ds. The fountain had but two little streams of water, and it took a
long time to fill a cask. At the sound of the carriage wheels, most of
the girls turned slowly round to see the sight, their empty barrels
balanced cross-wise on their heads. They did not even lift a hand to
steady their burdens as they changed their positions. They stared
steadily. Veronica looked to the right and left and tried to smile, to
show that she was pleased. But the visible, jagged edges of their
outward misery cut cruelly at her heart, for they were her people;
nominally, by old feudal right, they were all her people, and her
father's father had held right of justice and of life and death over
them all; and in actual fact they were almost all her people, since they
lived in her houses, worked on her lands, and ate a portion of her
bread, though it was such a very little one as could barely keep them
alive.

She tried to smile, and some of the girls held out their fingers towards
her and then kissed them, as though they had touched her dress, as the
old woman had done. But the men stared stolidly from under the low brims
of their battered hats. Only the fever-struck shepherd smiled in a
sickly way and lost his Sphinx-like look all at once.

A man in a white shirt came forward, leading Veronica's mare, all
saddled for her to mount.

"The carriage cannot go through the streets," said Don Teodoro, in
explanation. "They are too narrow and too rough."

"No," answered Veronica, as she stepped from the carriage upon the
muddy stones. "I will walk. If the streets are good enough for my
people, they are good enough for me."

Even to the good priest this seemed a little exaggeration on her part.
But she had seen much that day of which she had never dreamed, and in
her generous heart there was a sort of fierce wrath against so much
misery, with a strong impulse to share it or cure it, to face the devil
on his own ground, and beat him to death, hand to hand. It was perhaps
foolish of her to walk to her own gate, but there was nothing to be
ashamed of in the feeling which prompted her to do it.

Don Teodoro walked beside her on the left, and Elettra pressed close to
her on the right, as they threaded the foul black lanes towards the
castle. The moment she had left the carriage, men and women and children
had seized eagerly upon her belongings, to carry the bags and rugs and
little packages, and now they followed her in a compact crowd, all
talking