush of shame. He knew that he 
 merited all these words and more. 
 
 "I will provide temporarily for her; and you 
 will send her out no more upon these errands," 
 continued Don Silverio. " Perhaps, with time, 
 your mother may soften to her; but I doubt it." 
 
 "The house is mine," said Adone sullenly. 
 " She shall not keep Nerina out of it." 
 
 " You certainly cannot turn your mother away 
 from her own hearth," replied Don Silverio with 
 contempt. " I tell you I will take the girl to 
 
300 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 some place in Kuscino where she will be safe for 
 the present time. But I came to say another 
 thing to you as well as this. I have been away 
 three days. I have seen the Prefect, Senatore 
 Gallo. He has informed me that your intentions, 
 your actions, your plans and coadjutors are known 
 to him, and that he is aware that you are con- 
 spiring to organise resistance and riot." 
 
 A great shock struck Adone as he heard; he 
 felt as if an electric charge had passed through 
 him. He had believed his secret to be as abso- 
 lutely unknown as the graves of the lucomone 
 under the ivy by the riverside. 
 
 " How could he know ? " he stammered. " Who 
 is the traitor ?" 
 
 " That matters little," said Don Silverio. 
 " What matters much is, that all you do and 
 desire to do is written down at the Prefecture." 
 
 Adone was sceptical. He laughed harshly. 
 
 " If so, sir, why do they not arrest me ? That 
 would be easy enough. I do not hide." 
 
 "Have you not ofttimes seen a birdcatcher 
 spread his net ? Does he seize the first bird 
 which approaches it ? He is not so unwise. He 
 waits until all the feathered innocents are in the 
 meshes : then he fills his sack. That is how the 
 Government acts always. It gives its enemies 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 301 
 
 full rope to hang themselves. It is cold of blood, 
 and slow, and sure." 
 
 " You say this to scare me, to make me desist." 
 
 " I say it because it is the truth ; and if you 
 were not a boy, blind with rage and unreason, you 
 would long since have known that such actions as 
 yours, in rousing or trying to rouse the peasants 
 of the Valdedera, must come to the ear of the 
 authorities. Do not mistake. They let you alone 
 as yet, not because they love you or fear you ; but 
 because they are too cunning and too wise to 
 touch the pear before it is ripe." 
 
 Adone was silent. He was not convinced; 
 and many evil thoughts were black within his 
 brain. His first quarrel with a mother he adored 
 had intensified all the desperate ferocity awake in 
 him. 
 
 " You are as blind as a mole," said Don Silverio, 
 " but you have not the skill of the mole in con- 
 structing its hidden galleries. You scatter your 
 secrets broadcast as you scatter grain over your 
 ploughed field. You think it is enough to choose 
 a moonless night for you and your companions-in- 
 arms to be seen by no living creature ! Does the 
 stoat, does the wild cat, make such a mistake as 
 that ? If you make war on the State, study the 
 ways of your foe. Realise that it has as many 
 
302 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 eyes, as many ears, as many feet as the pagan 
 god ; that its arm is as long as its craft, that it 
 has behind it unscrupulous force and unlimited 
 gold, and the support of all those who only want 
 to pursue their making of wealth in ease and in 
 peace. Do you imagine you can meet and beat 
 such antagonists with a few rusty muskets, 
 a few beardless boys, a poor little girl like 
 Nerina?" 
 
 Don Silverio's voice was curt, imperious, sar- 
 donic ; his sentences cut like whips ; then after a 
 moment of silence his tone changed to an infinite 
 softness and sweetness of pleading and persuasion. 
 
 "My son, my dear son! cease to live in this 
 dream of impossible issues. Wake to the brutality 
 of fact, to the nakedness of truth. You have to 
 suffer a great wrong; but will you be consoled 
 for it by the knowledge that you have led to the 
 slaughter men whom you have known from your 
 infancy? It can but end in one way your 
 conflict with the power of the State. You, and 
 those who have listened to you, will be shot down 
 without mercy, or flung into prison, or driven to 
 lead the life of tracked beasts in the woods. 
 There is no other possible end to the rising which 
 you are trying to bring about. If you have no 
 pity for your mother, have pity on your comrades, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 303 
 
 for the women who bore them, for the women 
 who love them." 
 
 Adone quivered with breathless fury as he 
 heard. All the blackness of his soul gathered 
 into a storm of rage, burst forth in shameful 
 doubt and insult. He set his teeth, and his 
 voice hissed through them, losing all its natural 
 music. 
 
 " Sir, your clients are men in high place ; mine 
 are my miserable brethren. You take the side 
 of the rich and powerful ; I take that of the poor 
 and the robbed. Maybe your reverence has 
 deemed it your duty to tell the authorities that 
 which you say they have learned?" 
 
 A knife through his breast-bone would have 
 given a kindlier wound to his hearer. Amazement 
 under such an outrage was stronger in Don 
 Silverio than any other feeling for the first moment. 
 Adone Adone! his scholar, his beloved, his 
 disciple ! spoke to him thus ! Then an over- 
 whelming disgust and scorn swept over him, and 
 was stronger than his pain. He could have 
 stricken the ungrateful youth to the earth. The 
 muscles of his right arm swelled and throbbed; 
 but, with an intense effort, he controlled the 
 impulse to avenge his insulted honour. Without 
 a word, and with one glance of reproach and of dis- 
 
304 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 dain, he turned away and went through the morn- 
 ing shadows under the drooping apple boughs. 
 
 Adone, with his teeth set hard and his eyes 
 filled with savage fire, sprang down into the trench 
 and resumed his work. 
 
 He was impenitent. 
 
 " He is mad ! He knows not what he says ! " 
 thought the man whom he had insulted. But 
 though he strove to excuse the outrage it was like 
 a poisoned blade in his flesh. 
 
 Adone could suspect him ! Adone could believe 
 him to be an informer ! 
 
 Was this all the recompense for eighteen years 
 of unwearying affection, patience, and tuition ? 
 Though the whole world had witnessed against 
 him, he would have sworn that Adone Alba 
 would have been faithful to him. 
 
 "He is mad," he thought. "His first great 
 wrong turns his blood to poison. He will come 
 to me weeping to-morrow." 
 
 But he knew that what Adone had said to him, 
 however repented of, however washed away with 
 tears, was one of those injuries which may be 
 forgiven, but can never be forgotten, by any living 
 man. It would yawn like a pit between them 
 for ever. 
 
XVIII 
 
 TO this apple-tree field there was a high hedge 
 of luxuriant elder and ash, myrtle and field- 
 roses. Behind this hedge old Gianna was wait- 
 ing for him; the tears were running down her 
 face. She took the skirt of his coat between her 
 hands. "Wait, your reverence, wait! The child 
 is in the cattle stable." 
 
 Don Silverio looked down on her a few 
 moments without comprehension. Then he re- 
 membered. 
 
 "Is she there indeed? Poor little soul ! She 
 must not go to the house." 
 
 " She does not dream of it, sir. Only she 
 cannot understand why Madonna Clelia's anger 
 is so terrible. What can I do oh, Lord ! " 
 
 " Keep her where she is for the present. I am 
 going home. I will speak with some of the 
 women in Ruscino, and find her some temporary 
 shelter." 
 
 21 305 
 
306 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " She will go to none, sir. She says she must 
 be where she can serve Adone. If she be shut up, 
 she will escape and run into the woods. Three 
 years ago she was a wild thing; she will turn 
 wild again." 
 
 "Like enough ! But we must do what we can. 
 I am going home. I will come or send to you in 
 a few hours." 
 
 Gianna reluctantly let him go. As he crossed 
 the river he looked down on the bright water, here 
 green as emeralds, there brown as peat, eddying 
 round the old stone piers of the bridge, and an 
 infinite sorrow was on him. 
 
 As a forest fire sweeps away under its rolling 
 smoke and waves of flame millions of obscure and 
 harmless creatures, so the baneful fires of men's 
 greed and speculations came from afar and laid 
 low these harmless lives with neither thought of 
 them or pity. 
 
 Later in the day he sent word to Gianna to 
 bring Nerina to the presbytery. They both came, 
 obedient. The child looked tired and had lost her 
 bright colour; but she had a resolute look on 
 her face. 
 
 "My poor little girl," he said gently to 
 her, " Madonna Clelia is angered against you. 
 We will hope her anger will pass ere long. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 307 
 
 Meanwhile you must not go to the house. You 
 would not make ill-blood between a mother and 
 her son ? " 
 
 "No," said Nerina. 
 
 " I have found a home for awhile for you, 
 with old Alaida Manzi ; you know her ; she 
 is a good creature. I am very sorry for you, 
 my child ; but you did wrong to be absent at 
 night ; above all not to go back to your chamber 
 when Clelia Alba bade you do so." 
 
 Nerina' s face darkened. " I did no harm." 
 
 " I am sure you did not mean to do any; but 
 you disobeyed Madonna Clelia." 
 
 Nerina was silent. 
 
 " You are a young girl ; you must not roam 
 the country at night. It is most perilous. 
 Decent maidens and women are never abroad 
 after moonrise." 
 
 Nerina said nothing. 
 
 " You will promise me never to go out at night 
 again ? " 
 
 " I cannot promise that, sir." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " If I be wanted, I shall go." 
 
 " If Adone Alba bid you is that your 
 meaning ? " 
 
 Nerina was silent. 
 
3oS THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " Do you think that it is fitting for you to have 
 secrets from me, your confessor ? " 
 
 Nerina was silent : her rosy mouth was closed 
 firmly. It was very terrible to have to displease 
 and disobey Don Silverio ; but she would not 
 speak, not if she should burn in everlasting 
 flames for ever. 
 
 " Take her away. Take her to Alaida," he 
 said wearily to Gianna. 
 
 " She only obeys Adone, sir," said the old 
 woman. " All I can say counts as naught." 
 
 " Adone will send her on no more midnight 
 errands, unless he be brute and fool both. Take 
 her away. Look to her, you and Alaida." 
 
 " I will do what I can, sir," said Gianna 
 humbly, and pushed the girl out into the village 
 street before her. 
 
 Don Silverio sat down at his deal writing-table 
 and wrote in his fine, clear caligraphy a few 
 lines : " In the name of my holy office I forbid 
 you to risk the life and good name of the maiden 
 Nerina on your unlawful errands." 
 
 Then he signed and sealed the sheet, and sent 
 it by his sacristan to Adone. 
 
 He received no answer. 
 
 The night which followed was one of the most 
 bitter in its meditations that he had ever spent ; 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 309 
 
 and he had spent many cruel and sleepless nights 
 ere then. 
 
 That Adone could for one fleeting moment 
 have harboured so vile a thought filled him with 
 nausea and amaze. Betray them ! He ! who 
 would willingly have given up such years of life 
 as might remain to him could he by such a sac- 
 rifice have saved their river and their valley from 
 destruction. There was nothing short of vice or 
 crime which he would not have done to save the 
 Edera water from its fate. But it was utterly 
 impossible to do anything. Even men of eminence 
 had often brought all their forces of wealth and 
 of argument against similar enterprises, and had 
 failed in their opposition. What could a few 
 score of peasants, and one poor ecclesiastic, do 
 against all the omnipotence of Parliament, of 
 millionaires, of secretaries of State, of specu- 
 lators, of promoters, tenacious and forcible and 
 ravenous as the octopus ? 
 
