"Who? Why, you—I—any one."
"There you go again! Just like a three-year-old child! Or, rather, a snail before it's out of the shell. And how, pray, are we to find him out? Are we even certain that Costantino did not do it himself?"
"Yes, we are certain, entirely so," said Isidoro. "It might have been any one of us, but never him. I might have done it, or you——"
Giacobbe got up. "Well, what can you suggest to do? If there is anything to be done, tell me."
"Any one but him," repeated Uncle Isidoro, without raising his head. "Yes, there is one thing to do,—commit ourselves into the hands of God."
"Oh, you make me so angry!" cried the other, stamping about the forlorn little room like an imprisoned bull. "I ask if there are any steps to be taken, and you answer like a fool. I'll go and choke Bachissia Era; that will really be something to do!" And he marched off as he had come, without greeting or salutation of any kind, angry this time in earnest.
Uncle Isidoro, likewise, did not so much as raise his head, but, noticing presently that his visitor had left the door open, he got up to close it, and stood for some moments looking out.
It was a mild March night, moonlit but overcast. Already one got faint, damp whiffs, suggestive of the first stirrings of vegetation. All about the old man's hovel the hedges and wild shrubs seemed to lie sleeping in the faint, mysterious light of the veiled moon.
Far away, just above the horizon, a streak of clear sky wound and zigzagged its way among the vapourous clouds like a deep blue river, on whose banks a fire burned.