"From the Abruzzo?"

She was silent. She did not know the mountains of her birthplace by
their names.

"Who was your father?" he asked, with some impatience.

"He was Black Fausto."

"What did he do for a living?"

"He went down with the fair season to the Roman plain."

He understood: the man had no doubt been a labourer, one of those who
descend in bands from the villages of the Abruzzo heights to plough,
and mow, and sow, and reap, on the lands of the Castelli Romani; men
who work in droves, and are fed and stalled in droves, as cattle are,
who work all through the longest and hottest days in summer, and in
the worst storms of winter; men who are black by the sun, are half
naked, are lean and hairy and drip with continual sweat, but who take
faithfully back the small wage they receive to where their women and
children dwell in their mountain-villages.

"He went, you say? Is he ill? Does he work no longer?"

"He died last year."

"Of what?"