silent; but on rare, unexpected occasions she had, in the
hoarse, sluggish voice of a peasant, sung a song with the
sobbing refrain:

Ah, my beloved, sweetheart of mine,
Never again will these eyes seek thine!

Nor amid the stifling blackness of the southern night had these
voices ever failed to bring back to my memory the snowy wastes
of the North, and the icy, wailing storm-wind, and the distant
howling of unseen wolves.

In time, the squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and
removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain
quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to
be singing her little ditty about the graveyard and the sand.

The head with the yellow scarf rose, dipped, and disappeared.

After I had finished my breakfast I thatched the honey-pot with
some leaves, fastened down the lid, and indolently resumed my
way in the wake of the party, my blackthorn staff tiptapping
against the hard tread of the track as I proceeded.

The track loomed-- a grey, narrow strip-- before me, while
on my right the restless, dark blue sea had the air of being
ceaselessly planed by thousands of invisible carpenters; so
regularly did the stress of a wind as moist and sweet and warm
as the breath of a healthy woman cause ever-rustling curls of
foam to drift towards the beach. Also, careening on to its port