lad the first minute I saw it."

He shook his head. "It is an ill fate to have the eyes of Alessandro,"
he said. "They look ever on woe;" and he laid the baby back on Ramona's
breast, and stood gazing sadly at her.

"Dear Alessandro," said Ramona, "it is a sin to always mourn. Father
Salvierderra said if we repined under our crosses, then a heavier cross
would be laid on us. Worse things would come."

"Yes," he said. "That is true. Worse things will come." And he walked
away, with his head sunk deep on his breast.

XXIV

THERE was no real healing for Alessandro. His hurts had gone too deep.
His passionate heart, ever secretly brooding on the wrongs he had borne,
the hopeless outlook for his people in the future, and most of all on
the probable destitution and suffering in store for Ramona, consumed
itself as by hidden fires. Speech, complaint, active antagonism, might
have saved him; but all these were foreign to his self-contained,
reticent, repressed nature. Slowly, so slowly that Ramona could not tell
on what hour or what day her terrible fears first changed to an even
more terrible certainty, his brain gave way, and the thing, in dread
of which he had cried out the morning they left San Pasquale, came upon
him. Strangely enough, and mercifully, now that it had really come,
he did not know it. He knew that he suddenly came to his consciousness
sometimes, and discovered himself in strange and unexplained situations;
had no recollection of what had happened for an interval of time, longer
or shorter. But he thought it was only a sort of sickness; he did not
know that during those intervals his acts were the acts of a madman;
never violent, aggressive, or harmful to any one; never destructive.
It was piteous to see how in these intervals his delusions were always
shaped by the bitterest experiences of his life. Sometimes he fancied
that the Americans were pursuing him, or that they were carrying off
Ramona, and he was pursuing them. At such times he would run with maniac
swiftness for hours, till he fell exhausted on the ground, and slowly
regained true consciousness by exhaustion. At other times he believed
he owned vast flocks and herds; would enter any enclosure he saw, where
there were sheep or cattle, go about among them, speaking of them to
passers-by as his own. Sometimes he would try to drive them away; but on
being remonstrated with, would bewilderedly give up the attempt. Once he
suddenly found hims