'What do you want with the devil's tools, a fresh, fair young thing like you?'
'Your mother used them for me,' she answered crossly. 'And she had told me a number of things—ay, a vast number! And just in the middle uncle spied us out, and he swore at her and dragged me away, and I had never a chance to get back here till to-night, and now—now you say she is dead, and she will never tell me aught any more.'
'What can you want so sore to know?' said Caris, with wonder, as he rose to his feet.
'That is my business,' said the girl.
'True, so it is,' said Caris.
But he looked at her with wonder in his dark-brown, ox-like eyes.
'Where do you live?' he asked; 'and how knew you my name?'
'Everybody knows your name,' she answered. 'You are Caris, the son of Lisabetta, and when you sit on your doorstep it would be a fool indeed would not see who you are.'
'So it would,' said Caris. 'But you,' he added after a pause, 'who are you? And what did you want with Black Magic?'
'I am Santina, the daughter of Neri, the smith, by the west gate in Pistoia,' she said in reply to the first question, and making none to the second.