Mass over, Adone had gone home, broken his fast, taken off his velvet jacket, his long scarlet waistcoat, and his silver-studded belt, and put the oxen to the pole of the waggon.
"Shall I come?" cried Nerina.
"No," he answered. "Go and finish cutting the oats in the triangular field."
Always obedient, she went, her sickle swinging to her girdle. She was sorry, but she never murmured.
Adone had been at work amongst the furze two hours when old Pierino, who always accompanied the oxen, got up, growled, and then barked.
"What is it, old friend?" asked Adone, and left off his work and listened. He heard voices by the waterside, and steps on the loose shingle of its shrunken summer bed. He went out of the wild growth round him and looked. There were four men standing and talking by the water. They were doubtless the same persons as Nerina had seen, for they were evidently men from a city and strangers. Disquietude and offence took alarm in him at once.
He conquered that shyness which was natural to him, and which was due to the sensitiveness of his temperament and the solitude in which he had been reared.
"Excuse me, sirs," he said, as he advanced to them with his head uncovered; "what is it you want with my river?"
"Your river!" repeated the head of the group, and he smiled. "How is it more yours than your fellows?"
Adone advanced nearer.