But it is high time to look after that precious depositum, that cruel Pandosta committed to the merciless waves, who, having been tossed in her little boat, for two days together, upon the tempestuous ocean, was driven on the shore of Sicily, and taken up by a poor shepherd, as he passed by
to seek some sheep that he was looking after, he thought that the pretty infant’s cry had been the bleating of the starved sheep that he was looking after; he espied the boat, and saw a little child ready to die with hunger, wrapped up in a crimson-velvet mantle, embroidered round with gold, with a neck-lace about its neck, which appeared as if it had been made of stars. This neck-lace, composed of divers forts of oriental gems, was that which Pandosta gave to Bellaria when first he courted her. The shepherd seeing her turn her head about, as if to seek the pap and cry afresh, he thought that it was some distressed infant, he took it in his arms, and spreading the mantle over it, out dropt a purse of gold: and, carrying the infant to his wife, she imagined it to be his bastard, till he shewed her thepearl
