The car swooped down, and up again; but half way up the rocky horn the
wide white road turned into a stone paved mule path, old as the Romans.
Evelyn and Rosemary climbed hand in hand, singing a Christmas carol,
while Hugh carried the two huge baskets filled with toys, and sweets in
little packets.

Some small sentinel perched on high (perhaps hidden among the ruins of
that fortress-castle where once the temple of Isis stood) must have
spied the odd procession; for as the tall white girl and the little blue
one, with the brown young man, reached the last step of the steep mule
path, a tidal wave of children swept down upon them, out from the
mystery of dark tunnelled streets.

Such eyes were never seen as those that gleamed at the new comers, great
with surprise and wonder; eyes of brown velvet with diamonds shining
through; eyes like black wells, with mirrored stars in their unfathomed
depths; eyes of wild deer; eyes of fierce Saracens; eyes of baby saints,
all set in small bronze faces clear-cut as the profiles on ancient Roman
coins.

"Bella Madonna, bella Madonna!" piped a tiny voice, and forty other
voices caught up the adoring cry.

The brown children of the old rock village had poured down from their
high eyrie to bombard the strangers from the world below; to stare, to
beg, to laugh, to lisp out strange epithets in their crude _patois_; but
at sight of the wonderful white lady and her gold-haired child they
crowded back upon each other, hushed after their first cry into awed
admiration for visitants from another world.