“You are sure of the way?”

“Is the homing pigeon sure of his?”

“Let us be off,” said the sergeant.  “A bullet for her if she fail.”

He had little pleasure in trusting to this girl of the Abruzzo hills, but he and his men were lost upon these moors, and might grope all night, and miss the meeting, and fail to join his comrades and surprise those who gathered at it.  He reckoned upon fear as a sure agent to keep her true, as it kept his conscripts under arms.

“Bid him take his hand off me,” said Nerina, “or I do not move.”

The private translated to his superior.  “She prays of your mercy to leave her free, or she cannot pass through the heather.”

The sergeant let her go unwillingly, but pushed her in front of him, and levelled his revolver at her.

“Tell her, if she try to get away, I fire.”

“Tell him I know that,” said Nerina.

She was not afraid, for a fierce, unholy joy was in her veins; she could have sung, she could have laughed, she could have danced; she held them in her power; they had come to ensnare Adone, and she had got them in her power as if they were so many moles!

They tied her hands behind her; she let them do it; she did not want her hands.  Then she began to push her way doggedly, with her head down, to the south.  The tomb of Asdrubal was due north; she could see the pole star, and turned her back to it and went due south.

Three miles or more southward there was a large pollino, or swamp as L’Erba Molle, the wet grass; the grass was luxuriant, the flora was varied and beautiful; in appearance it was a field, in reality it was a morass; to all people of the Valdedera it was dreaded and avoided, as quicksand are by the seashore.

She went on as fast as the narrow path, winding in and out between the undergrowth, permitted her to go; the armed soldiers, heavy laden with their knapsacks and their boots, following her clumsily, and with effort, uttering curses on their ill-luck and their sleepless night.

The stars were now larger and brighter; the darkness was lightened, the river was running away from its southern birthplace in the hills which lie like couched lions about the feet of the Gran Sasso.  She could hear its distant murmur.  “They come to capture you,” she said to it, “and I will kill them.  They shall choke and go down, down, down —­ "

Her heart leapt within her; and she went with the loaded revolver pointed at her from behind as though she went to her bridal-bed.

“Where are you taking us, vile little bitch?” the sergeant cried, and the soldier from Paganica translated:  “Pretty little brown one, whither do you go?”

“I take you straight,” said Nerina, “only you go to clumsily, for men in these parts should not wear leather upon their feet.”

The soldiers sighed assent, and would willingly have gone barefoot, and the sergeant swore in tones of thunder because he could not understand what she said.