Adone could not say (for he had no idea himself) why he felt sure that this miserable little waif would not abuse hospitality:  “She is a child,” he answered rather stupidly, for children are often treacherous and wicked, and he knew nothing of this one except what she had chosen to tell of herself.

“She may have men behind her,” repeated his mother.

“Such men as you are thinking of, mother, do not come to this valley nowadays.  Ulisse Ferrero was the last of them.  Indeed, I think this poor little creature is all alone in the world.  Go and look at her.  You will see how forlorn and small she is.”

She went to the doorway and looked at the sleeping beggar; her eyes softened as she gazed, the whole attitude and appearance of the child were so miserable and so innocent, so helpless, and yet so tranquil, that her maternal heart was touched; the waif slept on the stone bench beside the door of strangers as though she were in some safe and happy home.

Clelia Alba looked down on her a few moments, then took the kerchief off her hair, and laid it gently, without awakening the sleeper, over the breast and the face of the child, on which flies were settling and the sun was shining.

Then she picked up the empty earthenware bowl, and went indoors again.

“I will go back to the river,” said Adone.  “I have left the net there.”

His mother nodded assent.

“You will not send this little foreigner away till I return?” he asked.  Every one was a foreigner who had not been born in the vale of Edera.

“No; not till you return.”

He went away through the sunshine and shadow of the olive-trees.  He knew that his mother never broke her word.  But she thought as she washed the bowl:  “A little stray mongrel bitch like that may bite badly some day.  She must go.  She is nothing now; but by and by she may bite.”

Clelia Alba knew human nature, though she had never been out of sight of the river Edera.  She took her spinning-wheel and sat down by the door.  There was nothing urgent to do, and she could from the threshold keep a watch on the little vagabond, and would be aware if she awoke.  All around was quiet.  She could see up and down the valley, beyond the thin, silvery foliage of the great olive-trees, and across it to where the ruins of a great fortress towered in their tragic helplessness.  The sun shone upon her fields of young wheat, her slopes of pasture.  The cherry-trees and the pear-trees were in bloom, her trellised vines running from tree to tree.  Ragged-robin, yellow crowsfoot, purple orchis, filled the grass, intermixed with the blue of borage and the white and gold of the oxeye.  She did not note these things.  Those fancies were for her son.  Herself, she would have preferred that there should be no flower in the grasses, for before the cow was fed the flowers had to be picked out of the cut grass, and had served no good end that she could perceive, for she knew of no bees except the wild ones, whose honey no one ever tasted, hidden from sight in hollow trees as it was.