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Nobody will know
what to do with her. However, the Government wants her.' He shrugged his
shoulders. 'I suppose he must have buried large quantities of his loot
in places that she alone knows of.'
"At dawn I saw her coming up the ridge, guarded by two soldiers, and
carrying her child on her arm.
"I walked to meet her.
"'Is he living yet?' she asked, confronting me with that white,
impassive face he used to look at in an adoring way.
"I bent my head, and led her round a clump of bushes without a word. His
eyes were open. He breathed with difficulty, and uttered her name with a
great effort.
"'Erminia!'
"She knelt at his head. The little girl, unconscious of him, and with
her big eyes looking about, began to chatter suddenly, in a joyous, thin
voice. She pointed a tiny finger at the rosy glow of sunrise behind the
black shapes of the peaks. And while that child-talk, incomprehensible
and sweet to the ear, lasted, those two, the dying man and the kneeling
woman, remained silent, looking into each other's eyes, listening to the
frail sound.


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