 In those lonely night hours when the moon- 
 beams shone on his bed and the little white dog 
 nestled itself close to his shoulder, he was tortured ' 
 also by the sense that it was his duty to arrest 
 Adone and the men of the Yaldedera in their mad 
 course, even at the price of such treachery to 
 them as Adone had dared to attribute to him. 
 
310 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 But if that were his duty it must be the first 
 duty which consciously he had left undone ! 
 
 If he could only stop them on their headlong 
 folly by betraying them they must rush on to 
 their doom! 
 
 He saw no light, no hope, no assistance any- 
 where. These lads would not be able to save 
 a single branch of the river water, nor a sword- 
 rush on its banks, nor a moorhen in its shallows, 
 nor a cluster of myosotis upon its banks, and they 
 would ruin themselves. 
 
 The golden glory of the planet Venus shone 
 between the budding vine-leaves at his casement. 
 
 " Are you not tired ? " he said to the shining 
 orb. "Are you not tired of watching the endless 
 cruelties and insanities on earth?" 
 
XIX 
 
 THE people of Buscino went early to their beds ; 
 the light of the oil- wicks of the Presbytery was 
 always the only light in the village half an hour 
 after dark. Nerina went uncomplainingly to hers 
 in the dark stone house within the walls where 
 she had been told that it was her lot to dwell. 
 She did not break her fast ; she drank great 
 draughts of water ; then, with no word except a 
 brief good-night, she went to the sacking filled 
 with leaves which the old woman Alaida pointed 
 out for her occupancy. 
 
 " She is soon reconciled,'* thought the old 
 crone. " They have trained her well." 
 
 Relieved of all anxiety, she herself lay down in 
 the dark and slept. The girl seemed a good, quiet, 
 tame little thing, and said her' paternosters as she 
 should do. But Nerina did not sleep. She was 
 
 stifled in this little close room with its one shut- 
 
 3" 
 
312 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 tered window. She who was used to sleep with 
 the fresh fragrant air of the dark fields blowing over 
 her in her loft, felt the sour, stagnant atmosphere 
 take her like a hand by the throat. 
 
 As soon as she heard by the heavy breathing of 
 the aged woman that she was sunk in the con- 
 gested slumber of old age, the child got up nois- 
 lessly she had not undressed and stole out of 
 the chamber, taking the door key from the nail 
 on which Alaida had hung it. A short stone 
 stair led down to the entrance. No one else was 
 sleeping in the house ; all was dark, and she had 
 not even a match or a tinder-box ; but she felt 
 her way to the outer door, unlocked it, as she had 
 been used to unlock the door at the Terra Vergine, 
 and in another moment ran down the steep and 
 stony street. She laughed as the wind from the 
 river blew against her lips, and brought her the 
 fragrance of Adone's fields. 
 
 " I shall be in time ! " she thought, as she ran 
 down a short cut which led, in a breakneck 
 descent, over the slope of what had once been the 
 glacis of the fortress, beneath the Eocca to the 
 bridge. 
 
 The usual spot for the assembly of the mal- 
 contents was a grassy hollow surrounded on all 
 sides with woods, and called the tomb of Asdrubal, 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 313 
 
 from a mound of masonry which bore that name, 
 although it was utterly improbable that Asdrubal, 
 who had been slain a hundred miles to the north- 
 east on the Marecchia water, should have been 
 buried in the Valdedera at all. But the place and 
 the name were well known in the district to 
 hundreds of peasants, who knew no more who 
 or what Asdrubal had been than they knew the 
 names of the stars which form the constellation 
 of Perseus. 
 
 Adone had summoned his friends to be there by 
 nightfall, and he was passing from the confines of 
 his own lands on to those of the open moors when 
 the child saw him. He was dressed in his working 
 clothes, but he was fully armed : his gun on his 
 shoulder, his great pistols in his sash, his dagger 
 in his stocking. They were ancient arms; but 
 they had served in matters of life and death, and 
 would so serve again. On the three-edged blade 
 of the sixteenth-century poignard was a blood- 
 stain more than a century old which nothing 
 would efface. 
 
 "Nerina! " he cried as the girl stopped him, 
 and was more distressed than pleased^ to see her 
 there ; he had not thought of her. 
 
 In the moonlight, under the silvery olive foliage 
 her little sunburnt face and figure took a softer 
 
3H THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 and more feminine grace. But Adone had no 
 sight for it. For him she was but a sturdy little 
 pony, who would trot till she dropped. 
 
 He was cruel as those who are possessed by 
 one intense and absorbing purpose always are : 
 he was cruel to Nerina as Garibaldi, in the days 
 of Kavenna, was cruel to Anita. 
 
 But through that intense egotism which sees 
 in all the world only its own cause, its own end, 
 its own misery, there touched him for one instant 
 an unselfish pity for the child of whom he had 
 made so mercilessly his servant and his slave. 
 
 "Poor little girl ! I have been hard to you, I 
 have been cruel and unfair," he said, as a vague 
 sense of her infinite devotion to his cause moved 
 him as a man may be moved by a dog's fidelity. 
 
 " You have been good to me," said Nerina ; 
 and from the bottom of her heart she thought 
 so. "I came to see if you wanted me," she added 
 humbly. 
 
 " No, no. They think ill of you for going my 
 errands. Poor child, I have done you harm 
 enough. I will not do you more." 
 
 " You have done me only good." 
 
 " What !. When my mother has turned you 
 out of the house ! " 
 
 "It is her right." 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 315 
 
 " Let it be so for a moment. You shall come 
 back. You are with old Alaida ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " How can you be out to-night ? " 
 
 " She sleeps heavily, and the lock is not 
 hard." 
 
 " You are a brave child." 
 
 " Is there nothing to do to-night ? " 
 
 "No, dear." 
 
 "Where do you go?" 
 
 " To meet the men at the tomb of Asdrubal." 
 
 " Who summoned them? " 
 
 "I myself. You must be sad and sorry, child,- 
 and it is my fault." 
 
 She checked a sob in her throat. " I am not 
 far away, and old Alaida is kind. Let me go on 
 some errand to-night ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, I cannot." 
 
 He recalled the words of the message which 
 he had received from Don Silverio that day. 
 He knew the justice of this message, he knew 
 that it only forbade what all humanity, hospi- 
 tality, manhood, and compassion forbade to him. 
 One terrible passion had warped his nature, 
 closed his heart, and invaded his reason to the 
 exclusion of all other thoughts or instincts ; but 
 he was not yet so lost to shame as, now that 
 
316 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 he knew what he had done, to send out a female 
 creature into peril to do his bidding. 
 
 " Tell me, then, tell me," pleaded Nerina, 
 " when will anything be done? " 
 
 " Whenever the foreign labourers come to 
 work on the water we shall drive them away." 
 
 " But if they will not go ? " 
 
 "Child, the river is deep; we know its ways 
 and its soundings; they do not." 
 
 Her great bright eyes flashed fire : an unholy 
 joy laughed in them. 
 
 " We will baptize them over again ! " she said ; 
 and all her face laughed and sparkled in the 
 moonlight. There was fierce mountain blood in 
 her veins ; it grew hot at the thought of slaughter 
 like the juice of grapes warmed in an August 
 noon. 
 
 He laughed also, savagely. " Their blood will 
 be on their own heads ! " 
 
 He meant to drive them out, swamp them 
 in the stream, choke them in the sand, hunt 
 them in the heather ; make every man of them 
 rue the day that ever they came thither to 
 meddle with the Edera water. 
 
 " Curse them ! Their blood will be on their 
 own heads ! " he said between his teeth. He 
 was thinking of the strange men who it was 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 317 
 
 said would be at work on the land and the 
 water before the moon, young now, should be 
 in her last quarter ; men hired by the hundreds, 
 day-labourers of the Bomagna and the Puglie, 
 leased by contract, marshalled under overseers, 
 different in nothing from slaves who groan under 
 the white man's lash in Africa. 
 
 "Let me come with you to-night," she pleaded 
 again. " I will hide in the bushes. The men 
 shall not see me." 
 
 " No, no," he said sternly. "Get you back to 
 your rest at Buscino. I did wrong, I did basely 
 to use your ignorance and abuse your obedience. 
 Get you gone, and listen to your priest, not to 
 me." 
 
 The child, ever obedient, vanished through the 
 olive boughs. Adone went onward northward to 
 his tryst : his soul was dark as night ; it enraged 
 him to have been forced by his conscience and 
 his honour to obey the command of Don Silverio. 
 
 But she did not go over the bridge to Buscino. 
 She waited a little while then followed on his 
 track. Gianna was right. She was a wild bird. 
 She had been caught and tamed for a time, but 
 she was always wild. The life which they had 
 given her had been precious and sweet to her, and 
 she had learned willingly all its ways ; but at the 
 
3i8 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 bottom of her heart the love of liberty, the love 
 of movement, the love of air and sky and freedom 
 were stronger than all else. She was of an adven- 
 turous temper also, and brave like all Abruzzese, 
 and she longed to see one of those moonlit mid-* 
 night meetings of armed men to which she had so 
 often borne the summons. Now that she had 
 escaped from Alaida's keeping she could not have 
 forced herself to go back out of this clear, cool, 
 radiant night into the little, close, dark sleeping- 
 chamber. No, not if Don Silverio himself had 
 stood in her path with the cross raised. She 
 was like a year-old lioness who smells blood. 
 
 She knew the way to the tomb of Asdmbal, 
 even in the darkness, as well as he did. It was 
 situated in a grassy hollow surrounded by dense 
 trees, some five miles or more from the Terra 
 Vergine, on the north bank of the river. The 
 solitude was absolute, and the place large enough 
 to permit the assemblage of several scores of 
 men. 
 
 Adone went on, unconscious that he was fol- 
 lowed; he went at a swinging trot, easy and 
 swift; the sinews of his lithe limbs were strong 
 as steel, and his rage, all aflame, lent lightning to 
 his feet. 
 
 She allowed him to precede her by half a 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 319 
 
 mile or more, for if he had seen her his anger 
 would have been great, and she feared it. She 
 went skipping and bounding along, where the path 
 was clear, in all the joy of liberty and rapture of 
 the fresh night air. The hours spent in Alaida's 
 close house in the village had been as terrible to 
 her as his hours in a birdcatcher's hamper are to 
 a wild bird. Up at Ansalda she had always been 
 out of doors, and at the Terra Vergine she had 
 gone under a roof only to eat and sleep. 
 
 The moon, which was in the beginning of its 
 first quarter, had passed behind some heavy 
 clouds ; there was little light, for there were as 
 yet few stars visible, but that was no matter 
 to her. She knew her way as well as any moun- 
 tain hare. 
 
