He ceased to have any faith in his friend and teacher; and gradually grew more and more alienated from him; their intimate affection, their frequent intercourse, their long walks and evening meeting were over; and even as his spiritual director the vicar had no longer power over him.  Most of his actions and intentions were concealed; except in the younger men of the district, who saw as he saw, he had now no confidence in any one.  The impending loss of the land and the water turned all the sweetness of his nature to gall.  He thought that never in the history of the world had any wrong so black been done.  He, himself, flung broadcast the fires of burning incitation without heeding or caring whither the flames might reach.  Riots had been successful before this:  why not now?  He was young enough and innocent enough to believe in the divine right of a just cause.  If that were denied, what remained to the weak?

If he could, he would have set the valley in flames from one end to the other rather than have allowed the foreigners to seize it.  Had not his forefather perished in fire on yonder hill rather than cede to the Borgia?

Evening after evening he looked at the sun setting behind the Rocca and felt the black rage in him gnaw at his heart like a vulture.

They would offer him money for this dear earth, for this fair, beloved stream! —­ the mere thought choked him as a man who loved his wife would be choked at the though of her dishonoured sale.

Some were half persuaded that it would be a fine thing to get some crisp banknotes in exchange for waste ground which yielded little, or a cabin which was falling to pieces, or a strip of woodland which gave them fuel, but not much more.  But the majority were angry, irreconcilable, furious to lose the water, full of their wrongs.  These were glad to find Adone Alba a spokesman and a leader:  they were tow which caught fire at his torch.  They comprehended little, but they knew that they were wronged; and they agreed with him that the labourers who should come from over the border to meddle with them should be made to rue it bitterly.

The Italian goes over seas, indeed; huddled under the hatches of emigrant ships; miserable, starved, confined; unable to move, scarce able to breathe, like the unhappy beasts carried with him.  But he never goes willingly; he never wrenches himself from the soil without torn nerves and aching heart; if he live and make a little money in exile he comes back to the shadow of the village church, to the sound of the village bell which he knew in his boyhood, to walk in the lanes where he threw his wooden quoit as a lad, and to play dominoes under the green bough of the winehouse where as a child he used to watch his elders and envy them.

Most of these people dwelling on the Edera water had not been five miles away from the river in all their lives.  The moorland birds and beasts went farther afield than they.  They had no interest in what was beyond their own freehold; they did not even know or care whither the water went, or whence it came.  Where it was, they owned it.  That was enough for them.