t it, but unconsciously the fibres of his
heart had twisted themselves round all the smallest and the biggest
things of his home as the tendrils of a strong ivy bush fasten round a
great tower and the little stones alike.

The wooden settle where his mother had sat; the shrine in the house
wall; the copper vessels that had glowed in the wood-fuel light when a
large family had gathered there about the hearth; the stone well under
the walnut-tree where dead Dina had often stayed to smile on him; the
cypress-wood presses where Pippa had kept her feast-day finery and her
pearls; the old vast sweet-smelling sheds and stables where he had
threshed and hewn and yoked his oxen thirty years if one: all these
things, and a hundred like them, were dear to him with all the memories
of his entire life; and away from them he could know no peace.

He was going away into a great darkness. He had nothing to guide him.
The iron of a wasted love, of a useless sacrifice, was in his heart. His
instinct drove him where there was peril for Pippa's son--that was all.

If this woman took the lad away from him, where was there any mercy or
justice, earthly or divine? That was all he asked himself, blindly and
stupidly; as the oxen seem to ask it with their mild, sad eyes as they
strain under the yoke and goad, suffering and not knowing why they
suffer.

Nothing was clear to Bruno.

Only life had taught him that Love is the brother of Death.

One thing and another had come between him and the lad he cherished. The
dreams of the child, the desires of the youth, the powers of art, the
passion of genius, one by one had come in between him and loosened his
hold, and made him stand aloof as a stranger. But Love he had dreaded
most of all; Love which slays with one glance dreams and art and genius,
and lays them dead as rootless weeds that rot in burning suns.

Now Love had come.

He worked all day, holding the sickness of fear off him as best he
could, for he was a brave man;--only he had wrestled with fate so long,
and it seemed always to beat him, and almost he grew tired.

He cut a week's fodder for the beasts, and left all things in their
places, and then, as the day darkened, prepared to go.

Tinello and Pastore lowed at him, thrusting their broad white foreheads
and soft noses over their stable door.

He turned and stroked them in farewell.

"Poor beasts!" he muttered; "shall I never muzzle and yoke you ever
again?"

His throat g