She knelt and tried to make the baby swallow, lifting its little head from Vanini's arm.

"The doctor would do that," said somebody in the crowd.

The father demanded: "Where's the spell?"

"Can't you get it down?" said Vanini; "get your finger between his lips and let the brandy run down." "What are you saying?" asked the child's father, shortly.

"London Bridge is falling down, falling down' Florida could not get the little clenched lips open. "I can't," she half sobbed to Vanini; "I can't do it."

"Let me," said Vanini. His hands were wonderful. He got the brandy down the poor little tightened throat. He had rubbed the little body till something of warmth had come to it.

"This is no spell," said the father, in a voice that threatened.

"Wait, wait," begged Florida; "London Bridge is falling down'

"The kettle, hot water," said Vanini, not looking up.

She got the kettle filled, and the lamp lighted under it, chanting all the while. It took terribly long. It seemed as if they could never get heat, as if the child would die before they could warm it. The scaldino scarcely warmed through the blankets. The draught blew the flame under the kettle so that Florida must keep her hands about it to screen it, and the water seemed never to heat. And all the time there must be kept up the pretense, she must go on droning over the nonsense, become dreadful, of London Bridge.

The old hag's muttering joined hers, and the muttering of the priest. The child's breathing sounded

dreadfully through their voices; there was all the time the howl of the wind around the house. The voices of the crowd outside came with the wind into the room through the still open door. Vanini's quick, short orders cut through all these other sounds, and gave Florida a sharp sense of relief. In the midst of the close-pressing little crowd, they were quite alone, fighting death together. They had never heard of one another, and suddenly each was, for an hour, everything to the other. The world fell back. There was no world, only they two were there, fighting death.

Vanini's knowledge of what to do was rapid and sure. Florida felt that she knew what he wanted done as quickly as he himself knew, and the people, more and more, let her do it. Soeu' Teré, huddled over the bowl, seemed to have forgotten she was there. All the others, watching her, must have seen how she cared. She cared terribly. She seemed to be going through, all over again, the suffering of her own baby. The beating of the little heart meant the life of her own baby, passing. She did not know if the night were years long or scarcely a minute. It was for herself she fought the whole night through. Toinetta crouched on the floor and scarcely moved the whole night through; the father stood over them and watched, and the hag kept up her mumbling the whole night through. All the night through people came and went and filled the room with sound and movement. After a while many of them seemed to have gone away. All of those who had stood outside were gone, and somebody shut the door. The priest went away. He tried to talk about something to the people, but nobody seemed to listen. Florida was conscious again that, as he talked, a curiously humble look came into Vanini's face. He took no heed

of anything the priest said, and yet seemed to have a special gentleness for him.

Florida had loved the reverendo since she was a child, conscious, vaguely, even as a child, of the broader ways life opened to her, of her easy touch on things beyond his reach. She had great pity for him, now that she could do what he could not do for his own people. As he was leaving, she sprang up from where she knelt by the baby, and ran after him to the door.

"Reverendo, you will come early to-morrow, it will all be better then."

He looked at her and answered "Yes," patiently and stupidly.

The people left in the room stood and whispered, and drew back, and drew near, more and more letting her and Vanini do what they could. There was terribly little that they could do, only to keep the people away from the baby and get it warm somehow, stimulate the poor little flicker it had left of life and keep the flame in. And for that they must fight hard each moment together. Maria Domenica, after a while, was allowed to help. It was she who got the cheese basket from where it hung from the rafters and packed the baby into it with the blankets and the scaldino. And all the while mistral kept up its wailing about the house; wailing, wailing, all on one long note.

The neighbors went away, one after another. It was Bacè who persuaded them to go. Everything in the world would be right, he said, if it were left to the Signorina. He went, and they went, given confidence by his confidence, quieted by the way he took the Signorina's power for granted, even by the customary, familiar little gesture of winding the scarf about his throat as he stooped to pick up his lantern.

Florida scarcely noticed at the time, but afterwards,

remembering, she wondered rather, that it should have been Bacè and not Maria Domenica who had seen the need of getting the people away. They went, one after the other.

VII

THEY went, one after another, all but the woman of the gold earrings. She stayed and talked. She had talked the whole night through. Through it all Florida was conscious of her voice, going on and on, and the things she said must have forced themselves upon her understanding too, for she remembered them afterwards.

Toinetta should never have taken her baby to the castle, she said. She herself, Giulin Settinella, had warned her. But Toinetta would show off her baby to the grand lady who had no baby. Never mind what any one said, indeed, the baby should be shown off at the castle. What had she, Giulin, who had worked for two months at the castle, and knew, told Toinetta? What had the whole paese told Toinetta that day when she was so pleased because the lady had picked up her baby in the path and hugged him and kissed him and told her to bring him to the castle? And what had they done with the money the lady gave Toinetta that day at the castle? It was cursed money. She, Giulin, had not lived for two months at the castle without knowing that everything of it was cursed. What had Toinetta thought when the lady held him in her arms the whole time at the castle? And had she not known, when at last she did take him away, and the lady stood in the door and looked and looked after him, how it would be? She, Giulin, had known the instant Toinetta told her. If

she were Toinetta the castle lady should pay for that look. The whole paese should see to it that the castle lady paid for that look, and for all the evil that had befallen the town since she came to the castle. The whole of the paese should see to it that she paid the full price of the evil that was in her eyes. Over and over again, the night through, Giulin repeated that "she should pay."

Sometimes the old hag nodded and mumbled it after her," She shall pay." And once, when, in the horrible small hours before dawn, the fight seemed to have grown hopeless, and even Vanini faltered a little, Maria Domenica emphasized the threat with a savage "Ah, ah!"

Afterwards Florida wondered that a superstition almost foreign to these morose Northern people, a race unimaginative, unemotional, reticent, compared with the races of the South, should so have taken hold of them. At the time she wondered at nothing, only fought, with Vanini, forces stronger and stranger than she realized, the whole night through.

When white dawn came in at the unglazed window, there was nothing left but to watch.

"If we can get through this hour," said Vanini, "it will be all right."

They had set the basket at last out of the draught that swept the floor, on one of the only two chairs in the cabin. Vanini had drawn the other chair close to it, and sat with his hand on the baby's wrist.

"Do you understand, Toinetta, Giulin," he said, "the baby will get well?"

Toinetta crept nearer to Florida on the floor. “If she looks at him again, Signorina —”

The father pointed with his thumb to Soeu' Teré, nodding over her bowl: "She did none of it.”

"There was nothing for her to do," said Vanini.