characteristic scene. The leading woman seemed to be superior to her
neighbours, for she wore a black silk handkerchief on her head instead of
a white or coloured cotton. It is almost a mantilla, and marks as clear a
social distinction in Corsica as does that head-dress in Spain. She
dragged at the child, and scarce turned her head when he fell and
scrambled as best he could to his feet. He laughed and crowed with
delight, remembering last year's carnival with that startling,
photographic memory of early childhood which never forgets.

At every few steps the woman gave a shriek as if she were suffering some
intermittent agony which caught her at regular intervals. At the sight of
the crowd she gave a quick cry of despair, and ran forward, leaving her
child sprawling on the road. She knelt by the dead man's side with shriek
after shriek, and seemed to lose all control over herself, for she gave
way to those strange gestures of despair of which many read in novels and
a few in the Scriptures, and which come by instinct to those who have no
reading at all. She dragged the handkerchief from her head, and threw it
over her face. She beat her breast. She beat the very ground with her
clenched hands. Her little boy, having gathered his belongings together
and dusted his cotton frock, now came forward, and stood watching her
with his fingers at his mouth. He took it to be a game which he did not
understand; as indeed it was--the game of life.

The priest scratched his chin with his forefinger, which was probably a
habit with him when puzzled, and stood looking down out of the corner of
his eyes at the ground.

It was he, however, who moved first, and, stooping, loosed the clenched
fingers round the gun. It was a double-barrelled gun, at full cock, and
every man in the little crowd assembled carried one like it. To this day,