winter that brought aliens to the land and death to the forest creatures.
Now she feared it with unceasing alarm. Any day the father of Zirlo might speak to a man from the mountains, or a shepherd with his travel-worn Lucchese sheep might pull the briony from the entrance-stairs, and oust her, and find the hunted fugitive, and claim the gold at Orbetello. Any day, any hour, she knew very well that this might betide them; and often all the night through she listened outside the tombs, her heart standing still with fear as the wild ducks flew by screaming hoarsely, or the greater owls beat the air with their broad wings, or the fox crept homeward through the rustling of the withered brake, a moorhen or a coot in his mouth.
The Church feasts of winter followed on one another.
Through the frosty air of the nights the bells of many a distant hamlet came sonorous though faint to her ears, ringing in the first masses of the morn. On such feasts she had been used to go up to the old dark church with Joconda and ask a blessing on the year; but it seemed to her now that she asked such blessing better, kneeling down where
