nt. 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 flames. They looked devilish to a first awakening glance. He told
her that the men were friendly; they were good Italians. This had been
the beacon arranged for the night of the Fifteenth, when no run of
signals was seen from Milan; and yesterday afternoon it had been in
mockery partially consumed. 'We have aroused the country, signorina, and
brought these poor fellows out of their beds. They supposed that Milan
must be up and at work. I have explained everything to them.'

Vittoria had rather to receive their excuses than to proffer her own.
They were mostly youths dressed like the better class of peasantry. They
laughed at the incident, stating how glad they would have been to behold
the heights all across the lakes ablaze and promising action for the
morrow. One square-shouldered fellow raised her lightly from the ground.
She felt herself to be a creature for whom circumstance was busily
plotting, so that it was usel