“Yes, then Orestes gave his son to the engineer. The next day the boy got a whipping from him. He beat him every day. The boy grew more and more feeble. Orestes saw it, and asked the engineer to spare the boy, but he had no mercy. He said that the boy was lazy, and he continued to persecute him. And now he is dead. My grandson is dead, Margherita.” The girl had quite forgotten all her own happiness. She was once more only the miner’s daughter, the protector of the little wagons, the poor child who used to sit on the bright terrace and weep over the hardships of the black mines. “Why do you let the man live?” she cried. The old woman looked at her furtively. Then she crept close to her with a knife. “Orestes sends you this with a thousand questions,” she said. Margherita Cornado took the knife, kissed the blade, and gave it back without a word. It was the evening before the wedding. The parents of the bridegroom were awaiting their son. He was to come home from the mines towards night; but he never came. Later in the night a servant was sent to the Grotte mines to look for him, and found him a mile from Girgenti. He lay murdered at the roadside. A search for the murderer was immediately instituted. Strict examinations of the miners were held, but the culprit could not be discovered. There were no witnesses; no one could be prevailed upon to betray a comrade. Then Margherita Cornado appeared and denounced Orestes, who was the son of her god-mother, Santuzza, and who had not moved to Racalmuto at all. She did it although she had heard afterwards that her betrothed had been guilty of everything of which Santuzza had accused him. She did it although she herself had sealed his doom by kissing the knife. She had hardly accused Orestes before she repented of it; she was filled with the anguish of remorse. In another land what she had done would not have been considered a crime, but it is so regarded in Sicily. A Sicilian would rather die than be an informer. Margherita Cornado enjoyed no rest either by night or by day. She had a continual aching feeling of anguish in her heart, a great unhappiness dwelt in her. She was not severely judged, because every one knew that she had loved the murdered man and thought that Santuzza had been too cruel towards her. No one spoke of her disdainfully, and no one refused to salute her. But it made no difference to her that others were kind to her. Remorse filled her soul and tortured her like an aching wound. Orestes had been sentenced to the galleys for life. Santuzza had died a few weeks after her son’s sentence had been passed, and Margherita could not ask forgiveness of either of them. She called on the saints, but they would not help her. It seemed as if nothing in the world could have the power to free her from the horror of remorse. At that time the famous Franciscan monk, Father Gondo, was sojourning in the neighborhood of Girgenti. He was preaching a pilgrimage to Diamante.