won’t daub sieve, sieve won’t hold water, water won’t wet stone, stone won’t edge axe, axe won’t cut rod, rod won’t make a gad, a gad to hang Manachar who has eaten my raspberries every one.” (So ran the rigmarole with which Mrs. Nance had beguiled my infancy.) The second refrain echoed poor Nat’s cry, “She needs help, needs help, and you could not see!  Blind, blind, that you could not see!”

How should she need help?  Little cared I though she needed it, and sorely!  But how had the notion taken hold of Nat?

Weakness?  Delirium?  No:  he had been running to get help for her when they shot him down.  I had his word for that. . . .  But she had pursued with the others.  For aught I knew, she herself had fired the shot.

If she needed help, why was she treating us despitefully—­putting this insult upon me, for example?  Why had she used those words of hate?  They had been passionate words, too; spoken from the heart in an instant of surprise.  Then, again, to suppose her a friend of the Genoese was impossible.  But why, if not a friend of the Genoese, was she a foe of their foes?  Why had she taken to the macchia with these men?  Why were they keeping watch on the coast while careless that their watchfire showed inland for leagues?  Why, if she were a patriot, had the sight of King Theodore’s crown awakened such scorn and yet rage against me, its bearer?  Why again, at the mere word that my father sought the Queen Emilia, had she let him pass on, while redoubling her despite against me?

On top of these puzzles Nat must needs propound another, that this girl stood in need of help!  Help?  From whom?

As my mind ran over these questions, still at every pause the old rigmarole kept dinning—­“Mud won’t daub sieve, sieve won’t hold water, water won’t wet stone . . .” on and on without ceasing, and still I toiled and sweated.

By noon the hut was clean, at any rate tolerably clean; but its soaked floor would certainly take many hours in drying, and Nat must spend another night under the open sky.  I left the hut, snatched a meal of bread and cheese, and, after a pull at the wine flask, turned my attention to the sty.  To cleanse it before nightfall was out of the question.  I examined it and saw three good days’ labour ahead of me.  But the palisading could be repaired and made secure after a fashion, and I started upon it at once, sharpening the rotten posts with my axe, driving, fixing, nailing, binding them firmly with osier-twists, of which I had fetched a fresh supply from the stream-side.  I had rolled my jacket into a pillow for Nat, that he might lie easily and watch me.

The sun was sinking beyond the mountain, staining with deep rose the pinnacles of granite that soared eastward above the pines, when a horn sounded on the slope and Marc’antonio came down the track driving the hogs before him.  He instructed me good-naturedly enough in the art of penning the brutes, breaking off from time to time to compliment me on my labours, the sum of which appeared to affect him with a degree of wonder not far short of awe.  “But why are you doing it?  Perche? perche?” he broke off once or twice to ask, eyeing me askance with a look rather fearful than unfriendly.