The features were calm
and resigned, but when the pain of the death agony seized upon her the
thin lips parted and deep lines of suffering appeared about the mouth;
She seemed to struggle as best she could, but the low, quavering cry
would not be stifled--lower and more trembling each time it was renewed.
An old barefooted friar with a kindly eye and a flowing grey beard stood
beside her. He had done what he could to comfort her and was going away.
But she feebly begged him to stay a little longer. In an interval, while
she had no pain, she spoke to her boys.
"Ruggiero--Sebastiano--dear sons--you could not save me, and I am going.
God bless you. Our Lady help you--remember--you are Children of the
King--remember--ah."
She sighed heavily and her jaw fell as another sort of pallor spread
suddenly over her face. Poor Carmela was dead at last, after weeks of
sickness, worked to death, as the neighbours said, by Pietro Casale and
his wife Concetta.
She left those two boys, lean, poorly clad lads of ten and twelve years,
yellow haired and blue eyed, with big bones and hunger-pinched faces.
They could just remember seeing their father brought home dead with a
knife wound in his breast six years earlier.
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