She saw scarce any one; the scattered folk of the hills were most of them in hiding, stricken with terror at the seizure of Saturnino, with whom they were all in habits of greater or lesser complicity.
One old man was met with, very old and bent. He was looking for simples in the many herbs that clothed the hillside. He told her at last where the Rocca del Giulio was, pointing, as he spoke, to a spot far away amidst the snow that had fallen on the heights.
'That was Saturnino's nest,' he said. 'Poor soul! They have taken him, and killed most of his men. He never did me any harm.'
He was very old, and not curious; being so, he let her go on upward without question.
Here the snow had fallen heavily. It had ceased to fall now, but there was a sharp frost on these heights, and the ground was white and hard. The stunted trees looked black. It was very desolate. The clouds were low upon the mountain side, and their mists were all around her. She could see the white crests of the Labbro and the Santa Fiora loom close on her, it seemed, in the steel-hued fog. She had never been so high
