Seeing him sitting there, not eating, throwing his bread to some wild pigeons which followed the plough, she plucked up courage to speak; he was always kind to her, though he noticed her little.

“What is it that ails you all?” she asked.  “Tell me, Adone, I am not a foolish thing to babble.”

He did not answer.  What use were words?  Deeds were wanted.

“Adone, tell me,” she said in a whisper; “what is this that seems to lie like a stone on you all?  Tell me why Don Silverio has gone away.  I will never tell again.”

There was a pathetic entreaty in the words which touched and roused him; there was in it the sympathy which would not criticise or doubt, and which is to the sore heart as balm and soothes it by its very lack of reason.

He told her; told her the little that he knew, the much that he feared; he spent all the force of his emotion in the narrative.

The child leaned against the great form of the ox and listened, not interrupting by a word or cry.

She did not rebuke him as Don Silverio had done, or reproach him as did his mother; she only listened with a world of comprehension in her eyes more eloquent than speech, not attempting to arrest the fury of imprecation or the prophecies of vengeance which poured from his lips.  Hers was that undoubting, undivided, implicit faith which is so dear to the wounded pride and impotent strength of a man in trouble who is conscious that what he longs to do would not be approved by law or sanctioned by religion.  That faith spoke in her eyes, in her absorbed attention, in the few breathless sentences which escaped her; there was also on her youthful face a set, stern anger akin to his own.

“Could we not slay these men?” she said in a low, firm voice; she came of a mountain race by whom life was esteemed little and revenge honour.

“We must not even say such a thing,” said Adone bitterly, in whose ears the rebuke of Don Silverio still rang.  “In these days everything is denied us, even speech.  If we take our rights we are caged in their prisons.”

“But what will you do, then?”

“For the moment I wait to learn more.  These things are done in the dark, or at least in no light that we can see.  To kill these men as you wish, little one, would do nothing.  Others of their kind would fill their places.  The seekers of gold are like ants.  Slay thousands, tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion brings meat-flies.  If they think of seizing the Edera it is because men of business will turn it into gold.  The Edera gives us our grain, our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to the foreigner, the foreigner will take it as he would take the stars and coin them if he could.  The brigand of the hills is caged or shot; the brigand of the banks is allowed to fatten and die in the odour of success.  There are two measures.”