 The pungent odour of the heaths through 
 which she went seemed to her like a draught of 
 wine, the strong sea breeze which was blowing 
 bore her up like wings. She forgot that she was 
 once more a homeless waif, as she had been that 
 day when she had sat under the dock leaves 
 by the Edera water. He had told her she 
 should go back ; she believed him : that was 
 enough. Madonna Clelia would forgive, she felt 
 sure, for what harm had she done? All would 
 be well ; she would feed the oxen again, and go 
 
320 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 again to the spring for water, and all would be 
 as it had been before her thoughts, her desires, 
 went no farther than that. So, with a light heart 
 she followed him gaily, running where there was 
 open ground, pushing hard where the heather 
 grew, going alw r ays in the same path as Adone 
 had done. 
 
 All of a sudden she stopped short, in alarm. 
 
 The night was still ; the rushing of the river 
 was loud upon it, the owls hooted and chuckled, 
 now and then a fox in the thickets barked. 
 There are many sounds in the open country 
 at night ; sounds of whirring pinions, of stealthy 
 feet, of shrill, lone cries, of breaking twigs, of 
 breaking ferns, of little rivulets unheard by day, 
 of timid creatures taking courage in the dark. 
 But to these sounds she was used; she could 
 give a name to every one of them. She heard 
 now what was unfamiliar to her in these 
 solitudes; she heard the footsteps of men; and 
 it seemed to her, all around her, as though in a 
 moment of time, the heath and bracken and 
 furze grew alive with them. Were they men of 
 Kuscino going to their tryst with Adone? She 
 did not think so, for she had never known the 
 few men in the village summon courage to join 
 the armed meetings of the men of the valley. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 321 
 
 She stopped and listened, as a pole-cat which was 
 near her did ; the sounds were those of human 
 beings, breathing, creeping, moving under the 
 heather. 
 
 Suddenly she felt some presence close to her in 
 the dark ; she held her breath ; she shrank noise- 
 lessly between the plumes of heath. If they were 
 men of the country they would not hurt her, but 
 if not she was not sure. 
 
 Near her was an open space where the wild 
 growth had been recently cut. The men debouched 
 on to it from the undergrowth; there was a faint 
 light from the stars on that strip of rough grass ; 
 by it she saw that they were soldiers, five in 
 number. 
 
 A great terror cowed her, like a hand of ice at 
 her heart, a terror not for herself, but for those 
 away there, in the green hollow by the three 
 stone-pines. 
 
 They were soldiers ; yes, they were soldiers ; 
 the sounds she had heard had been the crushing 
 of the plants under their feet, the click of their 
 muskets as they moved ; they were soldiers ! 
 Where had they come from ? There were no 
 soldiers at Euscino. 
 
 The only time when she had ever seen soldiers 
 had been when the troopers had captured Baruffo. 
 
 22 
 
322 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 These were not troopers ; they were small men, 
 on foot, linen-clad, moving stealthily, and as if in 
 fear ; only the tubes of their muskets glistened in 
 the light of the great planets. 
 
 She crouched down lower and lower, trying to 
 enter the ground and hide ; she hoped they would 
 go onward, and then she could run faster than 
 they and reach the hollow, and warn Adone and 
 his fellows. She had no doubt that they came to 
 surprise the meeting ; but she hoped from their 
 pauses and hesitating steps that they were un- 
 certain what way to take. 
 
 " If you come to me to lead you aye ! I will 
 lead you! you will not forget where I lead! " 
 she said to herself, as she hid under the heather ; 
 and her courage rose, for she saw a deed to be 
 done. For they were now very near to the place 
 of meeting, and could have taken the rebels like 
 mice in a trap, if they had only known where they 
 were ; but she, watching them stand still, and stare, 
 and look up to the stars, and then north, south, 
 east, and west, saw that they did not know, and 
 that it might be possible to lead them away from 
 the spot by artifice, as the quail leads the sports- 
 man away from the place where her nest is hidden. 
 
 As the thought took shape in her brain a sixth 
 man, a sergeant who commanded them, touched 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 323 
 
 her with his foot, stooped, clutched her, and pulled 
 her upward. She did not try to escape. 
 
 " What beast of night have we here? " he cried. 
 " Spawn of devils, who are you? " 
 
 Nerina writhed under the grip of his iron 
 fingers, but she still did not try to escape. He 
 cursed her, swore at her, shook her, crushed her 
 arm black and blue. She was sick with pain, but 
 she was mute. 
 
 " Who are you ? " he shouted. 
 
 " I come down from the mountains to work here 
 in summer." 
 
 " Can any of you speak her dialect? " cried the 
 sergeant to his privates : the sergeant was a man 
 of Milan. 
 
 One man answered, " I come from Paganica ; 
 it is much the same tongue there as in these parts." 
 
 " Ask her the way, then." 
 
 The soldier obeyed. 
 
 " What is the way to the Three Pines ? to the 
 tomb of Asdrubal ? " 
 
 11 The way is long," said Nerina. 
 
 " Do you know it ? " 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 " Have you heard tell of it ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " That men meet at night there ? " 
 
324 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Meet this night there ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You know where the tomb of Asdrubal is? " 
 
 "Have I not told you?" 
 
 The soldier repeated her answer translated to 
 his sergeant ; the latter kept his grasp on her. 
 
 " Ask her if she will take us there." 
 
 The soldier asked her and translated her 
 answer. 
 
 "If we give her two gold pieces she will take 
 us there." 
 
 " Spawn of hell ! I will give her nothing. But 
 if she do not lead us aright I will give her a bullet 
 for her breakfast." 
 
 The soldier translated to Nerina : " He will give 
 you two gold pieces if you guide us aright ; and 
 you need have no fear; we are honest men and 
 the king's servants." 
 
 " I will guide the king's servants." 
 
 " You are sure of the way ? " 
 
 " Is the homing pigeon sure of his ? " 
 
 " Let us be off," .said the sergeant. " A bullet 
 for her if she fail." 
 
 He had little pleasure in trusting to this girl of 
 the Abruzzo hills, but he and his men were lost 
 upon these moors, and might grope all night, and 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 325 
 
 miss the meeting, and fail to join his comrades 
 and surprise those who gathered at it. He 
 reckoned upon fear as a sure agent to keep her 
 true, as it kept his conscripts under arms. 
 
 " Bid him take his hand off me," said Nerina, 
 "or I do not move." 
 
 The private translated to his superior. " She 
 prays of your mercy to leave her free, or she 
 cannot pass through the heather." 
 
 The sergeant let her go unwillingly, but pushed 
 her in front of him, and levelled his revolver at 
 her. 
 
 " Tell her, if she try to get away, I fire." 
 
 " Tell him I know that," said Nerina. 
 
 She was not afraid, for a fierce, unholy joy was 
 in her veins ; she could have sung, she could have 
 laughed, she could have danced ; she held them 
 in her power ; they had come to ensnare Adone, 
 and she had got them in her power as if they were 
 so many moles ! 
 
 They tied her hands behind her ; she let them 
 do it; she did not want her hands. Then she 
 began to push her way doggedly, with her head 
 down, to the south. The tomb of Asdrubal was 
 due north ; she could see the pole star, and turned 
 her back to it and went due south. 
 
 Three miles or more southward there was a 
 
326 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 large pollino, or swamp known as L'Erba Molle, 
 the wet grass ; the grass was luxuriant, the flora 
 was varied and beautiful ; in appearance it was a 
 field, in reality it was a morass ; to all people of 
 the Valdedera it was dreaded and avoided, as 
 quicksands are by the seashore. 
 
 She went on as fast as the narrow path, winding 
 in and out between the undergrowth, permitted 
 her to go ; the armed soldiers, heavy laden with 
 their knapsacks and their boots, following her 
 clumsily, and with effort, muttering curses on 
 their ill-luck and their sleepless night. 
 
 The stars were now larger and brighter ; the 
 darkness was lightened, the river was running 
 away from its southern birthplace in the hills 
 which lie like couched lions about the feet of the 
 Gran Sasso. She could hear its distant murmur. 
 " They come to capture you," she said to it, "and 
 I will kill them. They shall choke and go down, 
 down, down " 
 
 Her heart leapt within her ; and she went 
 with the loaded revolver pointed at her from 
 behind as though she went to her bridal-bed. 
 
 " Where are you taking us, vile little bitch ? " 
 the sergeant cried, and the soldier from Paga- 
 nica translated : " Pretty little brown one, 
 whither do you go ? " 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 327 
 
 " I take you straight," said Nerina, " only you 
 go too clumsily, for men in these parts should 
 not wear leather upon their feet." 
 
 The soldiers sighed assent, and would willingly 
 have gone barefoot, and the sergeant swore in 
 tones of thunder because he could not understand 
 what she said. 
 
 Before long they came in sight of the Erba 
 Molle; it looked like a fair, peaceful pasture, 
 with thousands of sword rushes golden upon its 
 surface. The light of the stars, which was now 
 brilliant, shone upon its verdure ; there were great 
 flocks of water-birds at roost around it, and they 
 rose with shrill cries and great noise of wings, 
 with a roar as though a tide were rising. 
 
 Across it stretched a line of wooden piles which 
 served as a rude causeway to those who had the 
 courage and the steadiness to leap from one to 
 another of them. It was not three times in a 
 season that any one dared to do so. Adone did 
 so sometimes ; and he had taught Nerina how to 
 make the passage. 
 
 " Pass you after me, and set your feet where I 
 set mine," said Nerina to the little soldier of the 
 Abruzzo, and she put down her foot on the first 
 pile, sunk almost invisible under the bright green 
 slime, where thousands of frogs were croaking. 
 
328 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 The soldier of the Abruzzo said to his superior, 
 " She says we must set our feet where she sets 
 hers. We are quite near now to the tomb of the 
 barbarian." 
 
 Nerina, with the light leap of a kid, bounded 
 from pile to pile. They thought she went on 
 solid ground ; on meadow grass. The sergeant 
 and his men crowded on to what they thought 
 was pasture. In the uncertain shadows and 
 scarce dawning light, they did not see the row 
 of submerged timber. They sank like stones in 
 the thick ooze ; they were sucked under to their 
 knees, to their waists, to their shoulders, to 
 their mouths ; the yielding grasses, the clutching 
 slime, the tangled weed, the bottomless mud, 
 took hold of them ; the water-birds shrieked and 
 beat their wings ; the 'hideous clamour of dying 
 men answered them. 
 
 Nerina had reached the other side of the morass 
 in safety, and her mocking laughter rang upon 
 their ears. 
 
 " I have led you well ! " she cried to them. " I 
 have led you well, oh servants of the king ! oh 
 swine ! oh slaves ! oh spies ! oh hunters and 
 butchers of men ! " 
 
 And she danced on the edge of the field of death, 
 and the light of the great planets shone upon her 
 face. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 329 
 
 Had she run onward at once into the wood 
 beyond she would have been saved. That instant 
 of triumph and mockery lost her. 
 
