ore! They have carried the poor signore up."

The second light moved waveringly back towards the first.

"They are carrying him into the house, Signor Dottore. Madonna! And all
this to happen in the night!"

The doctor nodded without speaking. He was watching the lights up there
in that lonely place. He was not a man of strong imagination, and was
accustomed to look on misery, the misery of the poor. But to-night he
felt a certain solemnity descend upon him as he rode by these dark
by-paths up into the bosom of the hills. Perhaps part of this feeling
came from the fact that his mission had to do with strangers, with rich
people from a distant country who had come to his island for pleasure,
and who were now suddenly involved in tragedy in the midst of their
amusement. But also he had a certain sense of personal sympathy. He had
known Hermione on her former visit to Sicily and had liked her; and
though this time he had seen scarcely anything of her he had seen enough
to be aware that she was very happy with her young husband. Maurice, too,
he had seen, full of the joy of youth and of bounding health. And now all
that was put out, if Giuseppe's account were true. It was a pity, a sad
pity.

The donkey crossed the mouth of the ravine, and picked its way upward
carefully amid the loose stones. In the ravine a little owl hooted twice.

"Giuseppe!" said the doctor.

"Signore?"

"The signora has been away, hasn't she?"

"Si signore. In Africa."

"Nursing that sick stranger. And now directly she comes back here's this
happening to her! Per Dio!"

He shook his head.

"Somebody must have looked on the povera signora with the evil-eye,
Signor Dottore."

Giuseppe crossed himself.

"It seems so," the doctor replied, gravely.

He was almost as superstitious as the contadini among whom he labored.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore!"

The doctor looked up. At the arch stood a figure holding a little lamp.
Almost immediately, two more figures appeared behind it.

"Il dottore! Ecco il dottore!"

There was a murmur of voices in the dark. As the donkey came up the
excited fishermen crowded round, all speaking at once.

"He is dead, Signor Dottore. The povero signore is dead!"

"Let the Signor Dottore come to him, Beppe! What do you know? Let the--"

"Sure enough he is dead! Why, he must have been in the water a good hour.
He is all swollen with the water and--"

"It is his head, Signor Dottore! If it had not been for his c