During these six years father and daughter had lived frugally, almost as the peasants lived; yet with a daintiness, an order, which were unknown to the peasants. The little Antonia--Toni, as they called her--grew straight and strong as she played on the mountain slopes, or ate the simple meals of grapes and bread and goat's flesh provided for her by the old housekeeper, Fiammetta, who ruled both the pretty child and the handsome young father with a rule of iron which yet made life a very well-ordered and gracious existence. But when Toni had almost reached her ninth birthday the change came. The good old priest died; and with the death of his sole friend Roger Gibbs found life in the village impossible. Truth to tell, it was a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly, his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, and yet more life. Italy became all at once unendurable. The nomad spirit was aroused, and nothing would satisfy the man but a fresh start in life's pilgrimage. His little daughter, too, must be educated; and although he loved the child with all the concentrated passion of a man who has lost the woman of whom the child is his only memento, he yet felt that the time had come when he must shake himself free from the trammels of domesticity and live once again the life of a man in some free, wild, adventure-filled land. A month after Father Pietro's death Roger and his little daughter Antonia were in England. The father's first object was to seek out his brother Fred and see if he and his wife would take charge of the child for a short time; and this he found both Fred and his comely spouse very willing to do. There were other children in the home who were only too ready to welcome the pretty little Toni; and after a stay of some weeks in the noisy Brixton house Roger Gibbs had bidden his little daughter farewell, and had gone forth once more, this time as assistant purser on a liner, a post to which one of his former employers had assisted him opportunely. It was a chance to see more of the world, and the man embraced it gladly enough, though it would certainly prove irksome in the end. After that it was long before Toni saw her father again. At regular intervals he sent money for her maintenance; and she grew up with her cousins, attending the big Council School in the next street with them, and sharing in all the ups and downs of the Gibbs family. When she was thirteen Roger returned from an expedition to Peru, in the course of which he had amassed a respectable sum of money, and father and daughter met again, a meeting fraught, on Roger's side, with something like disappointment.