his devouring thirst he drank of it almost unceasingly, as if he had been shipwrecked on some bare rock without a drop to cool his mouth save such as rained from the clouds upon him.
But, if he should recover, when lie should recover, she said always to herself, she knew very well that his hunger in convalescence would equal his long fasting now; that he would want meat, wine, many things that she would never be able to procure; and the thought of this kept her harassed and anxious, and blinded her eyes to the autumnal colours on the moors and woods, and made her heedless of the departure of her songsters from the myrtle coverts and the jungle of cistus and bay.
When the call of the striginæ echoed over the marshes, or the night heron's croak thrilled hoarsely through the dark, they startled her now. She took them for the shout of soldiery or the boom of powder.
As she watched his fever, -and scanned the moors for him, so, as a child, she had watched the fluctuations of life in a storm-swallow with a broken wing that she had taken off the waves after a boatman had shot it. Often the bird had seemed lifeless,
