The thought that she was the niece of Massaio, the man who paid for his wood and charcoal with rolls of banknotes, and sent his own mules to bring the loads down from the hills, placed Santina leagues away from and above him. The only women with whom he had ever had any intercourse had been the rude wenches who tramped with the herds, and dug and hoed and cut grass and grain on the wastes of the Maremma; creatures burnt black with the sun and wrinkled by the winds, and with skin hard and hairy, and feet whose soles were like wood--'la femelle de l'homme,' but not so clean of hide or sweet of breath as the heifers they drove down along the sea-ways in autumn weather. This girl who called herself Santina was wholesome as lavender, fresh as field thyme, richly and fairly odoured as the flower of the wild pomegranate. When supper was over and the house was on the point of being bolted and barred, Santina threw her brown soft round arm round her uncle's neck. 'I went down to see Don Fabio, and he was out, and I sat talking with his woman and forgot the time,' she said penitently. Don Fabio was the priest of the little gaudy church low down in the valley where the post-road ran. Massaio patted the cheek, which was like an apricot, and believed her. Her aunt did not. 'There is still snow where the man of God lives up yonder, and there is no water, only dust, on her shoes,' thought the shrewd observer. But she did not say so; for she had no wish to put her husband out of humour with her kinsfolk. But to Santina, when with her alone, she said testily: 'I fear you are going again to the black arts of that woman Lisabetta; no good ever is got of them; it is playing with fire, and the devil breathes the fire out of his mouth!' 'I cannot play with it if I wished,' said Santina innocently; 'Lisabetta is dead months ago.' 'That is no loss to anybody if it be true,' said Eufemia Massaio angrily. Lisabetta had been such an obscure and lonely creature, that her death had been taken little note of anywhere, and the busy, bustling housewife of Massaio had had no heed of such an event. She had not even known the woman by sight; had only been cognizant of her evil repute for powers of sorcery. Santina went up to her room, which she shared with three of the Massaio children. Long after they were sleeping in a tangle of rough hair and brown limbs and healthy rosy nudity, the girl, their elder, sat up on the rude couch staring at the moon through the little square window. She was thinking of words that Lisabetta had said, as she had dealt out the cards and gazed in a bowl of spring water, 'Over the hills and far away; wealth and pleasure and love galore--where? how? when?--ay, that is hid; but we shall see, we shall see; only over the hills you go, and all the men are your slaves.' How? when? where? That was hidden with the dead fortune-teller under the earth.