A little old woman, with hair as white as snow, and strange black eyes in a strange and wrinkled face, knelt there, polishing something smooth and round that she held in her lap. The strange sight caused Francesco to peer all the more intently, and he drew back with a quick gasp, when in the suddenly revealed white dome of the head, the shadowy eye-sockets, the glistening teeth in the bare jaws, he recognized the thing for what it was,—the head of a skeleton.
As he sat there, considering the strange picture, Francesco for a time became oblivious of the cravings of his stomach. It was plain that the woman was mad, for as she polished the skull, she chattered incessantly. He asked himself, what was behind this madness. Death had been here at some time, perhaps with violence, wiping out life and reason, leaving white hair and tragic madness in its wake. The furrows deepened above Francesco's eyes. He sat there in the deepening dusk calling up visions of ruffianism and wrong; the vision of this poor soul's madness made him forget the dangers of the woods by night. Picking his way cautiously among the trees, he came within about five paces of her, before she lifted her head and saw him. Then he crossed himself and gave her a "Pax Dei."—
The little old woman stared at him and said nothing, her lower lip drooping, her inert hands resting on the top of the skull.
Her eyes puzzled Francesco, they were so black and bright, like the eyes of a bird. There was a startled wonder in them, as though she had never seen such a creature before. Then she suddenly wrapped the head in a bright-colored scarf which lay by her side, arose, and started through the thicket, putting her arms around the thing as a mother would hold a child.
The sun was now below the hills and the woods were turning black. Francesco felt a vague shudder go through him as, following the woman, he arrived at the fragments of a ruin, that was smothered up in ivy. An arched doorway with broken pillars led into a vault in which there stood an open coffin. He saw her approach the receptacle for the dead, place the skull in the coffin and close the lid. Then she crooned softly to herself and hobbled away into the dusk.
The thought that there must be a hut close by, struck Francesco with the pang of the returning consciousness of hunger, when suddenly he saw a light gleaming through the night as from a blood-red star. Straining his eyes, he peered through the dusk in the direction whence the light shone.
Under the shadow of a wooded spur that ran down into the valley Francesco saw a tower rising from an island in the centre of one of the great pools, of which the region abounded.
The walls of the tower shone crimson in the light of the rising moon, glowing above the black water as though it had been built of iron at red heat. Thousands of willows and aspens grew about the mere, and in the shallows were sedges and sword-leaved flags.
Remounting his steed, Francesco resolved to ask for food and a night's lodging, rather than to traverse the forests at night. He was spent, and so was his steed, and the region was infested by all manner of outlaws, who made the roads insecure. As he approached the mere, a large boat put out from a water-gate and crawled with long oars, like a beetle on the surface of the water. It disappeared in the night, and Francesco decided to hail it upon its return, in the meanwhile watching the red tower overhanging the pool. The reflection of the walls in the rippling waters was a broken redness wrinkling into black.
Francesco's wait was destined to be brief. The barge soon returned, and hailing the astonished oarsmen, he requested to be rowed across the mere. They seemed to hold silent council, then, seeing it was but one man, they grumblingly ran out planks for Francesco's horse, and he rode into the barge, remaining in the saddle and caressing his steed's black ears.