Marjorie Bowen

“ And he again touched his habit on the heart.
"Have you any dead to remember you to-morrow?" asked Orsola gently. "Any graves to visit here? Have you come back for that, after all these years?"
Giacomo laughed.
"I have my dead in Santa Rosa, but my business is with the living."
"Depart to your rest, pilgrim," said the young man; "already it is dark."
Giacomo was turning away, well content with the respite, when Donna Orsola spoke.
"Let him stay; let me speak to him to-night. Why not?"
Don Agatino frowned.
"It is so hopeless. How should he know? And to ask means to tell him everything." ”

“ Don Agatino spoke, turning round with great earnestness in face and voice.
"It is a sacred quest, and it will succeed, pilgrim—it is the task to which our lives will be given."
"The task which God has put upon us," said Donna Orsola gravely.
She pointed to a stool near her and sweetly bade Giacomo sit.
The Conte obeyed, and sat with his eyes fixed on the light hanging behind her—the light he had seen from the road when he was planning revenge against a man already in his grave.
"You have met such men—Christian captives?" pursued the girl anxiously. ”

“ Giacomo took off his flat pilgrim's hat and saluted the mountain and the town of Santa Rosa and his own castle rising on the crag above the city walls.
It was fifteen—sixteen—years since he had seen his home; it might have been longer, even much longer, for Giacomo had spent the time partly in an Algerian gaol, partly in a Turkish galley, and partly as a slave in Tunis, and he had lost count of the years. ”

“ As he could recall no kindness, no tenderness from others, so he felt none; as all his life was shadowed, and ever must be shadowed, by the great wrong that had sent him into the unspeakable anguish of prison and slavery, so he looked at the world from the darkness of his soul, and it, too, was dark.
There was only one person he recalled with respect, perhaps with gratitude, and that person was his Excellency the Viceroy, who had listened to him, believed him, and furnished him with a perfect instrument of vengeance. ”

“ Dying of one of their quick, poisonous fevers—men die young in the East. And he gave me my freedom, and asked me, if ever I came to Europe, to come to Santa Rosa, in Sicily, and seek out the man who called himself Conte Bescemi; and then he told me his story, in a few words, as Donna Orsola has told it to me now. ”

“ At the foot of the rock on which the town stood were rows of mules with clay vases slung in their panniers, and water-carts collecting water from the slow streams that trickled from the fountains; near was a group of women, most wearing black shawls, though here and there was one with colours, dull red or orange or dark green. ”

“ Standing within was a peasant from the mountains, exchanging chestnuts for measures of olives, dried beans, and oats. Men, women, and children were eagerly crowding round him, carrying away the chestnuts in measures, bowls, and handkerchiefs.
As Giacomo passed the piazza, the last chestnut had been exchanged and the crowd was hurrying home, many of them carrying little toys and sweets wrapped in their shawls, the gifts of the dead for the morrow.
The darkness deepened, casting all into uncertainty; the pedlars hurried across the piazza with covered packs ”