"I know they are poor," replied Nerina; she held to her opinions. "But when they ask, you always give. Therefore it is vile to rob you. Besides," she added, "if you go on and let them steal and steal till you will have nothing left."
Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, she told Adone; and he gave ear to her because she was not a chatterer, but was usually of few words. All her intelligence was spent in the defence and in the culture of the Terra Vergine; she did not know her alphabet, and did not wish to do so; but she had the quickest of ears, the keenest of eyes, the brightest of brains.
One morning she came running to him where he was cutting barley.
"Adone! Adone!" she cried breathlessly, "there were strange men by the river to-day."
"Indeed," said Adone astonished, because strangers were never seen there. Ruscino was near no highroad, and the river had long ceased to be navigable.
"They asked me questions, but I put my hands to my ears and shook my head; they thought I was deaf."
"What sort of men were they?" he asked with more attention, for there were still those who lived by violence up in the forests which overhung the valley of the Edera.
"How do I know? They were clothed in long woollen bed-gowns, and they had boots on their feet, and on their heads hats shaped like kitchen-pans."
Adone smiled. He saw men from a town, or country fellows who aped such men, with a contempt which was born at once of that artistic sense of fitness which was in him, and of his adherence to the customs and habits of his province. The city-bred and city-clothed man looked to him a grotesque and helpless creature, much sillier than an ape.
"That sounds like citizens or townsfolk. What did they say?"