It had been a very long day, and she had seen much that was quite new to her, and different from what she had expected.  At first, indeed, she was amazed at the richness of the country beyond Eboli, as she was driven for nearly an hour through what was literally a forest of ancient olive trees, interrupted only here and there by a broad field of vines, cut low and trained upon short stakes; and from the rising ground beyond Carpella, where the road winds up the first hill, she looked back and saw the shimmering grey-green light of the olive leaves, lying like a delicate mantle over the flat country and in the great hollow, from Eboli to the deep gorge wherein the ancient city of Campania lies as in a nest.  A part of the olive land was hers; and as she drove along, the midday breeze blew some of the tiny, star-like olive blossoms into her lap.  She took one in her fingers and looked at it closely and could just smell its very faint, aromatic odour.

“It is the first greeting from what is yours,” said Don Teodoro, with a smile.

“The wind brings me my own flowers,” answered Veronica, and she laughed softly and happily.

Up steep hills and down into deep valleys, across high, arched stone bridges, beneath which the water of the Sele was streaming fast and clear amid white limestone boulders and over broad reaches of white pebbles that were dazzling in the sun—­and the olive trees were left behind, and here and there were patches of big timber, oaks to which the old, brown leaves still clung in the spring, and many poplars straight and feathery with leaves but yet half grown.  But the land was by degrees less rich and less cultivated, till gradually it changed to a rough and stony country, and even from far off Veronica could see the little flocks of sheep dark brown and white, and small herds of cloud-grey cattle, pasturing and moving slowly on the hillsides above and below the winding road.

She looked at the shepherds when they were near enough for her to see them.  As she had left Eboli, she had seen one, driving a flock of sheep along the high road, and she had wondered whether there were many of his kind.  He was a magnificently handsome young fellow of two or three and twenty, dressed in loose brown velveteens, with a belted jacket and a spotless shirt, strong, well-made shoes, leathern gaiters, and a flat cap, and he carried the traditional hatchet of the southern shepherd.  He strode along with a light and easy gait, and looked more like a young gentleman in a rather eccentric but well-made shooting-dress, than like a herdsman.  But he was from Eboli itself, and a native would have told her that the people of Eboli were “exceedingly fanatic about dress.”  The men and the clothes she now saw were very different; tall, grim figures in vast and often ragged brown cloaks that reached almost to their feet; small, battered, pointed hats; rough, muddy hose that should have once been white; shoes that loaded their steps like lead; and they moved slowly, with bent heads, rough, long-unshaven faces, eyes too hollow, horny hands too lean—­wild, half-fed creatures, worse off than the flocks they drove, by all the degrees of the inverse ratio between man, who needs man’s help, and beast, that needs only nature.