r the spring rains; but when he named
Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with
his heel on the floor.

Odo glanced from one to the other. "She's dead, then?" he cried.

Filomena opened deprecating palms. "Can one tell, excellency? It may be
she is off with the gypsies."

"The gypsies? How long since?"

"Giannozzo," cried his mother, as he stood glowering, "go see that the
stable is locked and his excellency's horses bedded down." He slunk out
and she began to gather up the remains of Odo's meagre supper.

"But you must remember when this happened."

"Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our
hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one
day she was here, the next she was gone--clean gone, as a nut drops from
the tree--and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her!
Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The
next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes."

Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the
girl must have died--of neglect perhaps, or ill usage--and that they
feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed
to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.

He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in
the bailiff's parlour, and was afoot again with the first light.
Stepping out into the farm-yard he looked abroad over the flat grey face
of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the
pollarded mulberry orchards; but these, with the clustered hovels of the
village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and
woodland. The scene symbolised fitly enough of social conditions of the
country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of
arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights
that hemmed them in on every side.

Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled
over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken plough-share. Twilight held
the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant
of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead
faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost
in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams
they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across
the torrent. It was