herself suffered from all the thirst which they reported him to be enduring.
Then the old woman shut her up in the house, so that she might not hear another word about Gramigna, and she stopped up all the cracks of the door with images of the saints.
Peppa heard all that was said in the street behind the sacred images, and she turned red and white, as if the devil had kindled all his fires in her face.
Finally she heard it said that Gramigna had been located among the prickly pear-trees of Palagonia.
"They have been firing for two hours," they said. "He has killed one carabineer and wounded more than three compagni d'armi. But they sent back such a hailstorm of shots that he must have been hit; there was a pool of blood where he had been."
Then Peppa made the sign of the cross before the old mother's pillow, and made her escape out of the window.
