ht, the ruddiness of sunset
above them. The road wound and swirled, trying to get up the pass.
The omnibus pegged slowly up, then charged round a corner, swirled
into another loop, and pegged heavily once more. It seemed dark
between the closing-in mountains. The rocks rose very high, the
road looped and swerved from one side of the wide defile to the
other, the vehicle pulsed and persisted. Sometimes there was a
house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees, sometimes the glimpse of a
ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above the earthly
blackness. And still they went on and on, up the darkness.

Peering ahead, Alvina thought she saw the hollow between the peaks,
which was the top of the pass. And every time the omnibus took a new
turn, she thought it was coming out on the top of this hollow
between the heights. But no--the road coiled right away again.

A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again
no. Only the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from
her, descended grumbling because the 'bus had brought him past his
road, the driver having refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated
with him, and he dropped into the shadow. The big priest squeezed
into his place. The 'bus wound on and on, and always towards that
hollow sky-line between the high peaks.

At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high
rock-faces, and out into a little market-place, the crown of the
pass. The luggage was got out and lifted down. Alvina descended.
There she was, in a wild centre of an old, unfinished little
mountain town. The facade of a church rose from a small eminence. A
white road ran to the right, where a great open valley showed
faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid sort of buildings stood
around--with some high buildings. And there were bare little trees.
The stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People stood darkly,
excitedly about, women with an odd, shell-pattern head-dress of
gofered linen, something like a parlour-maid's cap, came and stared
hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.

Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.

"I couldn't get a cart to come down," he said in English. "But I
shall find one here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in
Grazia's place while you wait?--"

They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post
Restaurant. It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell
of cats. Three crones were sitting over a low brass