h an inviting shelter from the heat of the coming day?
She could see the opening into the hovel now, and the cry was darting
through her like a pain. The next moment her foot was within the
doorway, but the sight she beheld in the sombre light arrested her with
a shock of awe and horror. On the straw, with which the floor was
scattered, lay three dead bodies, one of a tall man, one of a girl about
eight years old, and one of a young woman whose long black hair was
being clutched and pulled by a living child--the child that was sending
forth the piercing cry. Romola's experience in the haunts of death and
disease made thought and action prompt: she lifted the little living
child, and in trying to soothe it on her bosom, still bent to look at
the bodies and see if they were really dead. The strongly marked type
of race in their features, and their peculiar garb, made her conjecture
that they were Spanish or Portuguese Jews, who had perhaps been put
ashore and abandoned there by rapacious sailors, to whom their property
remained as a prey. Such things were happening continually to Jews
compelled to abandon their homes by the Inquisition: the cruelty of
greed thrust them from the sea, and the cruelty of superstition thrust
them back to it.

"But, surely," thought Romola, "I shall find some woman in the village
whose mother's heart will not let her refuse to tend this helpless
child--if the real mother is indeed dead."

This doubt remained, because while the man and girl looked emaciated and
also showed signs of having been long dead, the woman seemed to have
been hardier, and had not quite lost the robustness of her form.
Romola, kneeling, was about to lay her hand on the heart; but as she
lifted the piece of yellow woollen drapery that lay across the bosom,
she saw the purple spots which marked the familiar pestilence. Then it
struck her that if the villagers knew of this, she might have more
difficulty than she had expected in getting help from them; they would
perhaps shrink from her with that child in her arms. But she had money
to offer them, and they would not refuse to give her some goat's milk in
exchange for it.

She set out at once towards the village, her mind filled now with the
effort to soothe the little dark creature, and with wondering how she
should win some woman to be good to it. She could not help hoping a
little in a certain awe she had observed herself to inspire, when she
appeared, unknown