 The sergeant had put his revolver in his teeth ; 
 he knew now that he was a dead man ; the slime 
 was up to his chin, under his feet the grass and 
 the mud quaked, yielded, yawned like a grave. 
 
 He drew his right arm out of the ooze, seized 
 his revolver, and aimed at the dancing, mocking, 
 triumphant figure beyond the border of golden 
 sword rushes. With a supreme effort he fired ; 
 then he sank under the mud and weed. 
 
 The child dropped dead on the edge of the 
 morass. 
 
 One by one each soldier sank. Not one escaped. 
 
 The water-birds came back from their upward 
 flight and settled again on the swamp. 
 
 Underneath it all was still, save for the loud 
 croaking of the frogs. 
 
XX 
 
 T\ON SILVEKIO rose with the dawn of day, 
 U and entered his church at five of the clock. 
 There were but a few women gathered hi the 
 gaunt, dark vastness of the nave. The morning 
 was hot, and the scent of buds and blossoms and 
 fresh-cut grass came in from the fields over the 
 broken walls and into the ancient houses. 
 
 When Mass was over, old Alaida crept over the 
 mouldy mosaics timidly to his side, and kneeled 
 down on the stones. 
 
 " Most reverend," she whispered, " 'twas not 
 my fault. I slept heavily ; she must have un- 
 locked the door, for it was undone at dawn ; her 
 bed is empty, she has not returned." 
 
 " You speak of Nerina ? " 
 
 " Of Nerina, reverence. I did all I could. It 
 was not my fault. She was like a hawk in a 
 
 cage." 
 
 330 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 331 
 
 "I am grieved," he said; and he thought: "Is 
 it Adone?" 
 
 He feared so. 
 
 "Is she not at the Terra Vergine? " he asked. 
 Alaida shook her head. 
 
 " No, reverend sir. I sent my grandchild to 
 ask there. Gianna has not seen her, and says the 
 girl would never dare to go near Clelia Alba." 
 
 " I am grieved," said Don Silverio again. 
 
 He did not blame the old woman, as who, he 
 thought, blames one who could not tame an 
 eaglet ? 
 
 He went back to the presbytery and broke his 
 fast on a glass of water, some bread, and some 
 cresses from the river. 
 
 He had sent for Gianna. In half an hour she 
 came, distressed and frightened. 
 
 " Sir, I know not of her; I should not dare to 
 harbour her, even in the cattle-stall. Madonna 
 Clelia would turn me adrift. When Madonna 
 Clelia has once spoken ' 
 
 " Adone is at home ? " 
 
 " Alas ! no, sir. He went out at nightfall; we 
 have not seen him since. He told me he went to 
 a meeting of men at the Three Pines, at what they 
 call the Tomb of the Barbarian." 
 
 Ppn Silverio was silent. 
 
332 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " It is very grave," he said at last. 
 
 " Aye, sir, grave indeed," said Gianna. " Would 
 that it were love between them, sir. Love is 
 sweet and wholesome and kind, but there is no 
 such thing in Adone's heart. There it is only, 
 alas ! blackness and fire and hatred, sir ; blood- 
 lust against those who mean ill to the river." 
 
 " And his mother has lost all influence over 
 him?" 
 
 "All, sir. She is no more to him now than a 
 bent stick. Yet, months ago, she gave him her 
 pearls and her bracelets, and he sold them in a 
 distant town to buy weapons." 
 
 " Indeed ? What madness ! " 
 
 " How else could the men have been armed, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Armed ! " he repeated. " And of what use is 
 it to arm? What use is it for two hundred 
 peasants to struggle against the whole forces of 
 the State ? They will rot in prison ; that is all 
 that they will do." 
 
 " Maybe yes, sir. Maybe no," said the old 
 woman, with the obstinacy of ignorance. " Some 
 one must begin. They have no right to take the 
 water away, sir ; no more right than to take the 
 breast from the babe." 
 
 Then, afraid of having said so much, she 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 333 
 
 dropped her curtsey and went out into the street. 
 But in another moment she came back into the 
 study with a scared, blanched face, in which the 
 wrinkles were scarred deep like furrows in a 
 field. 
 
 "Sir sir!" she gasped, "there are the 
 soldiery amongst us." 
 
 Don Silverio rose in haste, put the little dog 
 on his armchair, closed the door of his study, and 
 went down the narrow stone passage which 
 parted his bookroom from the entrance. The 
 lofty doorway showed him the stones of the 
 familiar street, a buttress of his church, a great 
 branch of one of the self-sown ilex-trees, the 
 glitter of the arms and the white leather of 
 the cross belts of a sentinel. The shrill lamen- 
 tations of the women seemed to rend the sunny 
 air. He shuddered as he heard. Coming up the 
 street farther off were half a troop of carabineers 
 and a score of dragoons ; the swords of the latter 
 were drawn, the former had their carbines levelled. 
 The villagers, screaming with terror, were closing 
 their doors and shutters in frantic haste ; the 
 door of the presbytery alone remained open. 
 Don Silverio went into the middle of the road 
 and addressed the officer who headed the carabi- 
 neers. 
 
334 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 " May I ask to what my parish owes this 
 visit ? " 
 
 " We owe no answer to you, reverend sir," said 
 the lieutenant. 
 
 The people were sobbing hysterically, catching 
 their children in their arms, calling to the Holy 
 Mother to save them, kneeling down on the sharp 
 stones in the dust. Their priest felt ashamed of 
 them. 
 
 " My people," he called to them, " do not be 
 afraid. Do not hide yourselves. Do not kneel 
 to these troopers. You have done no wrong." 
 
 " I forbid you to address the crowd," said the 
 officer. " Get you back into your house." 
 
 " What is my offence ?" 
 
 " You will learn in good time," said the com- 
 mandant. " Get you into your presbytery." 
 
 " My place is with my people." 
 
 The officer, impatient, struck him on the chest 
 with the pommel of his sword. 
 
 Two carabineers thrust him back into the 
 passage. 
 
 " No law justifies your conduct," he said 
 coldly, " or authorises you to sever me from 
 my flock." 
 
 " The sabre is law here," said the lieutenant in 
 command. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 335 
 
 "It is the only law known anywhere in this 
 kingdom," said Don Silverio. 
 
 " Arrest him," said the officer. "He is 
 creating disorder." 
 
 The carabineers drove him into his study, and 
 a brigadier began to ransack his papers and 
 drawers. 
 
 He said nothing ; the seizure of his manu- 
 scripts and documents was indifferent to him, 
 for there was nothing he had ever written 
 which would not bear the fullest light. But 
 the insolent and arbitrary act moved him to 
 keen anxiety, because it showed that the military 
 men had licence to do their worst, at their 
 will, and his anguish of apprehension was for 
 Adone. He could only hope and pray that Adone 
 had returned, and might be found tranquilly at 
 work in the fields of the Terra Vergine. But his 
 fears were great. Unless more soldiery were 
 patrolling the district in all directions it was 
 little likely, he thought, that these men would 
 conduct themselves thus in Euscino ; he had no 
 doubt that it was a concerted movement, directed 
 by the Prefect, and the General commanding the 
 garrisons of the province, and intended to net in 
 one haul the malcontents of the Valdedera. 
 
 From his study there was no view upon the 
 
336 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 street ; he could hear the wailing of women and 
 screaming of children from the now closed 
 houses : that was all. 
 
 "What is it your men do to my people?" he 
 said sternly. 
 
 The brigadier did not reply ; he went on throw- 
 ing papers into a trunk. 
 
 "Where is your warrant for this search? We 
 are not in a state of siege ? " asked Don 
 Silverio. 
 
 The man, with a significant gesture, drew his 
 sabre up half way out of its sheath; then let 
 it fall again with a clash. He vouchsafed no 
 other answer. 
 
 Some women's faces pressed in at the grating 
 of the window which looked on the little garden, 
 scared, blanched, horrified, the white head, and 
 sunburnt features of Gianna foremost. 
 
 " Eeverendissimo ! " they screamed as with 
 one voice. " They are bringing the lads in from 
 the moors." 
 
 And Gianna shrieked, " Adone ! They have got 
 Adone ! " 
 
 Don Silverio sprang to his feet. 
 
 " Adone ! Have you taken Adone Alba ? " 
 
 "The ringleader! By Bacchus! yes," cried 
 the brigadier, with a laugh. " He will get thirty 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 337 
 
 years at the galleys. Your flock does you honour, 
 Keverendissimo ! " 
 
 "Let me go to my flock," said Don Silverio; 
 and some tone in his voice, some gesture of his 
 hand, had an authority in them which compelled 
 the carabineer to let him pass unopposed. 
 
 He went down the stone passage to the archway 
 of the open door. A soldier stood sentinel there. 
 The street was crowded with armed men. The 
 air was full of clangour and clamour ; above all 
 rose the shrill screams of the women. 
 
 "No one passes," said the sentinel, and he 
 levelled the mouth of his musket at Don Silverio 's 
 breast. 
 
 " I pajs," said the priest, and with his bare 
 hand he grasped the barrel of the musket and 
 forced it upward. 
 
 " I rule here, in the name of God," he said in a 
 voice which rolled down the street with majestic 
 melody, dominating the screams, the oaths, the 
 hell of evil sound; and he went down the steps 
 of his house, and no man dared lay a hand on 
 him. 
 
 He could hear the trampling of horses and the 
 jingling of spears and scabbards; some lancers 
 who had beaten the moors that night were coming 
 up the street. Half a company of soldiers of the 
 
338 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 line, escorted by carabineers, came in from the 
 country, climbing the steep street, driving before 
 them a rabble of young men, disarmed, wounded, 
 lame, with their hands tied behind them, the 
 remnant of those who had met at the tomb of 
 Asdrubal in the night just passed. They had been 
 surprised, seized, surrounded by a wall of steel ; 
 some had answered to their leader's call and had 
 defended themselves, but these had been few; 
 most of them had thrown down their weapons 
 and begged for mercy when the cold steel of the 
 soldiers was at their throats. Adone had fought 
 as though the shade of Asdrubal had passed into 
 him ; but his friends had failed him ; his enemies 
 had outnumbered him a score to one ; he had 
 been overpowered, disarmed, bound, dragged 
 through his native heather backward and upward 
 to Kuscino, reaching the shadow of the walls as 
 the sun rose. 
 
 The child lay dead by the stagnant pond, and 
 the men she had led to their death lay choked 
 with the weeds and the slime ; but of that he 
 knew naught. 
 
 All he knew was that his cause was lost, his 
 life forfeit, his last hope dead. 
 
 Only by his stature and his bearing could he be 
 recognised. His features were black from powder 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 339 
 
 and gore ; his right arm hung broken by a shot ; 
 his clothing had been torn off him to his waist ; 
 he was lame ; but he alone still bore himself erect 
 as he came on up the village street. The others 
 were huddled together in a fainting, tottering, 
 crazed mob ; all were sick and swooning from the 
 long march, beaten when they paused by the 
 buckles of belts and the flat of sabres. 
 
