He looked up from the trench and lifted his hat as he saw the priest enter the field; then he resumed his labour.

“Come out of your ditch and hearken to me.  I will not weary you with many words.”

Adone, moved by long habit of obedience and deference, leapt with his agile feet on to the border of the trench and stood there, silent, sullen, ready to repel reproof with insolence.

“Is it worthy of you to ruin the name of a girl of sixteen by sending her on midnight errands to your fellow-rebels?”

Don Silverio spoke bluntly; he spoke only on suspicion, but his tone was that of a direct charge.

Adone did not doubt for a moment that he was in possession of facts.

“Has the girl played us false?” he said moodily.

“I have not seen the girl,” replied Don Silvero.  “But it is a base thing to do, to use that child for errands of which she cannot know either the danger or the illegality.  You misuse one whose youth and helplessness should have been her greatest protection.”

“I had no one else that I could trust.”

“Pour little soul!  You could trust her, so you abused her trust!  No:  I do not believe you are her lover.  I do not believe you care for her more than for the clod of earth you stand on.  But to my thinking that makes what you have done worse; colder, more cruel, more calculating.  Had you seduced her, you would at least feel that you owed her something.  She has been a mere little runner and slave to you —­ no more.  Surely your knowledge that she depends on you ought to have sufficed to make her sacred?”

Adone looked on the ground.  His face was red with the dull flush of shame.  He knew that he merited all these words and more.

“I will provide temporarily for her; and you will send her out no more upon these errands,” continued Don Silverio.  “Perhaps, with time, your mother may soften to her; but I doubt it.”

“The house is mine,” said Adone sullenly.  “She shall not keep Nerina out of it.”

“You certainly cannot turn your mother away from her own hearth,” replied Don Silverio with contempt.  “I tell you I will take the girl to some place in Ruscino where she will be safe for the present time.  But I came to say another thing to you as well as this.  I have been away three days.  I have seen the Prefect, Senatore Gallo.  He has informed me that your intentions, your actions, your plans and coadjutors are known to him, and that he is aware that you are conspiring to organise resistance and riot.”

A great shock struck Adone as he heard; he felt as if an electric charge had passed through him.  He had believed his secret to be as absolutely unknown as the graves of the lucomone under the ivy by the riverside.

“How could he know?” he stammered.  “Who is the traitor?”

“That matters little,” said Don Silverio.  “What matters much is, that all you do and desire to do is written down at the Prefecture.”