So saying, she hobbled off briskly, and Agnes, sitting down on the fragment sculptured with dancing nymphs, began abstractedly pulling her flowers towards her, shaking from them the dew of the fountain.

Unconsciously to herself, as she sat there, her head drooped into the attitude of the marble nymph, and her sweet features assumed the same expression of plaintive and dreamy thoughtfulness; her heavy dark lashes lay on her pure waxen cheeks like the dark fringe of some tropical flower.  Her form, in its drooping outlines, scarcely yet showed the full development of womanhood, which after-years might unfold into the ripe fulness of her countrywomen.  Her whole attitude and manner were those of an exquisitively sensitive and highly organized being, just struggling into the life of some mysterious new inner birth,—­into the sense of powers of feeling and being hitherto unknown even to herself.

“Ah,” she softly sighed to herself, “how little I am! how little I can do!  Could I convert one soul!  Ah, holy Dorothea, send down the roses of heaven into his soul, that he also may believe!”

“Well, my little beauty, you have not finished even one garland,” said the voice of old Jocunda, bustling up behind her.  “Praise to Saint Martha, the conserves are doing well, and so I catch a minute for my little heart.”

So saying, she sat down with her spindle and flax by Agnes, for an afternoon gossip.

“Dear Jocunda, I have heard you tell stories about spirits that haunt lonesome places.  Did you ever hear about any in the gorge?”

“Why, bless the child, yes,—­spirits are always pacing up and down in lonely places.  Father Anselmo told me that; and he had seen a priest once that had seen that in the Holy Scriptures themselves,—­so it must be true.”

“Well, did you ever hear of their making the most beautiful music?”

“Haven’t I?” said Jocunda,—­“to be sure I have,—­singing enough to draw the very heart out of your body,—­it’s an old trick they have.  Why, I want to know if you never heard about the King of Amalfi’s son coming home from fighting for the Holy Sepulchre?  Why, there’s rocks not far out from this very town where the Sirens live; and if the King’s son hadn’t had a holy bishop on board, who slept every night with a piece of the true cross under his pillow, the green ladies would have sung him straight into perdition.  They are very fair-spoken at first, and sing so that a man gets perfectly drunk with their music, and longs to fly to them; but they suck him down at last under water, and strangle him, and that’s the end of him.”

“You never told me about this before, Jocunda.”

“Haven’t I, child?  Well, I will now.  You see, this good bishop, he dreamed three times that they would sail past those rocks, and he was told to give all the sailors holy wax from an altar-candle to stop their ears, so that they shouldn’t hear the music.  Well, the King’s son said he wanted to hear the music, so he wouldn’t have his ears stopped; but he told ’em to tie him to the mast, so that he could hear it, but not to mind a word he said, if he begged ’em ever so hard to untie him.