“I am sorry you are going to stay behind here, Natalino,” the little girl panted. “Why do you? I should run after the wagon if I were you!”
Natale had never thought of such a simple thing to do by way of escape! He promptly set down the stool he had grasped and looked fixedly away from Olga’s red-brown eyes.
Alas! in that critical moment, what did he see approaching from the village? The flat, broad-brimmed hat and flowing black skirts of a priest, descending the street and turning in at the field!
There was then not a moment to be lost! Forgetting Olga and the heavy stools, Natale turned and fled, away—anywhere—out of sight of the jailor advancing. Everything flashed out of his mind except the impulse to escape, to hide himself from those searching eyes under the felt hat brim. His flying feet skimmed across the field, and when they had borne him out of sight down the nearest slope, Natale flung himself on the ground under a thicket of thorny blackberry bushes.
He lay there for what must have been a long time, for, after a while, a sudden shower of rain swept down the valley and for a few minutes enveloped everything in a gray mist. Even after it had passed, Natale delayed returning to the wagon until the priest should have quite gone, in despair of capturing his prisoner. When at last he did venture forth, and crept to the upper verge of the slope, his first glance was across the field for the brown wagon.
It was not there!
He set out in a headlong run for the place where it had stood. There was nothing left—absolutely nothing. Only a priest sat quietly waiting in a gap in the wall.
Natale, with eyes only for the deserted spot, came stumbling upon the man, without so much as seeing that he was there, and then the priest rose, and taking the boy’s hand, spoke with the utmost quietness.
“Come home with me now, Natalino,” was what he said, and Natale heard as one hears dream voices.
Poor child! If he had only listened, he might have heard the dull screeching of the brakes as the wagon crawled carefully down the hill toward the arched bridge, and it would have been an easy matter to snatch his hand from the limp grasp of the priest and go hurrying down the short cuts in pursuit. But his head seemed so full of a hundred roaring noises that he could not hear, and his heart beat so fast that he could not speak, and so up the hill he went at the priest’s side.