 Don Silverio saw that sight in front of his 
 church, in the white, clear light of early morning, 
 and on the air there was a sickly stench of sweat, 
 of powder, of wounds, of dust. 
 
 He went straight to the side of Adone. 
 
 " My son, my son ! I will come with you. 
 They cannot refuse me that." 
 
 But the soul of Adone was as a pit in which a 
 thousand devils strove for mastery. There was no 
 light in it, no conscience, no gratitude, no remorse. 
 
 " Judas ! " he cried aloud ; and there was foam 
 on his lips and there was red blood in his eyes. 
 " Judas ! you betrayed us ! " 
 
 Then, as a young bull lowers his horns, he bent 
 his head and bit through and through to the bone 
 the wrist of the soldier who held him ; in terror 
 and pain the man shrieked and let go his hold ; 
 Adone's arms remained bound behind him, but his 
 [imbs, though they dripped blood, were free. 
 
340 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 He fronted the church, and that breach in the 
 blocks of the Etruscan wall through which Nerina 
 had taken her path to the river a few hours before. 
 He knew every inch of the descent. Hundreds 
 of times in his boyhood had he run along the 
 ruined wall and leaped in sport over the huge 
 stones, to spring with joyous shouts into the 
 river below. 
 
 As the soldier with a scream of agony let go his 
 hold, he broke away like a young lion released 
 from the den. Before they could seize him he 
 had sprung over the wall, and was tearing down 
 the slope ; the linesmen, rushing in swift pursuit 
 behind him, stumbled, rolled down the slippery 
 grass, fell over the blocks of granite. He, sure of 
 foot, knowing the way from childhood, ran down 
 the hill safely, though blood poured from his 
 wounds and blinded his sight, and a sickness like 
 the swooning of death dulled his brain. Beyond 
 him and below him was the river. He dashed into 
 it like a hunted beast swimming to sanctuary ; 
 he ran along in it, with its brightness and cool- 
 ness rippling against his parched throat. He 
 stooped and kissed it for the last time. 
 
 " Take me ! save me ! comrade, brother, 
 friend ! " he cried aloud to it with his last breath 
 of life ; and he plunged where it was deepest. 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 341 
 
 Then the sky grew dark, and only the sound of 
 the water was heard in his ears. By the bridge 
 its depth was great, and the current was strong 
 under the shade of the ruined keep. It swept his 
 body onward to the sea. 
 
XXI 
 
 IT was the beginning of winter when Don Sil- 
 verio Frascara, having been put upon his trial 
 and no evidence of any sort having been adduced 
 against him, was declared innocent and set free, 
 no compensation or apology being offered to him. 
 
 " Were it only military law it had been easy 
 enough to find him guilty," said Senator Gio- 
 vacchino Gallo to the Syndic of San Beda, and the 
 Count Corradini warmly agreed with his Excel- 
 lency that for the sake of law, order, and public 
 peace it would be well could the military tribunals 
 be always substituted for the civil ; but alas ! the 
 monarchy was not yet absolute ! 
 
 He had been detained many weeks and months 
 at the city by the sea, where the trial of the 
 young men of the Valdedera had been held with 
 all the prolonged, tedious, and cruel delays com- 
 mon to the national laws. Great efforts had been 
 
 made to implicate him in the criminal charges; 
 
 342 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 343 
 
 but it had been found impossible to verify such 
 suspicions ; every witness by others, and every 
 action of his own, proved the wisdom, the purity, 
 and the excellence in counsel and example of his 
 whole life at Euscino. The unhappy youths who 
 had been taken with arms in their hands were 
 condemned for overt rebellion and conspiracy 
 against authority, and were sentenced, some to 
 four, some to seven, some to ten, and, a few who 
 were considered the ringleaders, to twenty-five 
 years of cellular confinement. But against Don 
 Silverio it was found impossible even to make out 
 the semblance of an accusation, the testimony 
 even of those hostile to him being irresistibly in 
 his favour in all ways. He had done his ut- 
 most to defend the poor peasantry who had been 
 misled by Adone to their own undoing, and he 
 had defended also the motives and the character 
 of the dead with an eloquence which moved to 
 tears the public who heard him, and touched even 
 the hearts of stone of president and advocates ; 
 and he had done this at his own imminent risk ; 
 for men of law can never be brought to under- 
 stand that comprehension is not collusion, or that 
 pity is not fellowship. 
 
 But all his efforts failed to save the young men 
 from the utmost rigour of the law. The judge, 
 
544 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 agreeing with the State prosecutor, declared that 
 the most severe example was necessary to check 
 once for all by its terrors the tendency of the 
 common people to resist the State and its public 
 works and decrees. Useful and patriotic enter- 
 prises must not be impeded or wrecked because 
 ignorance was opposed to progress : thus said the 
 King's advocate in an impassioned oration which 
 gained for him eventually emolument and prefer- 
 ment. The rustics were sent in a body to the 
 penitentiaries ; and Don Silverio was permitted to 
 go home. 
 
 Cold northern blasts blew from the upper 
 Apennines, and piled the snows upon the grey 
 and yellow rocks of the Abruzzo heights, as he 
 crossed the valley of the Edera towards Euscino. 
 It seemed to him as though a centmy had passed 
 since he had left it. In the icy wind which 
 blew from the hills he' shivered, for he had only 
 one poor, thin coat to cover him. His strength, 
 naturally great, had given way under the mental 
 and physical sufferings of the last six months, 
 although no word of lament had ever escaped 
 him. Like all generous natures he rebuked 
 himself for the sins of others. Incessantly he 
 asked himself might he not have saved Adone ? 
 
 As he came to the turn in the road which 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 345 
 
 brought him within sight of the river, he sat 
 down on a stone and covered his eyes with his 
 hands. 
 
 The sacristan had come to meet him, bringing 
 the little dog, grown thin, and sad, and old with 
 sorrow. 
 
 " I did all I could for him, but he would not 
 be consoled," murmured the old man. 
 
 From the point which they had reached the 
 course of the Edera, and the lands of the Terra 
 Vergine, were visible. With an effort, like one 
 who forces his will to look on a dead face, he 
 uncovered his eyes and looked downward. The 
 olive-trees were still standing; where the house 
 had stood there was a black, charred, roofless shell ; 
 the untilled fields lay bare beneath the frost. 
 
 " Keverend sir," said the old man below his 
 breath, " when Clelia Alba knew that Adone was 
 drowned she set fire to the house, and so perished. 
 They say she had promised her son." 
 
 " I. know ! " said Don Silverio. 
 
 The wind from the north swept across the 
 valley and drove the river in yellow foam and 
 black eddies through the dead sedges. Above 
 Euscino the acacia thickets had been cut down, 
 the herbage was crushed under timber and 
 iron and stone, the heather was trampled and 
 
346 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 hacked, the sand and gravel were piled in heaps, 
 the naked soil yawned in places like fresh-dug 
 graves; along the southern bank were laid the 
 metals of a light railway ; on the lines of it 
 were some trucks filled with bricks ; the wooden 
 huts of the workmen covered a dreary, dusty 
 space ; the water was still flowing, but on 
 all the scene were the soil, the disorder, the de- 
 struction, the vulgar meanness and disfigurement 
 which accompany modern labour, and affront like 
 a coarse bruise the gracious face of Nature. 
 
 " There have been three hundred men from 
 the Puglie at work," said the sacristan. " They 
 have stopped awhile now on account of the frost, 
 but as soon as the weather opens " 
 
 " Enough, enough ! " murmured Don Silverio ; 
 and he rose, and holding the little dog in his 
 arms, went on down the familiar road. 
 
 "His body has never been found?" he asked 
 under his breath. 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 "Nay, sir; what Edera takes it keeps. He 
 dropped where he knew it was deepest." 
 
 As the vicar returned up the village street 
 there was not a soul to give him greeting except 
 old Gianna, who kneeled weeping at his feet. 
 The people poured out of their doorways, but 
 
THE WATERS OF EDERA 347 
 
 they said not a word of welcome. The memory 
 of Adone was an idolatry with them, and Adone 
 had said that their priest had betrayed them. 
 One woman threw a stone at Signorino. Don 
 Silverio covered the little dog, and received the 
 blow on his own arm. 
 
 " For twenty years I have had no thought but 
 to serve these, my people ! " he thought ; but he 
 neither rebuked nor reproached them. 
 
 The women as he passed them hissed at him : 
 "Judas! Judas!" 
 
 One man alone said : "Nay, 'tis a shame. 
 Have you forgot what he did in the cholera ? 
 'Tis long ago, but still- 
 But the women said : " He betrayed the poor 
 lads. He brought the soldiers. He sold the 
 water." 
 
 Under that outrage, his manhood and his 
 dignity revived. 
 
 He drew his tall form erect, and passed through 
 the reviling crowd, and gave them his blessing as 
 he passed. 
 
 Then he went within his church ; and remained 
 there alone. 
 
 "He is gone to pray for the soul of Adone," 
 said the sacristan. 
 
 When he came out of the church and entered 
 
348 THE WATERS OF EDERA 
 
 his house, the street was empty ; the people were 
 afraid of what they had done and of their own 
 ingratitude. He crossed the threshold of the 
 presbytery. The sere vine veiled his study case- 
 ment ; in the silence he could hear the sound of the 
 Edera water ; he sat down at his familiar table, 
 with the dog upon his knees. His eyes were wet, 
 and his heart was sick ; his courage was broken. 
 
 " How shall I bear my life here ? " he thought. 
 All which had made it of value and lightened 
 its solitude" was gone. Even his people had turned 
 against him ; suspicious, thankless, hostile. 
 
 The old sacristan, standing doubtful and timid 
 at the entrance of the chamber, drew near and 
 reverently touched his arm. 
 
 " Sir here is a letter it came three days ago." 
 
 Don Silverio stretched out his hand over the 
 little dog's head, and took it. 
 
 He changed colour as he saw its seal and 
 superscription. 
 
 Kome had at last remembered him, and awakened 
 to his value. 
 
 At the latest Consistory he had been nominated 
 to the Cardinalate. 
 
 NOTE. As it may appear strange to the English reader that the 
 Porpora Bomana should be given to a village priest, I may here say 
 that, to my knowledge, a country vicar was himself sweeping out his 
 rural church when he was informed of his nomination as Cardinal, and 
 M. S. de Merode was only deacon when he rose to that elevation. 
 
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 ie Journal of Maurice de Guerin. Christie Johnstone. By CHARLES REAUE. 
 
 The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb. 
 Citation and Examination of William Siiakspearo. 
 
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 Peg Wofflngton. By CHARLES READE. 
 
