"Costantino! my soul!" she cried, alarmed lest in his weak and exhausted condition the shock of her news had been too great for him. "Costantino, what is it? You are shaking all over like a little kid! Yes; Brontu is very ill. He came back yesterday; it was a holiday, you know, and he came home so drunk that he was like something crazy. It seems that he has been drinking all the time lately, even up at the sheepfolds. So then yesterday when he came in he was horribly drunk, and he began quarrelling with his mother and Giovanna, and tried to beat them; they were so frightened that they ran up and locked themselves in their rooms. Brontu stayed down in the kitchen, and he must have stretched himself out alongside the fire. After some time they heard him crying out, but they thought it was just some drunken foolishness, and did not go down to see what it was. After a while, though, when he had become quiet, Aunt Martina went and found him lying there unconscious and frightfully burned. He had evidently fallen asleep and had put his legs right over the fire,[10] and then his clothing caught. There was an empty brandy bottle lying beside him. He hasn't come to since, and the doctor says he can't live through the night. Poor Brontu; he wasn't bad; he was weak, but not really bad--Costantino! Costantino!--what on earth is it? What are you doing?" For in the darkness Aunt Bachissia, who had told her story with moans and sighs of sympathy, partly for Costantino, partly for Brontu, heard what she at first took to be a burst of insane laughter. The young man's hands became rigid, his limbs contracted, and for one wild moment she thought he had lost his reason. Then the truth broke upon her; he was crying, weeping bitterly, half from weakness and reaction, but half, too, from horror and sympathy at the awful ending of a man whom, but a short while before, he had thought that he hated so much that he was in danger of killing him. * * * * * That same night Brontu died, and some time later Giovanna and Costantino were reunited. Old Aunt Martina, absorbed in her grief and completely shattered by it, like an oak-tree that has been struck by lightning, offered no objection, but neither did she forgive the young people, and she demanded that the little Mariedda should be left under her care. Thus the two, the old woman and the child, lived on in the white house, while Giovanna and Costantino returned to the little grey cottage. There, after a time, another child was born to them--Malthineddu. * * * * * It is a soft spring day. Overhead the sky is a tender blue, and all around the village the fields of grain sway like the waves of a green, encircling sea. Aunt Martina sits on the portico, spinning, and praying silently; a white, tragic figure, spiritualised by sorrow.