a
startled thing holding its breath.

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

He called again, lustily, leaped out from the trees, and went running
across the open space to the edge of the plateau by the sea. A tiny path
wound steeply down from here to the rocks below, and on it, just under
the concealing crest of the land, stood the padrone with Maddalena. Their
hands were linked together, as if they had caught at each other sharply
for sympathy or help. Their faces were tense and their lips parted. But
as they saw Gaspare's light figure leaping over the hill edge, his
dancing eyes fixed shrewdly, with a sort of boyish scolding, upon them,
their hands fell apart, their faces relaxed.

"Gasparino!" said Maurice. "It was you who called!"

"Si, signore."

He came up to them. Maddalena's oval face had flushed, and she dropped
the full lids over her black eyes as she said:

"Buon giorno, Gaspare."

"Buon giorno, Donna Maddalena."

Then they stood there for a moment in silence. Maurice was the first to
speak again.

"But why did you come here?" he said. "How did you know?"

Already the sparkle of merriment had dropped out of Gaspare's face as the
feeling of jealousy, of not having been completely trusted, returned to
his mind.

"Did not the signore wish me to know?" he said, almost gruffly, with a
sort of sullen violence. "I am sorry."

Maurice touched the back of his hand, giving it a gentle, half-humorous
slap.

"Don't be an ass, Gaspare. But how could you guess where I had gone?"

"Where did you go before, signore, when you could not sleep?"

At this thrust Maurice imitated Maddalena and reddened slightly. It
seemed to him as if he had been living under glass while he had fancied
himself enclosed in rock that was impenetrable by human eyes. He tried to
laugh away his slight confusion.

"Gaspare, you are the most birbante boy in Sicily!" he said. "You are
like a Mago Africano."

"Signorino, you should trust me," returned the boy, sullenly.

His own words seemed to move him, as if their sound revealed to him the
whole of the injury that had been inflicted upon his amour propre, and
suddenly angry tears started into his eyes.

"I thought I was a servant of confidence" (un servitore di confidenza),
he added, bitterly.

Maurice was amazed at the depth of feeling thus abruptly shown to him.
This was the first time he had been permitted to look for a moment deep
down into that strange volcano, a young and passionate Si