"Yes," she replied sadly, taking up her work again. "He is at home."
Giacobbe said good-bye, and walked thoughtfully away in the direction of Isidoro's house,—if house it could be called,—which stood at the other end of the village.
The fisherman, in justice to whom it should be said that he fished for trout and eels as well as leeches whenever he had the opportunity, was seated in the shadow of his hut, mending a net. This hut, which stood in the fields, a little apart from the rest of the village, was a prehistoric structure composed of rough pieces of slate dating possibly from the time when men, not yet having mastered the art of cutting stones for themselves, used such pieces as had already been detached by nature. It was roofed over with sticks and bits of tile, above which flourished a vigorous growth of vegetation.
The sun was sinking after a day of intense heat. Not a leaf stirred in the row of dusty trees along the scorched, deserted village street. Far off, the yellow uplands, furrowed by long, slanting shadows, were immersed in floods of crimson light; and beyond them rose the rugged line of purplish mountains—a row of huge red sphinxes covered with a veil of violet gauze. The all-pervading stillness was pierced by the distant note of a blackbird. Wild figs with coarse, dark foliage, and a hedge of wild robinia, among whose branches hairy nettles and the whitish-leaved henbane had wound and interlaced themselves, surrounded the hut; and from the doorway could be seen a wide expanse of country, lonely and vapourous as the sea. The atmosphere was filled with the acrid odour of stubble and dried asphodel, and the ground was so thickly covered with dead leaves, and twigs, and bits of straw that Giacobbe had got quite close to the old fisherman before the latter perceived him.
"What are we about now?" cried the herdsman gaily.
The other raised his eyes without lifting his head, and, regarding his visitor curiously for a moment, made no reply.
Dropping cross-legged on the ground, Giacobbe watched him as he mended the net with waxed twine threaded in a huge, rusty needle.
"Well, really!" said the herdsman presently, with a laugh. "I should think the little fishes would find no difficulty in coming and going at their pleasure!"
"Then let them come and go at their pleasure, little spring bird," said the fisherman, mimicking Giacobbe's favourite mode of address. "What are you doing here? Have you left your place?"