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 Gastronomy. By BRILLAT-SAVARIN. 
 Robinson Crusoe. Illustrated by G. CRUIKSHANK 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table and The Professor 
 
 at the Breakfast- Table. By O. W. HOLMES. 
 Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal. 
 Whims and Oddities. By THOMAS HOOD. 
 Leigh Hunt's Essays. Edited by E. OLI.IER. 
 The Barber's Chair. By DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 printed on laid paper and hf.-bd., zs. each. 
 The Essays of Elia. By CHARLES LAMB. 
 Anecdotes of the Clergy. By JACOB LARWOOD. 
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 The Shadow of a Grim*. By HALL CAINE. j 
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 Barbara 
 
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 A Golden Autumn. 
 Mrs.0richt on'sCreditor. 
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 Bv Woman's Wit. 
 
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 Philistia. | Babylon. The Great Taboo, 
 Strange Stories. 
 > or Maimie s Sake, 
 In all Shades. 
 Tiie Beckoning Hand. 
 'a hi Devil's Die. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 The Tents of Shem. 
 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 
 Blood Royal. 
 
 I. Greets Masterpiece. 
 
 The Scallywag. 
 
 At Market Value. 
 
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 Fhra the Phoenician. | Constable of St. Nicholas. 
 
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 From Whose Bourne. Revenue ! 
 
 By FRANK BARRETT. 
 Woman of IronBracelete. I Under a Strange Mask. 
 Fettered for Life. A Missing Witness. 
 
 The Harding Scandal. | Was She Justified? 
 By ' B E L L E .' Vashti and Esther . 
 By Sir W. BESAN F and J. RICE. 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 , Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
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 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema 
 
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 The Captains' Room. 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. 
 
 World Went Well Then. 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 Herr Paulus. 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 The Holy Rose. I 
 
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 By PAUL BOURGET.-A Living Lie. 
 By J. D. BRAYSHAW. Slum Bildouettes. 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 The Seamy Side. 
 TheCaseofMr.Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 S.Katherine's bv Tower 
 Verbena Camellia, <fec. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Dreams of Avarice. 
 In Deacon's Orders. 
 The Master Craftsman. 
 The City of Refuge. 
 A Fountain Sealed. 
 The Changeling. 
 Tha Charm. 
 
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 The New Abelard. 
 Matt. | Ra ;hel Dene 
 Master of the Mine. 
 The Heir of Linne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Red and White Heather. 
 Lady Kilpatrick. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword. 
 
 ACRildofNature. 
 
 God and the Man. 
 
 Martyrdom of Madeline 
 
 Lov<; Me for Ever. 
 
 Aa.nan Water. 
 
 Fox;!ove Manor. 
 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 k\ W. CHAAlBERS.-The King in Yellow. 
 
 By J. M. CHAPPLE.-The Minor Chord. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 ShJ.dow of a Crime, j Deemster. | Son of Hagar 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE.-By Rise of River. ' 
 
 By ANNE COATES. Rie's Diary 
 
 "By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Red Sultan. | The Burden of Isabel. 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Biacksmith & Scholar. 
 The Village Comedy. 
 You Play me False. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 From Midnight to Mid- 
 night. 
 
 Armadale. I AfterDark. 
 No Name. | Antonina 
 Basil. | Hide and Seek 
 The Dead Secret. 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 My Miscellanies, 
 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Law and the Lady. 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 
 Kiss or Mrs. ? 
 The New Magdalen. 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 The Two Destinies. 
 ' I Say No.' 
 Little Novels. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 The Evil Genius. 
 Tae Legacy of Cain. 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 M. J. COLQUHOUN. -Every Inoh Soldier. 
 
 By E.H. COOPER. -Geoffory Hamilton. 
 By V. C. COTES. Two Girls on a Barge. 
 C. E. CRADDOCK. -His Vanished Star. 
 
 By H. N. CRELLIN. 
 Romances of the Old Seraglio. 
 
 By MATT CR1M. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT and others. 
 Tales of Our Coast. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Marripd or Single ? 
 Two Masters. 
 In theKingdom of Kerry 
 Interference. 
 A Third Person, 
 Bevond the Pale. 
 Miss Balmaine's Past. 
 
 Diana Barrington. 
 Proper Pride. 
 A Family Likeness. 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 'To Let.' | Mr. Jervis. 
 Village Tales. 
 
 Some One Else. | Jason. , 
 
 By W. CYPLES. -Hearts of Gold. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 H. C. DAVIDSON. -Mr. Sadler's Daughters. 
 
 By E. DAWSON The Fountain of Youth, 
 
 By J. DE M I LLE. A Castle in Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 
 By HARRY DE WINDT. 
 True Talea of Travel and Adventure. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 Man from Manchester. The Mystery of 
 Chronicles of Michael Jamaica Terrace. 
 
 Danevitch. Tales of Terror. 
 
 Records of Vincent Trill 
 
 By RICHARD DOWLING. 
 Old Corcoran's Money. 
 
 By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
 The Firm of Gird'estone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day ! Vernon's Aunt. 
 By A. EDWARDES. A Plaster Saint. 
 By G. S. EDWARDS. Snazellepariila 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN 
 
 Cirsed by a Fortune 
 '/he Case of Ailsa Gray. 
 Commodore Junk. 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 The Tiger Lit*. 
 The White Virgin. 
 Black BlooO 
 Double CuniXvBg. 
 Ja? of Diamonds, & 
 
 A Fluttered Dovecote. 
 King of the Castle 
 Master of Ceremonies. 
 Eve at the Wheel, &c. 
 The Man with a Shadow 
 One Maid's Mischief. 
 Story of Antony Grace. 
 This'Man's Wife. 
 In Jeopardy. fn'ng. 
 A Woman Worth Win- 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD.-FatalZero. 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON, 
 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 
 Jack Doyle's Daughter. 
 
 One by One 
 
 A Dog and Ua Shadow. 
 
 A Real Que^n. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Broker's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 AStrange M.anuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder 
 By P/UL GAULOT. The Red Shirt.. 
 
 By CHARLCS GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. The Golden Shaft. 
 
 Loving a Dream. The Braes of Yarrow, 
 
 Of High Degree 
 
 By E. GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Golden Rock. 
 
 A Fair Colonist. Tales from the VW, 
 
 The PowickW. i. 
 
23 CHAtfO & WlNbUS, Publishes, lit St. Maf tin's Lane, Undoft, W.Ci 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
 
 By E. J. GOODMAN. 
 The Pate of Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 CECIL GRIFFITH.-Corinthia Marazion. 
 SYDNEY GRUNDY. Days of his Vanity. 
 
 By A. CLAVERING GUNTER. 
 A Florida Enchantment. 
 
 By OWEN HALL. 
 The Track of a Storm. | Jetsam. 
 
 By COSMO HAMILTON. 
 Glamour of Impossible. | Through a Keyhole. 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 A Ward of the Golden 
 Gate. [Springs. 
 
 A Sappho of Green 
 col. Starbottle s Client. 
 Susy. | Sally Dows. 
 Bell-Ringer of Angel's. 
 Tales of Trail and Town 
 
 A Protegee 6t Jack 
 
 Hamlin'S. 
 Clarence. 
 Barker s LUck. 
 Devil's Ford. [celsJor.* 
 The Crusade of the ' Ex- 
 Three Partners. 
 Gabriel Gonroy. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 David Foindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. 
 Spectre of Camera. 
 
 Garth. | Dust. 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 Fortune s Fool. 
 
 By Sir A. HELPS. Ivan de Biron. 
 By I. HENDERSON. Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 Dorothy's Double. | The Queen's Cup. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 By JOHN HILL. The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By TIGHE HOPKINS. 
 'Twixt Love and Duty. | Nugents of Carriconna. 
 
 The Incomplete Adventurer. 
 VICTOR HUGO. -The Outlaw of Iceland. 
 FERGUS HUME.-Ladv from Nowhere. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 A Mental Struggle. A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flight. 
 The Red-House Mystery 
 The Three Graces. 
 Professor's Experiment. 
 
 The Coming of Chloe. 
 Nora Creina. 
 An Anxious Moment. 
 April's Lady. 
 Peter's Wife. | Lovice. 
 
 A Point of Conscience 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden Casket. I Self-Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | Mrs. Juliet. 
 
 By C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE. 
 Honour of Thieves. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING. 
 A Drawn Game. 
 
 By GEORGE LAMBERT. 
 The President of Boravia. 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 Madame Sans Gene. 
 
 By ADAM LILBURN. 
 A Tragedy in Marble. 
 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 Rhoda Roberts. | The Jacobite. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. -Gideon Fleyce. 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 Under which Lord? 
 ' My Love ! ' | lone. 
 Paston Carew. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 With a Silken Thread, 
 The World Well Lost. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 An Octave of Friends. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 
 Linley Hochford. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 
 Camiola. 
 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 
 My Enemy s Daughter. 
 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 
 Maid of Athens. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Bing. 
 
 The Three Disgraces, 
 
 By JUSTIN H. McCARTHY. 
 
 A London Legend. | The Royal Christopher, 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snow. | Phantastes. 
 W. H MALLOCK. The New Republic. 
 P.&V. MARGUERITTE. -The Disaster. 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 
 On Brink of a Chasm. 
 
 The Siren. 
 
 The Way of a Woman. 
 
 A Son of Ithmael. 
 
 By 
 
 For 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 In an Iron Grip. 
 Dr. Rumsey's Patient. 
 The Voice of the Charmer 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 This Stage of Fools. | Cynthia. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 The Gun Runner. I The King's Assegai. 
 
 LuckofGerardRidgeley. Rensh. Fanning 'sQuest. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. | Golden Idol. 
 Basile the Jester. | Young Lochinvar. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 BobMartin's Little Girl 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o' Nails. 
 Tales in Prose & Verse. 
 A Race for Millions. 
 This Little World. 
 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 A Model Father. 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person Singular. 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 The Bishops' Bible. I Paul Jones's Alias. 
 One Traveller Returns. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET.-' Bail Up r 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Anns. | Billy Belle w. 
 
 Miss Wentworth a Idea. 
 
 By G. OHNET. 
 A Weird Gift. | Love's Depths, 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT The Sorceress. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. In a Winter City. 
 
 Strathmore. | Chandos. Friendship. 
 Under Two Flags. Moths. | Ruffino. 
 
 Idalia. [Gage. Pipistrello. | Ariadne. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine s A Village Commune. 
 Tricotrin. | Puck. Bimbi. | Wanda. 
 Folle Farine. Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. In Maremma. 
 
 Pascarel. | Signa. Syrlin. | Guilderoy. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. Santa Barbara. 
 Two Wooden Shoes. Two Offenders. 
 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. Under One Roof. 
 A County Family. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Painted. 
 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 In Peril and Privation. 
 Mystery of Mirbridge. 
 Walter's Word. 
 High Spirits. (By Proxy. tington. 
 
 By WILL PAYNE. -Jerry the Dreamer. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. I Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 Christina Chard. | Nulma. I Madame Izan. 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 Valentina. | Foreigners. | Mrs. Lancaster's Rival. 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 Weird Stories. | A Rich Man's Daughter. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Denng. I Meriel. 
 
