"You waste all your time with _them_," he said scornfully; "well, they can make wax hares for you! I'd have caught the whole nestful of the real ones, if I hadn't been waiting to show them to you. Well, now we'll look for a crow's nest." The little goatherd did all he could to amuse Anania, but the young child found the autumn mists cold on the mountains, and he stayed among the houses. In those days he saw little of his mother and treasured up few remembrances of her. She was always out. She worked by the day in fields or houses. She dug potatoes and came home late, worn out, livid with cold, famished. Anania's father had not been to Fonni for a long time; the boy had no recollection of ever having seen him. It was the bandit's widow who to a certain extent mothered the poor little love-child, and of her he retained pleasant memories. The widow had rocked him and hushed him to sleep with the melancholy wail of strange dirges. She washed his head, she cut his nails, she blew his nose violently. Every evening she sat spinning by the fire and telling the heroic deeds of her bandit. The children listened greedily; but Olì no longer cared for the stories and often went away to lie down on her bed in the garret. Anania's sleeping place was at her feet. Often when he went up he found his mother already asleep, but cold as ice; and he tried to warm her feet with his own little hot ones. More than once he heard her sob in the silence of the night, but he was too much in awe of her to ask her why. He consulted Zuanne on the subject, and the little goatherd thought it his duty to impart certain information to his friend. "You ought to know," he said, "that you're a bastard; your father isn't married to your mother. There are lots of people like that, you know," he added consolingly. "Why didn't he marry her?" "Because he had a wife already. He'll marry her when that one dies." "When will that one die?" "When God wills. Your father used to come and see us, so I know him." "What's he like?" asked Anania, frowning under an impulse of hatred towards this unknown father who didn't come to see him. This was probably what his mother cried about at night. "Well," said Zuanne, cudgelling his memory, "he's tall and very handsome with eyes like fireflies. He has a soldier's coat." "Where is he?" "At Nuoro, Nuoro is a great city which can be seen from the Gennargentu. I know the Monsignore at Nuoro, because he christened me." "Have you been there? To Nuoro?" "Of course I have," said Zuanne, lying. "I don't believe it. You haven't been there. I remember you haven't been there!" "I was there before you was born, that's how it was!" After this Anania went willingly with Zuanne even when it was cold. He kept asking questions about his father and about Nuoro and the road to that city. At night he dreamed of the road, and saw a city with so many, many churches, with such big, big houses, and mountains higher than even the Gennargentu.