ong the acacia-flowers, and the green tree-frogs
shouting joyously above in the ilex-tops, and the lizards running in and
out of the china-rose hedges on the highways. Many people of Marca were
summoned as witnesses, and these went to the town in mule-carts or crazy
chaises, with the farm-horse put in the shafts, and grumbled because
they would lose their day's labor in their fields, and yet were
pleasurably excited at the idea of seeing Generosa in the prisoner's
dock, and being able themselves to tell all they knew, and a great deal
that they did not know.

Falko Melegari rode over at dawn by himself, and Gesualdo with his
housekeeper and sacristan, who were all summoned to give testimony,
went, as they had no choice but to do, by the diligence, which started
from Sant' Arturo, and rolled through the dusty roads, and over the
bridges, and past the wayside shrines and shops and forges, across the
country to the town.

The vicar never spoke throughout the four weary hours during which the
rickety and crowded vehicle, with its poor, starved, bruised beasts,
rumbled on its road through the lovely shadows and cool sunlight of the
early morning. He held his breviary in his hand for form's sake, and,
seeing him thus absorbed in holy meditation, as they thought, his
garrulous neighbors did not disturb him, but chattered among themselves,
filling the honeysuckle-scented air with the odors of garlic and wine
and coarse tobacco.

Candida glanced at him anxiously from time to time, haunted by she could
not have said what,--a vague presentiment of ill. His face looked very
strange, she thought, and his closely-locked lips were white as the lips
of a corpse. When the diligence was driven over the stones of the town,
all the passengers by it descended at the first wine-house which they
saw on the piazza, to eat and drink; but he, with never a word, motioned
his housekeeper aside when she would have pressed food on him, and went
into the great church of the place to pray alone.

The town was hot and dusty and sparsely peopled. It had brown walls and
large brick palaces untenanted, and ancient towers, also of brick,
pointing high to heaven. It was a place dear to the memory of lovers of
art for the sake of some fine paintings of the Sienese school which hung
in its churches, and was occasionally visited by strangers for sake of
these; but for the most part it was utterly forgotten by the world; and
its bridge of many arches, said