 Bv F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands'of Justice. | Woman in the Dark. 
 By HERBERT RUSSELL. -True Blue, 
 
 The Talk of the Town. 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 For Cash Only. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 The Word and the Will. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 A Modern Dick Whit- 
 
CHAtfo & WlN'OlJS, Publish^, tit 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (q/6) NOVELS continued. 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 . Martin^ 
 
 , LSHd6rt, W.C. 
 
 Peg Wofflngton ; and 
 Christie Johnstono. 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Cloister & the Hearth. 
 
 Never Too Late to Mend 
 
 The Course of True 
 Love ; and Single- 
 heart & Doubleface. 
 
 Autobiography of a 
 Thief; Jack of all 
 Trades; A Hero at.d 
 a Martyr ; and The 
 Wandering Heir. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 Love Little, Love Long. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Foul Play. 
 
 Put Y'rself in His Place 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 The Jilt, & otherStories : 
 & Good Stories of Man. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Keadiana ; and Bible 
 Characters. 
 
 J. RUNCIMAN. Skippers and Shellbacks. 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 Round the Galley-Fire. My Shipmate Louise. 
 In the Middle Watch. Alone onWideWide Sea. 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head The Phantom Death. 
 A Voyase to the Cape. Is He the Man ? 
 Book for the Hammock. Good Ship 'Mohock. 1 
 Mysteryof 'Ocean Star' The Convict Ship. 
 Jenny Harlowe. Heart of Oak. 
 
 An Ocean Tragedy. The Tale of the Ten. 
 
 A Tale of Two Tunnels. The Last Entry. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL.-Driftof Fate. 
 BAYLE ST. JOHN. -A Levantine Family. 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 Dr. Endicott s Experiment. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 Once Upon a Christmas i Dagonet Abroad. 
 Time. In London's Heart 
 
 Without the Limelight. I Mary Jane Marned. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. I 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 Without Love or Licence. The Outsider. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. Beatrice & Benedick. 
 Long Odds. A Racing Rubber. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 A Minion of the Moon. 
 Secret Wyvern Towers. 
 The Doom of Siva. 
 
 The Grey Monk. 
 
 The Master of Trenance 
 
 The Web of Fate. 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 The Wooing of May 
 A Tragic Honeymoon. 
 A Proctor's Wooing. 
 Fortune's Gate. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. 
 The Junior Dean. 
 Master of St.Benedict's 
 To his Own Master. 
 Gallantry Bower. 
 In Face of the World. 
 
 Bonnie Maggie Lander. 
 
 By JOHN STAFFORD. Doris and I 
 
 By R. STEPHENS. The Cruciform Mark 
 
 R. A. STERNDALE. The Afghan Knife. 
 
 R. L. STEVENSON. The Suicide Club. 
 
 By FRANK STOCKTON. 
 
 The Young Master of Hyson Hall. 
 By ANNIE THOMAS. The Sirens Web. 
 
 BERTHA THOMAS. The Violin Plaver. 
 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPS. 
 
 Like Ships upon Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 Aune Furness. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 The Way we Live Now. I Scarborough's Family; 
 Frau Frohmann. The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN 
 
 Choice Works' 
 Library of Humour. 
 The Innocents Abroad. 
 Roughing It ; and The 
 
 Innocents at Home. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 TheAmerican Claimant. 
 AdventuresTomSawyer 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. 
 Tom Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Pudd'nhead Wilson. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Prince and the Pauper; 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Adventures o'f 
 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 1.000,000 Bank-note. 
 
 C. C. F.-TYTLER. Mistress Judith. 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 WhatShe CaineThrough , Mrs Carmichael's God- 
 desses. ! Lady Bell. 
 Rachel Langton. 
 A Honeymoon's Eclipse. 
 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 The Blackball Ghosts. 
 The Macdonald Lass. 
 Witch-Wife. | Sapphira 
 
 A Young Dragon. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 The Queen against Owen I The Prince of Balkistan, 
 
 By ALBERT D. VANDAM. 
 A Oourt Trageay. 
 
 By E. A. VIZETELLY.-The Scorpion. 
 By F. WARDEN. Joan, the Curate. 
 By CY WARM A N.-Express Messenger, 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 For Honour and Life. 
 A Woman Tempted Him 
 
 Her Two Millions. 
 Two Pinches of Snuff. 
 Nigel Fortescue. 
 Birch Dene. 
 The Phantom City. 
 
 Roy of Ro 
 
 A Queer 
 
 Ben Ciough. 
 The Old Factory. 
 Red Ryvington. 
 Ralph Norbreck's Trust. 
 Truat.-money 
 Sons of Belial. 
 s Csurt. 
 
 Roy of Roy's Csurt. 
 By ATHA WESTBURY. 
 
 The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook. 
 By C. J. WILLS. An Easy poin? Fellow. 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life : and Regimental Legends. 
 A Soldier's Children. 
 
 By E. ZOLA. 
 The Fortune of the Rougone. 
 Abbe Mouret's Transgression. 
 The Conquest of Plassans. 
 
 The Downfall. 
 The Dream. I Monev. 
 Dr. Pascal. I Lourdes. 
 The Fat and the Thin 
 
 His Excellency. 
 The Dram-Shop. 
 Koine. i Paris. 
 Fruitfulness. 
 
 By * Z Z. * A Nineteenth Century MiracK , 
 
 CHEAP 
 
 By ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
 Ward Complete. 
 
 By EDMOND ABOUT. 
 
 Artemus Ward Complete. 
 
 9lla By HAMILTON AIDE. 
 
 Carr of Carrlyon. | Confidences. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, as. each. 
 
 By E. LESTER ARNOLD. 
 Para the Phoenician. 
 
 BY FRANK BARRETT. 
 
 Maid. Wife, or Widow? 
 Blind Fate. 
 Valerie s Fate. 
 
 By GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 Philistia. [ Babylon. 
 Strange Stories. 
 For Maimie's Sake. 
 In all Shades. 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 The Devil's Die. 
 The Tents of Shem. 
 The Great Taboo. 
 
 A Life Interest. 
 Mona's Choice. 
 By Woman's Wit. 
 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Blood Royal. [piece. 
 Ivan Greet's Master- 
 The Scallywag. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 At Market Value. 
 Under Sealed Orders, 
 
 Found Guilty. 
 A Recoiling Vengeance, 
 For Love and Honour. 
 John Ford, &c. 
 Woman of Iron Brace'tw 
 The Hardins; Scandal. 
 A Missing Witness. 
 
 Fettered for Life. 
 Little Lady Linton. 
 Between Life & Death. 
 Sin of Olga Zassoulich. 
 Folly Morrison. 
 Lieut. Barnabas. 
 Honest Davie. 
 A Prodigal's Progress. 
 
 By SHELSLEY BEAUCHAMP. 
 
 Grantley Grange. 
 
 By FREDERICK BOYLE. 
 
 Camp Notes. I Chronicles of Wo mant 
 
 Savage Lire. 1 Land. 
 
30 CHAtTO &. WiNDUS, PubiUhefS, tit M. Martin's LAM, London, W.fi. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 Ready 
 
 ly-Monoy Mortiboy 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema. 
 
 By Celia'a Arbour. 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 Ail Sorts and Condi- , Ths Bell of St. Paul's. 
 
 tions of Men. i Th* Holy Rose. 
 
 The Captains Room. Armorel of Lyonesse. 
 All in a Garden Fair. S.Katherine s by Tower 
 Dorothy Forster. Verbena Camellia Ste- 
 
 Uncle Jack. phanotis. 
 
 The World Went Very The Ivory Gate. 
 
 Well Then. The Rebel Queen. 
 
 Children of Gibeon. Beyond the Dreams of 
 
 Herr Paulus. Avarice. 
 
 For Faith and Freedom. The Rs^olt of Man. 
 TI Ci.ll Her Mine. In Deacon s Orders. 
 
 The Master Craftsman. I The City of Refuge. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE. 
 In the Miust of Life. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 Californian Stories. I Flip. I Maruja. 
 
 Gabriel Conroy. | A Phyllis of the_Sierras. 
 
 Luck of Roaring Camp. 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 Ward of Golden Gate. 
 
 The Martyrdom of Ma- 
 deline. 
 
 The New Abelard. 
 The Heir of Linn*. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Rachel Dene. | Matt. 
 Lady Kilpatrick. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword. 
 A Child of Nature. 
 God and the Man. 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Master of the Mine, 
 Annan Water. 
 
 By BUCHANAN and MURRAY. 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 The Shadow 01 a Crime. I The Deemster. 
 A Son of Bagar. | 
 
 By Commander CAMERON. 
 The Cruise of the 'Black Prince.' 
 
 By HAYDEN CARRUTH. 
 The Adventures of Jones. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE. 
 For the Love of a Lass. 
 
 By Airs. ARCHER CLIVE. 
 
 Paul Ferroll. 
 
 Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Cure of Souls. | The Red Sultan. 
 By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
 The Bar Sinister. 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 Sweet and Twenty. 
 The Village Comedy. 
 You Play me False. 
 Blacksmith and Scholar 
 Frances. 
 
 Eweet Anne Page. 
 Transmigration. 
 Fiora Midnight to Mid 
 
 night. 
 A Fight with Fortune. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Arroadale. | AfterDark 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antouina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 
 Miss or Mrs. ? 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The Law and the Lady 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN 
 
 Every Inch a SoUU 
 
 My Miscellanies. 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 ' I Say No ! ' 
 The Evil Genius. 
 Little Novels. 
 Legacy of Cain. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 
 The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER 
 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 Diana Harrington. 
 
 To Let.' 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness. 
 
 A Third Person. 
 
 By W. 
 Hearts of Gold. 
 
 Village Tales and Jungle 
 
 Tragedies. 
 Two Masters. 
 Mr. Jervis. 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single 7 
 Interference. 
 CYPLES. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist: or, 1'ort Salvation. 
 
 By ERASMUS DAWSON. 
 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLE. 
 A Castle in Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe s Lovers. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 The Man-Hunter. 
 Tracked and Taken. 
 Caught at Last 1 
 Wanted ! 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 
 Duncan ? 
 
 I Man irom Manchester. 
 A Detective's Triumphs 
 
 In the Grip of the Law. 
 From Information Re- 
 ceived. 
 
 TracKed to Doom. 
 Link by Link 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Dark Deeds. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
 The Mystery of Jamaica Terrace. 
 The Chronicles of Michael Danevitcb.. 
 
 By Airs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell. 
 
 By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. 
 Felicia. | Kitty. 
 
 By EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 Rosy. 
 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 The New Mistress. I The Ti?er Lilv. 
 
 Witness to the Ded. | The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 Bella Donna. Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 
 Never Forgotten. Seventy - five Brooke 
 
 Polly. Street. 
 
 Fatal Zero. The Lady of Brantome. 
 
 By P. FITZGERALD and others. 
 Strange Secrets. 
 
 By ALBANY DE FONBLANQUE. 
 Filthy Lucre. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 King or Knave? 
 Romances of the Law. 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 A Dog and his Shadow. 
 
