One morning she came running to him where he was cutting barley.

“Adone!  Adone!” she cried breathlessly, “there were strange men by the river to-day.”

“Indeed,” said Adone astonished, because strangers were never seen there.  Ruscino was near no highroad, and the river had long ceased to be navigable.

“They asked me questions, but I put my hands to my ears and shook my head; they thought I was deaf.”

“What sort of men were they?” he asked with more attention, for there were still those who lived by violence up in the forests which overhung the valley of the Edera.

“How do I know?  They were clothed in long woollen bed-gowns, and they had boots on their feet, and on their heads hats shaped like kitchen-pans.”

Adone smiled.  He saw men from a town, or country fellows who aped such men, with a contempt which was born at once of that artistic sense of fitness which was in him, and of his adherence to the customs and habits of his province.  The city-bred and city-clothed man looked to him a grotesque and helpless creature, much sillier than an ape.

“That sounds like citizens or townsfolk.  What did they say?”

“I could not understand; but they spoke of the water, I think, for they pointed to it and said a great deal which I did not understand, and seemed to measure the banks, and took your punt and threw a chain into the water in places.”

“Took castings?  Used my punt?  That is odd!  I have never seen a stranger in my life by the Edera.  Were they anglers?”

“No.”

“Or sportsmen?”

“They had no guns.”

“How many were they?”

“Three.  They went away up the river talking.”

“Did they cross the bridge?”

“No.  They were not shepherds, or labourers, or priests,” said Nerina.  To these classes of men her own acquaintance was confined.

“Painters, perhaps?” said Adone; but no artists were ever seen there; the existence even of the valley was scarcely known, except to topographers.

“What are painters?” said Nerina.

“Men who sit and stare and then make splashes of colour.”

“No; they did not do that.”

“It is strange.”

He felt vaguely uneasy that any had come near the water; as a lover dislikes the pressure of a crowd about his beloved in a street, so he disliked the thought of foreign eyes resting on the Edera.  That they should have used his little punt, always left amongst the sedges, seemed to him a most offensive and unpardonable action.