near the
village he hailed them in English:

"Good morning. Nice morning."

"Does everybody speak English here?" asked Alvina.

"I have been eighteen years in Glasgow. I am only here for a trip."

He was a little Italian shop-keeper from Glasgow. He was most
friendly, insisted on paying for drinks, and coffee and almond
biscuits for Alvina. Evidently he also was grateful to Britain.

The village was wonderful. It occupied the crown of an eminence in
the midst of the wide valley. From the terrace of the high-road the
valley spread below, with all its jumble of hills, and two rivers,
set in the walls of the mountains, a wide space, but imprisoned. It
glistened with snow under the blue sky. But the lowest hollows were
brown. In the distance, Ossona hung at the edge of a platform. Many
villages clung like pale swarms of birds to the far slopes, or
perched on the hills beneath. It was a world within a world, a
valley of many hills and townlets and streams shut in beyond access.

Pescocalascio itself was crowded. The roads were sloppy with snow.
But none the less, peasants in full dress, their feet soaked in the
skin sandals, were trooping in the sun, purchasing, selling,
bargaining for cloth, talking all the time. In the shop, which was
also a sort of inn, an ancient woman was making coffee over a
charcoal brazier, while a crowd of peasants sat at the tables at the
back, eating the food they had brought.

Post was due at mid-day. Ciccio went to fetch it, whilst Pancrazio
took Alvina to the summit, to the castle. There, in the level
region, boys were snowballing and shouting. The ancient castle,
badly cracked by the last earthquake, looked wonderfully down on the
valley of many hills beneath, Califano a speck down the left, Ossona
a blot to the right, suspended, its towers and its castle clear in
the light. Behind the castle of Pescocalascio was a deep, steep
valley, almost a gorge, at the bottom of which a river ran, and
where Pancrazio pointed out the electricity works of the village,
deep in the gloom. Above this gorge, at the end, rose the long
slopes of the mountains, up to the vivid snow--and across again was
the wall of the Abruzzi.

They went down, past the ruined houses broken by the earthquake.
Ciccio still had not come with the post. A crowd surged at the
post-office door, in a steep, black, wet side-street. Alvina's feet
were sodden. Pancrazio took her to the place where she could drink
coffee and a st