he irate woman with the hooked nose interrupted her:--"It was not
you who drowned him; it was Destiny. It was not you who took him to the
slaughter. You had placed him in the midst of bread." And making a
gesture toward the hill where the house stood which had sheltered the
lad, she added, "They kept him there, like a pink at the ear."

The mother continued:--"O my son, who was it sent you; who was it sent
you here, to drown?"

And the irate woman:--"Who was it sent him? It was our Lord. He said to
him, 'Go into the water and end yourself.'"

As Giorgio was affirming in a low tone to one of the bystanders that if
succored in time the child might have been saved, and that they had
killed him by turning him upside down and holding him suspended by the
feet, he felt the gaze of the mother fixed upon him. "Can't you do
something for him, sir?" she prayed. "Can't you do something for him?"

And she prayed:--"O Madonna of the Miracles, work a miracle for him!"

Touching the head of the dead boy, she repeated:--"My son! my son! my
son! arise and walk!"

On his knees in front of her was the brother of the dead boy; he was
sobbing, but without grief, and from time to time he glanced around with
a face that suddenly grew indifferent. Another brother, the oldest one,
remained at a little distance, seated in the shade of a bowlder; and he
was making a great show of grief, hiding his face in his hands. The
women, striving to console the mother, were bending over her with
gestures of compassion, and accompanying her monody with an
occasional lament.

And she sang on:--"Why have I sent you forth from my house? Why have I
sent you to your death? I have done everything to keep my children from
hunger; everything, everything, except to be a woman with a price. And
for a morsel of bread I have lost you! This was the way you were
to die!"

Thereupon the woman with the hawk nose raised her petticoats in an
impetus of wrath, entered the water up to her knees, and cried:--"Look!
He came only to here. Look! The water is like oil. It is a sign that he
was bound to die that way."

With two strides she regained the shore. "Look!" she repeated, pointing
to the deep imprint in the sand made by the man who recovered the
body. "Look!"

The mother looked in a dull way; but it seemed as if she neither saw nor
comprehended. After her first wild outbursts of grief, there came over
her brief pauses, amounting to an obscurement of consciousness