"And what explanation is given of the girl's death?"

"Oh! they pretended that it was an accident caused by a new stove, the
mechanism of which got out of order. As a good many such accidents have
occurred, the thing seemed probable enough."




A VENDETTA

The widow of Paolo Saverini lived alone with her son in a poor little
house on the outskirts of Bonifacio. The town, built on an outjutting
part of the mountain, in places even overhanging the sea, looks across
the straits, full of sandbanks, towards the southernmost coast of
Sardinia. Beneath it, on the other side and almost surrounding it, is a
cleft in the cliff like an immense corridor which serves as a harbor, and
along it the little Italian and Sardinian fishing boats come by a
circuitous route between precipitous cliffs as far as the first houses,
and every two weeks the old, wheezy steamer which makes the trip to
Ajaccio.

On the white mountain the houses, massed together, makes an even whiter
spot. They look like the nests of wild birds, clinging to this peak,
overlooking this terrible passage, where vessels rarely venture. The
wind, which blows uninterruptedly, has swept bare the forbidding coast;
it drives through the narrow straits and lays waste both sides. The pale
streaks of foam, clinging to the black rocks, whose countless peaks rise
up out of the water, look like bits of rag floating and drifting on the