The performance that then took place was even more extraordinary. The head, looking as though it had been severed from the body and stuck in the centre of this heap of refuse, was surrounded by sparse vegetation, which trembled in the breeze as though affrighted; while overhead hung the melancholy sky. Hardly had the two men completed their task, and stood,--the one wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve, and the other knocking off the dirt that was sticking to his hands,--when the women closed in a circle around the head, and began to dance to the sound of their own chanting voices and the instrument still played by the blind man, who stood with his sightless balls and pale, impassive face turned towards the distant horizon. This continued for some time; then the dancing ceased, the circle broke, but the chanting still went on. Isidoro and the other men threw themselves on the mound, and with spades and hands, had soon disinterred Giacobbe. He was perspiring profusely when he emerged, covered with dirt, and his face and neck were purple. He said he had felt as though he would suffocate; then he shook himself and thrust first one arm and then the other into the sleeves of the coat which his sister held ready. "Well, so you are not going to die after all, little spring bird?" said Isidoro jokingly. The other, however, made no reply; the cold wind struck his perspiring body with an icy chill, his face grew pallid, and his teeth chattered. They walked off in the direction of Aunt Anna-Rosa's house, Isidoro, who by this time had lost all interest in his supper, accompanying them. "Did you kill it?" he enquired of the sick man, remembering to have heard that if one kills a tarantula with his ring finger he acquires the power to cure the bite with a simple touch of the same finger. "No," said Giacobbe; and then, while the weird chanting still continued, he gave an account of his misfortune. "I was asleep; suddenly I felt something like the sting of a wasp. I woke up all in a perspiration. Ah, it had stung me! It had stung me! The horrible tarantula! I saw it as plain as I see you, but it was some distance off, on the wall. Ah, the devil take you, accursed creature! So I came right home. Do you know, I am afraid to die; I've been afraid for ever so long." "But we all have to die some time, whenever the hour comes," said Isidoro seriously. "Yes, that is true; we all have to some time," agreed one of the men; "but that is poor consolation for Giacobbe Dejas." "My legs feel as though they had been broken," he groaned. "And oh, my spine! it is just as though some one had struck it with an axe! I am going to die; I know I am going to die----" As they passed along, the people came out of their houses to watch them go by, but it was like a funeral procession; no one spoke, nor did any one follow them. Giacobbe's eyes grew dim, and presently he stumbled and clutched hold of Isidoro for support.