suspiciously. He could not be persuaded that the words that were said either by him or by Don Alfonso could possibly be repeated on paper, and still more—those things that had not proceeded from their mouths, and he ended with that shrewd smile.

Every new idea which knocked for entrance at his head made him suspicious; he seemed to try it with the wild diffidence of his vajata. But he expressed no wonder at anything in the world; he might have been told that in cities horses rode in carriages,—he would have kept on that mask of oriental indifference which is the dignity of a Sicilian peasant. It would seem as if he intrenched himself instinctively in his ignorance, as if it were the force of poverty. Every time that he remained short of arguments he would repeat,—

"I do not know at all. I am poor," with that obstinate smile that was intended to be shrewd.

He had asked his friend Alfonso to write for him the name of Mara on a piece of paper that he had found somewhere, because it was his habit to pick up whatever he saw lying about and put into his packet of odds and ends. One day, after being rather quiet and looking round anxiously, he said, very gravely,—

"I'm in love with some one."

Alfonso, though he knew how to read, opened his eyes in astonishment.

"Yes," continued Jeli, "massaro Agrippino's daughter Mara, who used to be here; but now they're at Marineo, in that great house in the plain that you can see from the 'plain of the lettighiere' yonder."

"O you're going to get married, then?"

"Yes, when I'm grown up and have six onze a year wages. Mara knows nothing about it."

"Why, haven't you told her?"

Jeli shook his head and reflected. Then he opened his hoard and unfolded the paper which bore the written name.

"It must be that it says 'Mara'; Don Gesualdo, the campiere,[7] has read it; and fra Cola, when he came down here begging for beans."

"He who knows how to write," he went on saying, "is like one who preserves words in his tinder-box and can carry them in his pocket, and even send them this way and that."

"Now what are you going to do with that piece of paper that you can't read?" asked Alfonso.

Jeli shrugged his shoulders, but kept on carefully folding his written leaf to put away in his heap of odds and ends.

He had known la Mara ever since she was a little girl. Their acquaintance had begun in a pitched battle once when they met down in the valley, both of them after blackberries. The little girl, knowing that she was "within her rights," had seized Jeli by the neck as if he were a thief. For awhile they exchanged blows on the slope—"You one, I one,"—as the cooper does on the hoops of his barrels; but when they got tired of it they gradually calmed down, though they still had each other by the hair.

"Who are you?" demanded Mara.

And when Jeli with less breeding refused to tell who he was,—

"I am Mara, the daughter of Massaro Agrippino, who is the keeper of all these fields here."

Jeli then let his grasp relax, and the little girl set to work to pick up the blackberries that had fallen during their struggle, now and then glancing with curiosity at her antagonist.

"Just beyond the bridge, on the edge of the orchard, there are lots of big berries," suggested the little maid, "and the hens are eating them."

Jeli meantime was creeping off stealthily, and Mara, after standing on tip-toe to watch him disappearing in the grove, turned her back and ran home as fast as her legs would carry her.

But from that day forth they began to be friends. Mara went with her hemp to spin on to the parapet of the little bridge, and Jeli would slowly drive his cattle toward the slopes of the poggio del Bandito. At first he kept at a distance, roving around and looking from afar, with suspicion in his face, but he kept gradually edging near, with the watchful gait of a dog used to stones. When at last he joined her, they remained long hours without speaking a word, Jeli attentively watching the intricate work of the stockings which Mara's mamma had hung round her neck, or she looking on while he carved his pretty zig-zags on the almond sticks. Then they would separate, he going one way, she the other, without saying a word, and the little girl as soon as she was in sight of her house would start to run, kicking high her petticoat with her little red legs.

When the prickly pears were ripe they would settle down in the thick of the bushes, peeling the figs all the live-long day. They would wander together under the immemorial walnuts, and Jeli would beat so many of the walnuts that they would shower down thick as hail, and the girl would tire herself out picking them up with jubilant shouts—more than she could carry; and then she would scamper away nimbly, holding up the two corners of her apron, bobbing like a little old woman.

During the winter time, Mara dared not put her nose out of doors, it was so cold. Sometimes toward evening could be seen the smoke of Jeli's fires of sumach wood, which he built on the Piano del lettighiere, or on the Poggio di Macca, so as not to perish of the cold, like the tomtits which he sometimes found in the morning behind some rock, or in the shelter of a clod. The horses also found pleasure in dangling their tails around the fire, and they would cuddle close together so as to be warmer.

In March, the larks came back to the plain, the sparrows to the roofs, the leaves and the nests to the hedges. Mara took up her habit of going about with Jeli in the soft grass among the flowering bushes under the still bare trees which were just beginning to show tender points of green. Jeli would make his way through the brambles like a bloodhound, so as to discover the nests of the blackbirds which would look up to him in astonishment with their little keen eyes; the two children would carry, cuddled in their hearts, little wee rabbits just born, almost without fur, but already quick to move their long ears.

They would scour the fields in pursuit of the drove of horses, entering the plains behind the hay-gatherers, step for step with the herd, pausing every time that a mare stopped to pluck a mouthful of grass. At evening, when they got back to the bridge, they separated, he going in one direction, she in another, without saying good-by.

Thus they passed the whole summer. When the sun began to go down behind the Poggio alla Croce, the robin red-breasts also went toward the mountain, as it grew dark, following the light among the clumps of prickly pears. The crickets and cicadæ were no longer heard, and at that hour a great melancholy spread through the air.

About that time, to Jeli's tumble-down hovel came his father, the cowherd, who had caught the malaria at Ragoleti, and could scarcely dismount from the ass which brought him. Jeli started a fire quickly, and ran to "the hall" for some hen's eggs.

"Put a little straw down in front of the fire as soon as you can," said his father, "for I feel the fever returning."

The chill of the fever was so severe that compare Menu buried under his thick cloak, the saddle-bags of the ass and Jeli's sacks shook as the leaves do in November, in spite of the great blaze of branches which made his face white as a corpse.

The contadini of the farm came to ask