"At last! At last!"
She called to the driver--I could not see him, for I lay with my face
to the tilt--and he pulled up his horse with a jolt. Belike he had
been slumbering, and with the same jolt awoke himself. I tried to
lift a hand--I think to brush away the illusion of the window and its
painted panes.
Maybe, slight as it was, she mistook the movement to mean that I felt
stifled under the hood of the waggon and wanted air. At any rate,
she called again, and the driver (I have clean forgotten his face),
left his reins and came around to her. Between them they lifted me
out and laid me on a bank between the road and a water-course that
ran beside it. I heard the water rippling, near by, and presently
felt the cool, delicious touch of it as she dipped up a little in her
hollowed palms and moistened my bandages.
Our waggon had come to a halt in the very centre (as it seemed) of a
great plain, criss-crossed with dykes and lines of trees, and dotted
with distant hamlets. The hamlets twinkled in the fresh daylight,
and in the nearest one--a mile back on the road--a fine campanile
stood up against the sun, which pierced through three windows in its
topmost story.
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