ank with weeds, the cross half shattered,
the inscription half effaced. It was as if no one had loved him, or
remembered him. I went back to the house in which we had lodged
together. The same people were still living there, and made me kindly
welcome. I stayed with them for some weeks. I weeded, and planted, and
trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in pure
white marble. It was the first season of rest that I had known since I
laid him there; and when at last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth
again to battle with the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I
would creep back to Rocca, when my days drew near to ending, and be
buried by his side.

From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than formerly for very
distant parts, and willing to keep within reach of that grave, I went no
further than Mantua, where I engaged myself as an engine-driver on the
line, then not long completed, between that city and Venice. Somehow,
although I had been trained to the working engineering, I preferred in
these days to earn my bread by driving. I liked the excitement of it,
the sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the
flitting of the landscape. Above all, I enjoyed to drive a night
express. The worse the weather, the better it suited with my sullen
temper. For I was as hard, and harder than ever. The years had done
nothing to soften me. They had only confirmed all that was blackest and
bitterest in my heart.

I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been working on
it steadily for more than seven months when that which I am now about to
relate took place.

It was in the month of March. The weather had been unsettled for some
days past, and the nights stormy; and at one point along the line, near
Ponte di Brenta, the waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards
of embankment. Since this accident, the trains had all been obliged to
stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di Brenta, and the
passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be transported in all kinds
of vehicles, by a circuitous country road, to the nearest station on the
other side of the gap, where another train and engine awaited them.
This, of course, caused great confusion and annoyance, put all our
time-tables wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of
inconvenience. In the meanwhile an army of navvies was drafted to the
spot, and worked day and night