“Let us go back to your mother,” he said.  “Why should you shun her?  What you feel she feels also.  Why leave her alone?”

“I will go home,” said Adone.

“Yes, come home.  You must see that there is nothing to be done or to be learned as yet.  When they know anything fresh at San Beda they will let me know.  The Prior is a man of good faith.”

Adone turned on him almost savagely; his eyes were full of sullen anger.

“And I am to bear my days like this?  Knowing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing to protect the water that is as dear to me as a brother, and the land which is my own?  What will the land be without the river?  You forget, sir, you forget!”

“No, I do not forget,” said Don Silverio without offence.  “But I ask you to hear reason.  What can you possibly do?  Think you no man has been wronged before you?  Think you that you alone here will suffer?  The village will be ruined.  Do you feel for yourself alone?”

Adone seemed scarcely to hear.  He was like a man in a fever who sees one set of images and cannot see anything else.

“Sir,” he said suddenly, “why will you not go to Rome?”

“To Rome?” echoed the priest in amazement.

“There alone can the truth of this thing be learned,” said Adone.  “It is to Rome that the promoters of this scheme must carry it; there to be permitted or forbidden as the Government chooses.  All these things are brought about by bribes, by intrigues, by union.  Without authority from high office they cannot be done.  We here do not even know who are buying or selling us—­”

“No, we do not,” said Don Silverio; and he thought, “When the cart-horse is bought by the knacker what matter to him the name of his purchaser or his price?”

“Sir,” said Adone, with passionate entreaty.  “Do go to Rome.  There alone can the truth be learnt.  You, a learned man, can find means to meet learned people.  I would go, I would have gone yesternight, but, when I should get there, I know no more than a stray dog where to go or from whom to inquire.  They would see I am a country fellow.  They would shut the doors in my face.  But you carry respect with you.  No one would dare to flout you.  You could find ways and means to know who moves this scheme, how far it is advanced, what chance there is of our defeating it.  Go, I beseech you, go!”

“My son, you amaze me,” said Don Silverio.  “I?  In Rome?  I have not stirred out of this district for eighteen years.  I am nothing.  I have no voice.  I have no weight.  I am a poor rural vicar buried here for punishment.”

He stopped abruptly, for no complaint of the injustice from which he suffered had ever in those eighteen years escaped him.

“Go, go,” said Adone.  “You carry respect with you.  You are learned and will know how to find those in power and how to speak to them.  Go, go!  Have pity on all of us, your poor, helpless, menaced people.”