'
Burdened by their black encounter, the two passed again behind the
Cathedral. Farina's hungry glances devoured each footmark of their
track. Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees, and
groped for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony,
drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices
of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy
in his breast. At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid
him, and ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his
religious lore inspire. By-and-by they reached the head of the street
where Margarita dwelt. The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if
touched with a warning of dawn. Chill sighs from the open land passed
through the spaces of the city. On certain coloured gables and wood-
crossed fronts, the white light lingered; but mostly the houses were
veiled in dusk, and Gottlieb's house was confused in the twilight with
those of his neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness and the
old grandeur of its timbered bulk. They determined to take up their
position there again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his
shoulders, and Guy nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.
On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude
earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some
valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.
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