Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/31

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IN MAREMMA.
19

Maremma, but in her youth she had comfrom the Alpine ranges of Savoy.

She looked at Saturnino as she stood on the edge of the crowd, and said, 'Ay, ay, it is he!'

'You have seen him before, mother?' said an eager youth, who had come from the Apennines to go and make charcoal in the Ciminian woods away yonder to the south-east.

'Ay, ay, she said briefly, and said no more, being a woman of few words, who, though she had dwelt here fifty years, was always called the woman of Savoy, and deemed an alien and a stranger.

She was standing near the troop of horsemen, clad in a russet gown, with a yellow handkerchief tied about her white hair. The brigand was sitting in his saddle, sullen, sombre, ashamed: ashamed to be brought thus amidst the people, like a netted calf, like a yoked bull.

The old woman with the keen blue eyes, and the face that had once been fair, looked with the rest, and though she was an honest woman, law-abiding, God-fearing, her heart also was heavy for this hawk of the hills that for ever was caged.