had followed him, wrapped in a mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,—
"If anything should happen to it—Heaven forefend—we are ruined with the prospects before us."
The woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky, desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with sulphur matches!
"In spite of the crop which I put in," mourned massaro Cirino, pulling off his doublet, "why, that ass has worked himself to death like a stupid mule. That ass is under a curse!"
His wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field, and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,—
"The ass had nothing to do with the fail-
