Nancy put down her pen. Her struggles with Italian seemed to have deprived her of the use of her own tongue. She could not express her appreciation of what he had done for her except in a bread-and-butter way that would be worse than writing nothing. For all the sunlight flickering on the pink and yellow houses opposite she felt overwhelmed by a wintry loneliness and frost. And then she heard coming up from the street below the sound of bagpipes. She went to the window and looked out. Two men in heavy blue cloaks and steeple-crowned felt hats, two shaggy men cross-gartered, were playing before the little shrine of the Blessed Virgin at the corner of the Via Virgilio an ancient tune, a tune as ancient as the hills whence every year they came down for the feast of the Immaculate Conception to play their seasonable carols and grave melodies until Christmas-tide. Nancy had been told about them, and here they were, these—she could not remember their name, but it began with “z”—these _zamp_ something or other. And while she stood listening by the window she heard far and wide the pipes of other pious mountaineers piping their holy ancient tunes. Their bourdon sounded above the noise of the traffic, above the harsh cries of the street-vendors, above the chattering of people and the clattering of carts and the cracking of whips, above the tinkling of mandolins in the barber-shops, sounded remote and near and far and wide as the bourdon of bees in summer. The playing of these pipers calmed the fever of Nancy’s dissatisfaction and seemed to give her an assurance that her failure was not yet the sad fact she was imagining. She decided to postpone for a little while her ultimatum to Kenrick and, tearing up the unfinished letter, threw the pieces on the open brazier, over which for so many hours of the wintry days Signor Arcucci used to huddle, slowly stirring the charcoal embers with an iron fork and musing upon the days when he sang this or that famous part. He was out of the room for a moment, but presently he and his Signora, as he called her, came in much excited to say that the _zampognieri_ were going to play for them. The pipers in the gimcrack room looked like two great boulders from their own mountains, and the droning throbbed almost unbearably in the constricted space. When everybody in turn had given them a lira or two, they acknowledged the offerings by presenting Nancy as the guest and stranger with a large wooden spoon. She was taken aback for the moment by what would have been in England the implication of such a gift. Even when she had realised that it was intended as a compliment the omen remained. She could not help wondering if this wooden spoon might not prove to be the only gift she should ever take home from Italy. Nevertheless, the _zampognieri_ with their grave carols healed her fear of discouragement, and during the next fortnight Maestro Gambone on more than one occasion actually praised her singing and found that at