Caris cared little for that man's frown.
He sat thus at his door one evening when the sun was setting behind the many peaks and domes of the Apennine spurs which fronted him. The sun itself had sunk beyond them half an hour before, but the red glow which comes and stays long after it was in the heavens and on the hills.
Genistrello was a solitary place, and only here and there a hut or cot like his own was hidden away under the saplings and undergrowth. Far away down in the valley were the belfries and towers of the little strong-walled city which had been so often as a lion in the path to the invading hosts of Germany; and like a narrow white cord the post-road, now so rarely used, wound in and out until its slender thread was lost in the blue vapours of the distance, and the shadows from the clouds.
Bells were tolling from all the little spires and towers on the hills and in the valleys, for it was a vigil, and there was the nearer tinkle of the goats' bells under the heather and broom as those innocent marauders cropped their supper off the tender chestnut-shoots, the trails of ground ivy, and the curling woodbine. Caris, with his bowl of bean-soup between his knees and his hunch of rye-bread in his hand, ate hungrily, whilst his eyes filled themselves with the beauty of the landscape. His stomach was empty—which he knew, and his soul was empty—which he did not know.
He looked up, and saw a young woman standing in front of him. She was handsome, with big, bright eyes, and a rosy mouth, and dusky glossy hair coiled up on her head like a Greek Venus.
He had never seen her before, and her sudden apparition there startled him.
'Good-even, Caris,' she said familiarly, with a smile like a burst of sunlight. 'Is the mother indoors, eh?'
Caris continued to stare at her.
'Eh, are you deaf?' she asked impatiently. 'Is the mother in, I want to know?'
'My mother is dead,' said Caris, without preamble.