Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/172

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
164
IN MAREMMA.

He had become half madman, half brute, the dullest, most savage, most hopeless unit of all that hopeless world to which he now belonged. But for that one moment humanity stirred in him—he was a man once more.

He remembered the little child that he had left under the stone-pines on the crags above the Fiora torrents.

He sprang forward, he cried out, the whip of the overseer lashed him back into the ranks, the guards hustled him with oaths into silence.

Musa passed on, going she knew not where.

Daniello Villamagna looked hard at her.

'You did not turn your face from that hound,' he said jealously.

'He is a hound chained, and so to be pitied,' she answered him.

'He was the robber of Santa Fiora.'

'I know,'

Her face was sad and anxious; she was thinking of him who had been sent to her by Saturnino.

Out in the deeper water beyond the Argentaro rocks the Sicilian brig was at anchor; a trim vessel still, though she had