and unexpected, in her religious dress. As she passed
across a breadth of cultivated ground, she noticed, with wonder, that
little patches of corn mingled with the other crops had been left to
over-ripeness untouched by the sickle, and that golden apples and dark
figs lay rotting on the weedy earth. There were grassy spaces within
sight, but no cow, or sheep, or goat. The stillness began to have
something fearful in it to Romola; she hurried along towards the
thickest cluster of houses, where there would be the most life to appeal
to on behalf of the helpless life she carried in her arms. But she had
picked up two figs, and bit little pieces from the sweet pulp to still
the child with.

She entered between two lines of dwellings. It was time that villagers
should have been stirring long ago, but not a soul was in sight. The
air was becoming more and more oppressive, laden, it seemed, with some
horrible impurity. There was a door open; she looked in, and saw grim
emptiness. Another open door; and through that she saw a man lying dead
with all his garments on, his head lying athwart a spade handle, and an
earthenware cruse in his hand, as if he had fallen suddenly.

Romola felt horror taking possession of her. Was she in a village of
the unburied dead? She wanted to listen if there were any faint sound,
but the child cried out afresh when she ceased to feed it, and the cry
filled her ears. At last she saw a figure crawling slowly out of a
house, and soon sinking back in a sitting posture against the wall. She
hastened towards the figure; it was a young woman in fevered anguish,
and she, too, held a pitcher in her hand. As Romola approached her she
did not start; the one need was too absorbing for any other idea to
impress itself on her.

"Water! get me water!" she said, with a moaning utterance.

Romola stooped to take the pitcher, and said gently in her ear, "You
shall have water; can you point towards the well?"

The hand was lifted towards the more distant end of the little street,
and Romola set off at once with as much speed as she could use under the
difficulty of carrying the pitcher as well as feeding the child. But
the little one was getting more content as the morsels of sweet pulp
were repeated, and ceased to distress her with its cry, so that she
could give a less distracted attention to the objects around her.

The well lay twenty yards or more beyond the end of the street, and as
Romola w