Fringuello doffed his cap mechanically, and crossed himself also, and rested against the shaft of his cart with his face leaning on his hands. His hope was struck down into nothingness; the future had no longer a smile. Though he had told himself, and them, that children were fickle and unstable, and that nothing was less likely than that the lad would come back in the same mind, he had nevertheless clung to and cherished the idea of such a fate for his little daughter with a tenacity of which he had been unconscious until his air castle was scattered to the winds by the words of the priest. The boy was dead; and never would Lizina go to dwell in peace and plenty at the old farmhouse by the great pine. 'It was too good to be. Patience!' he said to himself, with a groan, as he lifted his head and bade the mule between the shafts move onward. His job had to be done; his load had to be carried; he had no leisure to sit down alone with his regret. 'And it is worse for Lillo than it is for me,' he said to himself, with an unselfish thought for the lad's father. He looked up at the little window of his own attic which he could see afar off; the lemon-tree was visible, and beside it the little brown head of Lizina as she sat sewing. 'Perhaps she will not care; I hope she will not care,' he thought. He longed to go and tell her himself lest she should hear it from some gossip, but he could not leave his work. Yet, he could not bear the child to learn it first from the careless chattering of neighbouring gossips. When he had discharged the load he carried, he fastened the mule to a post by the water-side, and said to a fellow-carter, 'Will you watch him a moment whilst I run home?' and on the man's assenting he flew with lightning speed along the road and up the staircase of his house. Lizina dropped her sewing in amazement as he burst into the room and stood on the threshold with a look which frightened her. She ran to him quickly. '_Babbo!_ _Babbo!_ What is the matter?' she cried to him. Then, before he could answer, she said timidly, under her breath, 'Is anything wrong--with Cecco?' Then Fringuello turned his head away and wept aloud. He had hoped the child had forgotten. He knew now that she had remembered only too well. All through the year which had gone by since the departure of the youth she had been as happy as a field-mouse undisturbed in the wheat. The grain was not ripe yet for her, but she was sure that it would be, and that her harvest would be plenteous. She had always been sure, quite sure, that Cecco would come back; and now, in an instant, she understood that he was dead. Lizina said little then or at any time; but the little gay life of her changed, grew dull, seemed to shrink into itself and wither up as a flower will when a worm is at its root. She had been so sure that Cecco would return! 'She is so young; soon it will not matter to her,' her father told himself.