And Gardana--would you believe it--after he realized that it was hard fact, gnashed his teeth, beat his breast, and disappeared. Two days later he was on the mountains, and a gang with him.
Eh! love knows no bounds, love builds, but love also destroys many homes.
The girl's father was seized and murdered; not long after Dina was murdered too. Then Gardana spread terror for many years in succession.
For some time now, whatever he might have been doing, wherever he might be in hiding, nothing had been heard of him. But as soon as something happened, his name once again passed round the village: "Gardana, it is Gardana!"
Perhaps it was not he, perhaps he had left the mountains, perhaps even he was dead; but the people who knew something----
"How many did you say there were?" asked Mia.
"Two; both merchants. They came from abroad."
"Come, do you think he really is dead? No, no, they alone give this kind of tidings of themselves."
"They have to be on their guard, the bailiffs are after them, they might capture them."
The spinning-wheel spun on. The spool wound the thread, the treadle hummed, filling the room with a soothing noise.
"Not a very big man, but large enough to terrify one, with a black beard--oh, so black!--and, when you least expect it, there he is on your road, just as though he had sprung out of the ground. Didn't our Toli once meet him!"
The spinning-wheel stopped suddenly. A swarm of gnats came in through the windows, and buzzed round in the warmth of the sun; and Lena said quietly:
"It was on his way from the sheepfold; he came upon Gardana on the Padea-Murgu."
"It was he, he himself, with that beard, those garments----"
And so the conversation continued. Toli, the shepherd, took no part in the talk. He sat over on the floor, silent, impassive--like a moss-grown stone. Only occasionally he raised his bushy eyebrows, and a troubled, misty look shone in his eyes. Tega's wife wondered to herself, she could not understand him; really, what was the matter with him? He was brave, she knew he had not his equal for courage, when he had charge of the herd not an animal was ever lost; all the same, what a man he was, always frowning, and never a smile on his lips! There must be something with him, naturally it must be---- And breaking off her train of thought she suddenly spoke to him.