"How is it? But is Gardana still alive?" "Come, do you think he really is dead? No, no, they alone give this kind of tidings of themselves." "And why?" "They have to be on their guard, the bailiffs are after them, they might capture them." "Perhaps----" The spinning-wheel spun on. The spool wound the thread, the treadle hummed, filling the room with a soothing noise. Doda Sili said wonderingly: "Who knows what kind of man he is?" "Gardana?" "Gardana." "Not a very big man, but large enough to terrify one, with a black beard--oh, so black!--and, when you least expect it, there he is on your road, just as though he had sprung out of the ground. Didn't our Toli once meet him!" "How was that?" The spinning-wheel stopped suddenly. A swarm of gnats came in through the windows, and buzzed round in the warmth of the sun; and Lena said quietly: "It was on his way from the sheepfold; he came upon Gardana on the Padea-Murgu." "Oh, it might have been somebody else." "It was he, he himself, with that beard, those garments----" And so the conversation continued. Toli, the shepherd, took no part in the talk. He sat over on the floor, silent, impassive--like a moss-grown stone. Only occasionally he raised his bushy eyebrows, and a troubled, misty look shone in his eyes. Tega's wife wondered to herself, she could not understand him; really, what was the matter with him? He was brave, she knew he had not his equal for courage, when he had charge of the herd not an animal was ever lost; all the same, what a man he was, always frowning, and never a smile on his lips! There must be something with him, naturally it must be---- And breaking off her train of thought she suddenly spoke to him. "Toli, during all the months you have been with us I have never asked you whether you are married?" The question was unexpected. The shepherd seemed to be considering. Then he answered: "No." "What? You have never married? Have you no wife, no home?" "Home--ah!" he sighed. "You are right, even I once had a home, even I had hopes of a bride, but they came to nought--what would you, it was not written in the book of destiny--I was poor." He spoke haltingly, and his eyes wandered here and there. And after one motion of his hand, as though to say "I have much sorrow in my heart," he added: "That girl is dead--and I, too, shall die, everything will die." One afternoon in March, as the shepherd did not appear, Mitu Tega prepared to go alone to the fold. He brought out the horse, bought two bags of bread, and a lamb freshly killed, went to the mill where he procured some barley, and then on slowly, quietly--he on foot, the horse in front--till he reached his destination just as the sun was disappearing behind the Aitosh mountains. The shepherds rubbed their eyes when they saw him, but he called out: "I have brought a lamb for roasting." "You must eat it with us," said Toli, "and stay the night here." "No, for they expect me at home."