I shall go to Muro next month.

Some day, I will tell you my story, perhapssome day, if you will come to Muro, dear.

When she was ready to go up to Muro, she knew that without those letters life in such a solitude would be well nigh unsupportable, whereas, being able to look forward to them, and to answering them, her hours of idleness were already a foretasted pleasure.

Even Elettra, born a peasant of the mountains, thought her mistress's decision amazingly bold, though she approved of it in her heart, and had been ready to go to Muro with Veronica long ago.

He was to find a man in Muro to help him in the stables, and he was the only servant, not a native, whom she meant to employ.

"You, at least, do not think that I am mad to come to Muro, do you?"

" "Is it so far?" asked Veronica, whose ideas about the position of her property were still uncertain, for it had never struck Elettra that her mistress did not know how far it was from Eboli to Muro.

She had been struck by the practical necessity for doing something, when Don Teodoro had first written to her about the condition of the people in Muro, and her own observations made on her farms in the Falernian districtone of the richest corners of vine land in all Italyhad convinced her that some sort of action was urgently necessary.

Possibly that last fact had even influenced her a little in her final determination to live at Muro, rather than in any other of four or five equally habitable or uninhabitable places which she owned, and where she might have begun her work under circumstances quite as favourable to success.

Then, in the shadow below the sun-line cut by the mountains across the earth, she saw a sharp peak, grey and regular as a pyramid, rising in the midst of the high valley, and then beyond it, as the carriage rolled along, there was a misty landscape of a far, low valleyand then, all at once, the brown, tiled roofs of her own Muro were at her feet, and far to the left, out of the houses, rose the round grey keep of the fortress.

Just then, she looked down, and there, at her feet, were the brown roofs of Muro.

Her work and occupation were to be in Muro, and she cared very little about what might happen anywhere else.

Amidst her first arrangements for her own comfort, she did not forget what she looked upon as her chief work, and before that day was over she had begun what was to be a systematic improvement of Muro.

"There shall be no more pigs in Muro," answered the young princess.

If I find one pig in Muro a week from to-day, and if, in fine weather, I cannot walk dry shod where I please, I will take another steward.

As for the people of Muro, they were dumb with astonishment.

But before Veronica had been in Muro ten days, the municipality was nothing more than the shadow of a name.

He found it hard, indeed, to keep pace with her swift advances towards the civilization of Muro, and he was quite incapable of entering into the boldness of some of her generalizations, which, to tell the truth, were youthful enough when she first expressed her ideas to him.

And so, seeing the great things that were done by Veronica in Muro, and secretly giving of his very little where she gave very much, Don Teodoro grew daily to be more and more happy in the satisfaction of his strongest instinct; and little by little he, also, came to look upon his princess as the incarnation of a good power come to illuminate his darkness and to lift his people out of degradation to human estate.

When she was alone, she wrote about them to Gianluca, giving him what was almost a daily chronicle of her new life, and waiting anxiously for the answers to her letters which came with almost perfect regularity for some time after her own arrival at Muro.

She carelessly wrote that she wished he were at Muro to see what she had done in a short time.

He repeated her own words, as though wishing her to see how much he valued them, saying that he wished indeed that he were at Muro, to see what she had accomplished.

To some extent, he added, the fulfilment of the wish only depended on herself, for in the following week he was going with his father and mother and all the family to spend a month in a place they had not far from Avellino, and that, as she knew, was not at an impossible distance from Muro.

If she could not see him in Naples and could not go to see him at his father's place, he must come to Muro.

As for Gianluca, if he were well enough to be taken to Avellino, he could be brought to Muro.