Anania had not been able to get a horse that evening, so he was obliged to spend another night at Fonni, sleeping a strange sleep like the sleep of a convict on the day he has been sentenced. Aunt Grathia and Olì sat up a long time over the fire. Olì had the cold fit which is precursor of fever; her teeth chattered, she yawned and groaned. As in the nights of long ago, the wind roared through the kitchen, stirring the black relics of the bandit. By the firelight the widow worked at her spinning, her face pallid and impassive as that of a spectre. But she told her guest no stories of her dead husband, nor did she dare to offer consolation. Only now and then she vainly implored the sufferer to go to bed. "I'll go, if you'll do me one kindness," said Olì at last. "What is it?" "Go and ask him if he still has the _rezetta_ which I gave him the day we left this. Beg him to let me look at it." The old woman promised and Olì got up. She shook all over, and yawned so wide that her jaws cracked. That night she was light-headed, her temperature very high. Now and then she demanded the _rezetta_, and grumbled childishly because Aunt Grathia, who lay beside her, would not ask Anania for it. In her delirium a doubt crossed her mind; if Anania were not her son? Surely, he was not her son! he was too cruel, too unfeeling. She had been tormented all her life by all the people she had known; now, she could not believe that her son could torture her more even than the rest. Still delirious, she told Aunt Grathia of the little packet she had tied round Anania's neck, that she might recognize him when he should be grown up and well-to-do. "I meant to go to him some day when I should be very old and walking with a stick. Rat-tat-tat! I should knock at his door, and say, 'I am Most Holy Mary disguised as a beggar.' My son's servants would laugh and call their master. 'Old woman, what do you want?' 'Sir, I know you have a little packet, like this and this--I know who gave it to you.' To-day you have all these _tancas_ and servants and cattle, but you owe them all to that poor soul who is now reduced to seven little ounces of dust. Good-bye. Give me a slice of bread and some honey. And forgive that poor soul.' 'Servants,' he would say, 'cross yourselves. This old woman who knows everything is Most Holy Mary.' Ah! ah! ah! The _rezetta_! I want the _rezetta_. That man is not my son! The _rezetta_! The _rezetta_!" When it was light. Aunt Grathia went to Anania and told him what Olì had said. "That's the one thing wanting," he said smiling bitterly, "that she should doubt me! I'll soon prove to her that I am--myself." "Son, don't be unnatural. Content her at least in this one small matter." "But I haven't got the thing. I threw it away. If I can find it again, I'll send it." Aunt Grathia wished further to know the result of Anania's disclosures to his betrothed.