sent over the sea to command them.

"Now we will carry down the milk," said Romola, "and see if any one
wants it."

So they went all together down the slope, and that morning the sufferers
saw help come to them in their despair. There were hardly more than a
score alive in the whole valley; but all of these were comforted, most
were saved, and the dead were buried.

In this way days, weeks, and months passed with Romola till the men were
digging and sowing again, till the women smiled at her as they carried
their great vases on their heads to the well, and the Hebrew baby was a
tottering tumbling Christian, Benedetto by name, having been baptised in
the church on the mountain-side. But by that time she herself was
suffering from the fatigue and languor that must come after a continuous
strain on mind and body. She had taken for her dwelling one of the
houses abandoned by their owners, standing a little aloof from the
village street; and here on a thick heap of clean straw--a delicious bed
for those who do not dream of down--she felt glad to lie still through
most of the daylight hours, taken care of along with the little
Benedetto by a woman whom the pestilence had widowed.

Every day the Padre and Jacopo and the small flock of surviving
villagers paid their visit to this cottage to see the blessed Lady, and
to bring her of their best as an offering--honey, fresh cakes, eggs, and
polenta. It was a sight they could none of them forget, a sight they
all told of in their old age--how the sweet and sainted lady with her
fair face, her golden hair, and her brown eyes that had a blessing in
them, lay weary with her labours after she had been sent over the sea to
help them in their extremity, and how the queer little black Benedetto
used to crawl about the straw by her side and want everything that was
brought to her, and she always gave him a bit of what she took, and told
them if they loved her they must be good to Benedetto.

Many legends were afterwards told in that valley about the blessed Lady
who came over the sea, but they were legends by which all who heard
might know that in times gone by a woman had done beautiful loving deeds
there, rescuing those who were ready to perish.

CHAPTER SIXTY NINE.

HOMEWARD.

In those silent wintry hours when Romola lay resting from her weariness,
her mind, travelling back over the past, and gazing across the undefined
distance of the future, saw all objects from a new