y dully; but in the solitary
places, where men brood alone, as Bruno did, they are heavy enough; all
the rest of the world might be dead and buried, the stillness is so
unbroken, the loneliness so great.

He got up and saw after his few sheep above amongst the pines; one or
two of them were near lambing; then he laboured on his garden mould
amongst the potato plants and cauliflowers, the raw mist in his lungs
and the sea-wind blowing. It had become very mild; the red rose on his
house-wall was in bud, and the violets were beginning to push from
underneath the moss; but the mornings were always very cold and damp.

An old man came across from Carmignano to beg a pumpkin-gourd or two; he
got a scanty living by rubbing them up and selling them to the fishermen
down on the Arno. Bruno gave them. He had known the old creature all his
life.

"You are dull here," said the old man, timidly; because every one was
more or less afraid of Bruno.

Bruno shrugged his shoulders and took up his spade again.

"Your boy does grand things, they say," said the old man; "but it would
be cheerfuller for you if he had taken to the soil."

Bruno went on digging.

"It is like a man I know," said the pumpkin-seller, thinking the sound
of his own voice must be a charity. "A man that helped to cast
church-bells. He cast bells all his life; he never did anything else at
all. 'It is brave work,' said he to me once, 'sweating in the furnace
there and making the metal into tuneful things to chime the praise of
all the saints and angels; but when you sweat and sweat and sweat, and
every bell you make just goes away and is swung up where you never see
or hear it ever again--that seems sad; my bells are all ringing in the
clouds, saving the people's souls, greeting Our Lady; but they are all
gone ever so far away from me. I only hear them ringing in my dreams.'
Now, I think the boy is like the bells--to you."

Bruno dug in the earth.

"The man was a fool," said he. "Who cared for his sweat or sorrow? It
was his work to melt the metal. That was all."

"Ay," said the pumpkin-seller, and shouldered the big, yellow, wrinkled
things that he had begged; "but never to hear the bells--that is sad
work."

Bruno smiled grimly.

"Sad! He could hear some of them as other people did, no doubt, ringing
far away against the skies while he was in the mud. That was all he
wanted; if he were wise, he did not even want so much as that.
Good-day."

It was