In Sicily the animal fairs are often held in the great watercourses that stretch down from the foot of the mountains to the sea, and that resemble huge highroads in the making, roads upon which the stones have been dumped ready for the steam-roller. In winter there is sometimes a torrent of water rushing through them, but in summer they are dry, and look like wounds gashed in the thickly growing lemon and orange groves. The trampling feet of beasts can do no harm to the stones, and these watercourses in the summer season are of no use to anybody. They are, therefore, often utilized at fair time. Cattle, donkeys, mules are driven down to them in squadrons. Painted Sicilian carts are ranged upon their banks, with sets of harness, and the auctioneers, whose business it is to sell miscellaneous articles, household furniture, stuffs, clocks, ornaments, frequently descend into them, and mount a heap of stones to gain command of their gaping audience of contadini and the shrewder buyers from the towns.
The watercourse of San Felice was traversed at its mouth by the railway line from Catania to Messina, which crossed it on a long bridge supported by stone pillars and buttresses, the bridge which, as Gaspare had said, had recently collapsed and was now nearly built up again. It was already in use, but the trains were obliged to crawl over it at a snail's pace in order not to shake the unfinished masonry, and men were stationed at each end to signal to the driver whether he was to stop or whether he might venture to go on. Beyond the watercourse, upon the side opposite to the town of San Felice, was a series of dense lemon groves, gained by a sloping bank of bare, crumbling earth, on the top of which, close to the line and exactly where it came to the bridge, was a group of four old olive-trees with gnarled, twisted trunks. These trees cast a patch of pleasant shade, from which all the bustle of the fair was visible, but at a distance, and as Maurice and his party came out of the village on the opposite bank, he whispered to Maddalena:
"Maddalena!"
"Si, signore?"
"Let's get away presently, you and I; let's go and sit under those trees. I want to talk to you quietly."
"Si, signore?"
Her voice was lower even than his own.
Salvatore was pointing to a crowd of donkeys.
"Signorino! Signorino!"