great disappointment. A fire in the darkness gives hopes that men will
be at hand. Here there was not any human society. The fire crouched on
its ashes. It was on a little circular eminence of mossed rock; black
sticks, and brushwood, and dry fern, and split logs, pitchy to the touch,
lay about; in the centre of them the fire coiled sullenly among its
ashes, with a long eye like a serpent's.

'Could you sleep here?' said Angelo.

'Anywhere!' Vittoria sighed with droll dolefulness.

'I can promise to keep you warm, signorina.'

'I will not ask for more till to-morrow, my friend.'

She laid herself down sideways, curling up her feet, with her cheek on
the palm of her hand.

Angelo knelt and coaxed the fire, whose appetite, like that which is said
to be ours, was fed by eating, for after the red jaws had taken half-a-
dozen sticks, it sang out for more, and sent up flame leaping after flame
and thick smoke. Vittoria watched the scene through a thin division of
her eyelids; the fire, the black abyss of country, the stars, and the
sentinel figure. She dozed on the edge of sleep, unable to yield herself
to it wholly. She believed that she was dreaming when by-and-by many
voices filled her ears. The fire was sounding like an angry sea, and the
voices were like the shore, more intelligible, but confused in shriller
clamour. She was awakened by Angelo, who knelt on one knee and took her
outlying hand; then she saw that men surrounded them, some of whom were
hurling the lighted logs about, some trampling down the outer rim of