At the edge of the village a group of donkeys was in readiness. Here the crowd paused. Not more than seventy-five elected to walk the seven miles to the station and back, and there were few relatives among them. Antonio’s father was as completely broken down as if he was giving his favorite son and the others to the grave, instead of their departing for a happy land. It was with difficulty that those natural leaders among the people effected the final separations, but at last, in the starlight, the two groups drew apart on the highway, the cavalcade with its foot retinue ascending along the face of the hill, the great, black mass of the crowd grouped about the end of the bridge shouting farewells. Some one struck up a farewell song, several voices joined in, among them the Vazzana boy’s clear soprano; but one by one they broke, and soon the song failed and ceased; and as the procession turned the corner that hid the town from view the long file of those left behind could be dimly seen moving back to the darkened homes. It were ill indeed not to speak of “Bella.” The day before, when donkeys were being hired for the ride to the station, I had been struck by the gentle and affectionate way in which she stood beside her owner’s young wife, and had marked her for my own. Experience with the army mule of Missouri extraction and his despised cousin, the Mexican burro, should have made me less trustful. For a half hour we cantered along in the dark, the babel of talk all about us. At the rougher places I held my camera carefully balanced on Bella’s neck in front of me, in order that it be not banged against projecting rocks or by other laden beasts pressing close alongside at times. When one wishes to urge a Sicilian donkey forward, one kicks him in the ribs and shouts high and nasally: “Ah-a-a-ah!”