, surrounded by their own people, and wholly
devoted to each other. But though much of the day was passed in that
unceasing conversation and exchange of ideas which seem to belong
exclusively to happily-wedded man and wife, the hours were not wholly
idle. Daily the two mounted their horses and rode along the level stretch
towards Aquaviva till they came to the turning from which Corona had
first caught sight of Saracinesca. Here a broad road was already broken
out; the construction was so far advanced that two miles at least were
already serviceable, the gentle grade winding backwards and forwards,
crossing and recrossing the old bridle-path as it descended to the valley
below; and now from the furthest point completed Corona could distinguish
in the dim distance the great square palace of Astrardente crowning the
hills above the town. Thither the two rode daily, pushing on the work,
consulting with the engineer they employed, and often looking forward
to the day when for the first time their carriage should roll smoothly
down from Saracinesca to Astrardente without making the vast detour which
the old road followed as it skirted the mountain. There was an
inexpressible pleasure in watching the growth of the work they had so
long contemplated, in speculating on the advantages they would obtain by
so uniting their respective villages, and in feeling that, being at last
one, they were working together for the good of their people. For the men
who did the work were without exception their own peasants, who were
unemployed during the winter time, and who, but for the timely occupation
provided for them, would have spent the cold months in that state of
half-starved torpor peculiar to the indigent agricultural labourer when
he has nothing to do--at that bitter season when father and mother and
shivering little ones watch wistfully the ever-dwindling sack of maize,
as day by day two or three handfuls are ground between the stones of the
hand-mill and kneaded into a thick unwholesome dough, the only food of
the poorer peasants in the winter. But now every man who could handle
pickaxe and bore, and sledge-hammer and spade, was out upon the road from
dawn to dark, and every Saturday night each man took home a silver scudo
in his pocket; and where people are sober and do not drink their wages, a
silver scudo goes a long way further than nothing. Yet many a lean and
swarthy fellow there would have felt that he was cheated if besides