“No on will care for us; we are too feeble, we are too small,” they urged; they were willing to do anything were they sure it would succeed, but —­

“But who can be sure of anything under heaven?” replied Adone.  “You are never sure of your crops until the very last day they are reaped and carried; yet you sow.”

Yes, they granted that; but sowing grain was a safe, familiar labour; the idea of sowing lead and death alarmed them.  Still there were some, most of them those who were dwellers on the river, or owners of land abutting on it, who were of more fiery temper, and these thought as Adone thought, that never had a rural people juster cause for rebellion; and these gathered around him in those meetings by night of which information had reached the Prefecture, for there are spies in every province.

Adone had changed greatly; he had grown thin and almost gaunt; he had lost his beautiful aspect of adolescence; his eyes had no longer their clear and happy light; they were keen and fierce, and looked out defiantly from under his level brows.

He worked on his own land usually, by day, to stave off suspicion; but by night he scoured the country up and down the stream wherever he believed he could find proselytes or arms.  He had no settled plan of action; he had no defined project; his only idea was to resist, to resist, to resist.  Under a leader he would have been an invaluable auxiliary, but he had not the knowledge whatever of stratagem, or manoeuvre, or any of the manifold complications of guerrilla warfare.  His calm and dreamy life had not prepared him to be all at once a man of action:  action was alien alike to his temperament and to his habits.  All his heart, his blood, his imagination, were on fire; but behind them there was not that genius of conception and command which alone makes the successful chief of a popular cause.

His mother said nothing to disturb or deter him on his course, but in herself she was sorely afraid.  She kept her lips shut because she would have thought it unworthy to discourage him, and she could not believe in his success, try how she might to compel her faith to await miracles.

Little Nerina alone gave him that unquestioning, blind belief which is so dear to the soul of man.  Nerina was convinced that at his call the whole of the Valdedera would rise full-armed, and that no hostile power on earth would dare to touch the water.  To her any miracle seemed possible.  Whatever he ordered, she did.  She had neither fear nor hesitation.  She would slip out of her room unheard, and speed over the dark country on moonless nights on his errands; she would seek for weapons and bring them in and distribute them; she would take his messages to those on whom he could rely, and rouse to his cause the hesitating and half-hearted by repetition of his words.  Her whole young life had caught fire at his; and her passionate loyalty accepted without comprehending all he enjoined her or told to her.