"Aye, an evil country! "

After which they had gone on to speak of their native haunts,
where every handful of soil had represented to them the dust of
their ancestors, and every grain of that soil had been watered
with the sweat of their brows, and become charged with dear and
intimate recollections.

Previously there had joined the party a woman who, tall and
straight, had had breasts as flat as a board, and jawbones like
the jawbones of a horse, and a glance in her dull, sidelong
black eyes like a gleaming, smouldering fire.

And every evening this woman had been wont to step outside the
barraque with the woman in the yellow scarf and to seat herself
on a rubbish heap, and, resting her cheeks on the palms of her
hands, and inclining her head sideways, to sing in a high and
shrewish voice:

Behind the graveyard wall,
Where fair green bushes stand.
I'll spread me on the sand
A shroud as white as snow.
And not long will it be
Before my heart's adored,
My master and my lord,
Shall answer my curtsey low.

Usually her companion, the woman in the yellow scarf, had, with
head bent forward and eyes fixed upon her stomach, remained