 Olympia. 
 One by One. 
 A Real Queen. 
 Queen Ccphetna. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. ! The Lawton Girl. 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 A Strange Manuscript. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. In Honour Bound. 
 
 Fancy Free. ! Flower of the Forest. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. ! The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 What will World Say ? The Golden Shaft. 
 In Love and War. , Of High Degree. 
 
 For the King. i By Mead and Stream 
 
 In Pastures Green. Loving a Dream. 
 
 Queen of the Meadow. | A Hard Knot. 
 A Heart's Problem. I Heart's Delight. 
 The Dead Heart. ' Blood Money. 
 
 By WILLIAM GILBERT. 
 Dr. Austin's Guests. I The Wizard of 
 James Duke. Mountain 
 
 By ERN5ST GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Fosgicker. 
 
 A Fair Csloniat. i 
 
 tu 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in 5t. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 31 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 
 Red Spider. I Eve. 
 
 By HENRY GREVILLE. 
 
 A Noble Woman. | Nikanor. 
 
 By CECIL GRIFFITH. 
 
 Corinthia Karazion. 
 
 By SYDNEY GRUNDY. 
 
 The Days of his Vanity. 
 
 By JOHN HABBERT.ON. 
 
 Brueton's Bayou. | Country Luck. 
 
 By ANDREW HALLIDAY. 
 
 Every-day Paper*. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Garth. 
 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 
 Fortune s Fool. 
 
 Miss Cadogna. 
 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 
 Dust. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 Love or a Name. 
 David Poindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. 
 The Spectre of the 
 
 Camera. 
 
 By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 Rujub the Juggler. 
 
 By HENRY HERMAN. 
 A Leading Lady. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 Treason Felony. 
 
 By Mrs. CASHEL HOEY. 
 The Lover's Creed. 
 
 By Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER. 
 The House of Raby. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 In Durance Vile. 
 Maryel. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flle'ht. 
 The Ked-Hoase Mystery 
 
 The Three Graces 
 
 A Mental Struggle. Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 
 A Modern Circe. Lady Patty. 
 
 April's Lady. Nora Creina. 
 
 Pater's Wife. Professor's Experiment. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 Thornicroft's Model. I Self-Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | The Leaden Casket. 
 
 By WM. JAMESON. 
 My Dead Sett. 
 
 By HARRIETT JAY. 
 The Dark Colleen. | Queen of Connaught. 
 
 By MARK KERSHAW. 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING. 
 A Drawn Game. Passion s Slave. 
 
 The Wearing of the Bell Barry. 
 Green.' 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 Madame Sans-Gen,e. 
 
 By JOHN LEYS. 
 
 The Lindsays. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball 
 
 The World Well Lost. 
 
 Under which Loid ? 
 
 Paston Carew. 
 
 ' My Love I ' 
 
 Ion a. 
 
 With * Silken Thread. 
 
 BV HENRY W. LUCY. 
 Oideoa Fleyce. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Evertoa. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain: 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 My Enemy's Daughter 
 A ?&ir Saxon. 
 Linley Rochford. 
 MU Miaiatliropa. 
 
 Donna.Quixo.te. 
 Maid of Athens. 
 Tha Comet of a Season. 
 The Dictator. 
 Red Diamond*. 
 
 By HUGH MACCOLL. 
 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow. 
 
 By AGNE5 MACDONELL. 
 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 
 By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. 
 
 The Evil Eye. j Lost Rose. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 
 The New Republic. 
 
 By BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. 
 
 Touch and Go. | Mr. Dorillion. 
 
 By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Stories Weird and Won- I From the Bosom of the 
 
 derful. Deep 
 
 The Dead Man's Secret. I 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A Model Father. 
 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 
 Old Blazer s Hero. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 
 A Life s Atonement. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person SinguUr. 
 Bab Martin's Little Girl. 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o' Nails 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. I The Bishops' Bible 
 Paul Jones's Alias. | . 
 
 By HENRY MURRAY. 
 
 A Game of Bluff. | A Song of Sixpence. 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 1 Bail Up ! ' | Dr.Bernard St. Vincent. 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. [ Billy Ballw 
 
 By ALICE O'HANLON. 
 The Unforeseen. | Chance ? or Fate ? 
 
 By GEORGES OHNET. 
 Dr. Rameau. j A Weird Gift. 
 
 A Last Love. 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 
 Whiteladies. I The Greatest Heiress in 
 
 The Primrose Path. | England. 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 AVi 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. 
 . Strathmore. 
 I Chandos. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Cecil Castlernaine sGage 
 
 Tricotrin. 
 
 Puck. 
 
 Folle Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flandors. 
 
 Pascarel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxina. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Two Lit. Wooden Shoei. 
 
 Moths. 
 
 Bimbi. 
 
 illage Comrauna. 
 Wanda 
 
 Othmar 
 
 Frescoes. 
 
 In Maremma. 
 
 Guilderoy. 
 
 Ruffino. 
 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Ouida's Wisdom, Wit. 
 
 and Pathos. 
 By MARGARET AGNES PAUL. 
 Gentle and Simple, , s . 
 
 By Mrs; CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
 The Romance of a Station. - 
 The Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 Ou^awrind Lawmaker. ] Mrs. Tregajkisg. 
 
32 CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 
 Valenti**. I Mrs. Lancaster sRival. 
 
 The Foreigners. | Gerald. 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Bentinck's Tutor. 
 
 Murphy's Master, 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 Cecil's Tryst. 
 
 The Ciyffards of Clyffe 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. 
 
 Walter's Word. 
 
 Halves. 
 
 Fallen Fortune*. 
 
 Humorous Stories, 
 
 200 Reward. 
 
 A Marine Residence. 
 
 Mirk Abbey 
 
 By Proxy. 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 
 High Spirits. 
 
 Carlyon's Year. 
 
 From Exile. 
 
 For Cash Only. 
 
 Kit. 
 
 The Canon's Ward. 
 
 The Talk of the Town. 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 A Perfect Treasure. 
 What He Cost Her. 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 Glow-worm Tales. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. 
 A Woman's Vengeance. 
 The Family Scapegrace. 
 Gwendoline s Harvest. 
 Like Father, Like Sou. 
 Married Beneath Him. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. 
 Less Black than We re 
 
 Painted. 
 
 Some Private Views. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 
 bridge. 
 
 The Word and the Will. 
 A Prince of the Blood. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 It is Never Too Late to 
 
 Mend. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Put Yourself in His 
 
 Place 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Cloister and the 
 
 Hearth. 
 The Course of True 
 
 Love. 
 The Jilt. 
 The Autobiography of 
 
 a Thief. 
 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 
 Foul Play. 
 
 The Wandering Heir. 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Singleheart and Double- 
 face 
 
 Good Stories of Man and 
 other Animals. 
 
 Peg Woffington. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 
 A Simpleton. 
 
 Readiana. 
 
 A Woman Hater. 
 
 By Airs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 
 Weird Stories 
 Fairy Water. 
 Her Mother's Darling. 
 The Prince of Wales s 
 Garden Party. 
 
 The Uninhabited House. 
 The Mystery in Palace 
 
 Gardens. 
 
 The Nun's Curae. 
 Idle Tales. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 
 Barbara Dering. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 
 Women are Strange. I The Woman in the Dark 
 The Hands of Justice. | 
 
 By JAMES RUNCIMAN. 
 
 Schools and Scholars. 
 
 Grate Balmaign s Sweetheart. 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 Round the Galley Fire. I An Ocean Tragedy. 
 Ou the Fo'k sle Head. I My Shipmate Louise. 
 In the Middle Watch. Aloue on Wide Wide Sea. 
 A Voyage to the Cape. Good Ship ' Mohock.' 
 A Book for the Hain- | The Phantom Death. 
 
 mosk. Is He the Man? 
 
 The Mystery of the | Ksa-t of Oak. 
 
 ' Oceau Star.' j The Convict Ship. 
 
 The Romance of Jenny ! The Tale of the Ten. 
 
 Harlowe. ! The Laat Entry. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 A Country Sweetheart. 
 
 By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 
 Gaslight and Davlight. 
 
 By GEORG'E R. SIMS. 
 
 The Ring o Bells. 
 Mary Jane 'a. Memoirs. 
 Mary Jane Marrie,d. 
 Talea of. To-day. 
 Dramas of Lit 8.^ 
 Tinkletop's CrU4o. 
 Ky Two WivBS. 
 
 Zeph. 
 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 Scenes from the Show. 
 The 10 Commandments. 
 Da,goBet Abroad. 
 
 By ARTHUR SKETCHLEY. 
 
 A Match in the Dark. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. I The Plunger. 
 Beatrice and Benedick. Long Odds. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. | 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron 
 
 Dyke. 
 
 The Golden Hoop. 
 Hoodwinked. 
 By Devious Ways. 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 Back to Life. 
 
 The LoudwaterTragedy. 
 Burgo s Romance. 
 Quittance in Full. 
 A Husband from the Sea 
 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 
 In the Face of theWorld. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. 
 The Junior Dean, 
 Master of St.Beuedict's 
 To His Own Master. 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 Cressida. | The Violin-Player. 
 
 By WALTER THORNBURY, 
 Tales for the Marines. | Old Stories Retold. 
 
 By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 By F. ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 
 
 Like Ships upon the I Anne Furness. 
 Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 Frau Frohmann. 
 Marion Fay. 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 John Caldigate. 
 The Way We Live Now. 
 
 The Land-Leaguers. 
 The American Senator. 
 Mr. Scarborough/a 
 
 Family. 
 GoldenLion of Granpert 
 
 By J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 Farnell's Folly. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 Stories from Foreign Nove.ists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Prince and the 
 
 Pauper. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 The 1,000,000 Bank. 
 
 Note. 
 
 A Pleasure Trip on the 
 
 Continent. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 MarkTwain s Sketches. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 The Bride s Pass. 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 St. Mungo's City. 
 
 go' 
 
 Lady Bell. 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 The Huguenot Family 
 The Blackball Ghosts. 
 What SheCaineThrouph. 
 Beauty and the Beast, 
 Citoyenne Jaqueline. 
 Disappeared. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 The Queen against Owen. | Prince of Balkistaa. 
 
 ' God Save the Queen ! ' 
 By AARON WATSON and LILLIAS 
 
 WASSERMANN. 
 The Marquis of Carabas. 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 Trust-Money. 
 
 By Mrs. F. H. WILLIAMSON. 
 A Child Widow. 
 
 By J. S. WINTER. 
 Cavalry Lile. | Regimental Legend*. 
 
 By H. F. WOOD. 
 
 The Passenger from -Scotland .Yard. 
 The, Englishman of the Rue Cam. 
 
 By CEL1A PARKED WOOLLEY. 
 Rachel Armstrong ; tor, Love and Theology. 
 
 C'y EDMUND Y*TES. 
 The FtfHorn Hort. | Castaway. 
 
 
 V8WT9R& QHKAT SAFFRON HILL, B.C. 
 
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