“Is it true, then?” he muttered.  “Do they mean to come here?”

“Yes.”

“Who are they?  Jews?”

“Jews and Gentiles.  There is no difference between those races now; they have a common Credo —­ greed; they adore one Jehovah —­ gold.  My boy, I am very tired, and you are ill.  Let us get home as quickly as we can.”

“I am not ill.  It was nothing.  It is passed.  Tell me the worst.”

“The worst, in a work, is that a foreign company, already established for several years in this country, has obtained a faculty to turn this water out if its course and use it as the motive power of an electric railway and of an acetylene manufactory, and of other enterprises.”

“And this cannot be undone?”

“I fear not; they are rich and powerful.  What are we?  Let me get home.  There you shall hear all, and judge.”

Adone asked and said no more.  He turned and went backward.  His steps were slow and unsteady, his head was hung down.  The dry, hot air was like fire around them; the sun, though still low, darted fierce rays upon them, like spears thrown with a sure aim.  He had not known how much and how strongly he had hoped until now that he heard that there was no hope left.

Don Silverio, though he did not speak of himself, was faint with fatigue; the return journey had tried him more cruelly than the first, since on his way to Rome he had been sustained by the hope to find the project abandoned, or at the least uncertain.  He had spent all his scanty earnings, so hardly and tediously collected through a score of years, and he had brought back to his poor people, and to the youth he loved, nothing except the confirmation of their worst fears.  It was with difficulty that he could drag his aching feet over the burn grass back to his parish.

When they reached the bridge they were on the village side of the stream.  Adone, with an effort, raised himself from the trance into which he had fallen.

“Forgive me, sir; you are overtired, you must rest.  I will come to you later.”

“No, no,” said Don Silverio quickly, for he thought the youth in no state to be alone.  “I will wash and take a cup of coffee, then I will tell you all.  Wait in my book-room.”

They went together to his house.  There was no one in the street or on the walls except some children gathering dandelion leaves in the ditch.  They reached the priest’s house unobserved; only the little dog, who was making his diurnal search there, rushed out of the entrance in a frenzy of rapture.

“Poor little man!  Dear Signorino!” murmured Don Silverio, and he took the little creature in his arms.  Then he opened the door of his study.  “Wait there,” he said to Adone.  “I will soon come downstairs.  I will only wash off the dust of this journey.”

Adone obeyed.

The room was dusky, cool, silent; he sat down in it and waited; he could hear the loud, uneven beating of his own heart in the stillness.