e had no
head. They had an inquest; he was buried in a ditch; then in the night
he was dug up again. His flesh was all mangled and like jelly, but he
still had his boots on. The judge said, 'See, they are better than
mine!' So he must have been a rich man. And it turned out that he was a
dealer in cattle. They had killed him and chopped off his head, and had
thrown him into the Tronto."...

She continued to talk in her shrill voice, from time to time sucking in
the superfluous saliva with a slight hissing sound.

"And the mother? When is the mother coming?"

At that name there arose exclamations of compassion from all the women
who had gathered.

"The mother! There comes the mother, now!"

And all of them turned around, fancying that they saw her in the far
distance, along the burning strand. Some of the women could give
particulars about her. Her name was Riccangela; she was a widow with
seven children. She had placed this one in a farmer's family, so that he
might tend the sheep, and gain a morsel of bread.

One woman said, gazing down at the corpse, "Who knows how much pains the
mother has taken in raising him!" Another said, "To keep the children
from going hungry she has even had to ask charity."

Another told how, only a few months before, the unfortunate child had
come very near strangling to death in a courtyard in a pool of water
barely six inches deep. All the women repeated, "It was his destiny. He
was bound to die that way."

And the suspense of waiting rendered them restless, anxious. "The
mother! There comes the mother now!"

Feeling himself grow sick at heart, Giorgio exclaimed, "Can't you take
him into the shade, or into a house, so that the mother will not see him
here naked on the stones, under a sun like this?"

Stubbornly the man on guard objected:--"He is not to be touched. He is
not to be moved--until the inquest is held."

The bystanders gazed in surprise at the stranger,--Candia's stranger.
Their number was augmenting. A few occupied the embankment shaded with
acacias; others crowned the promontory rising abruptly from the rocks.
Here and there, on the monstrous bowlders, a tiny boat lay sparkling
like gold at the foot of the detached crag, so lofty that it gave the
effect of the ruins of some Cyclopean tower, confronting the immensity
of the sea.

All at once, from above on the height, a voice announced, "There she
is."

Other voices followed:--"The mother! The mother!"

All t