to be seen seated patiently on a certain
stone bench, waiting to be served, whole
families of beggars: poor yellow-faced
wretches, who all receive a meal of bread
and a drink of wine, according to ancient
custom, in spite of the vigorous
remonstrances and often violent interposition
of Argo, the watch dog, as large and as white
as a polar bear.

The old cardinal's retreat has its ghost, of
course. One evening we had been tempted by
the wondrous beauty of the moonlight into
the woods. The twisted ilex trunks looked
down upon us, like a fantastic multitude
hovering in the deep shadows; above, the
moon rode in an unclouded sky. We went
on and descended from the plateau into
the Siena road, over-arched with black
branches. On one side, a wall borders the
road; on the other, where the ground falls
rapidly, and the road is terraced, there is
not even a parapet, but a fall of some ten
or fourteen feet. The night was very still,
nothing but the distant baying of a dog
broke the silence. Suddenly a sound of
wheels came on us, very faintly at first,
then ceased, then came on again. At last
it grew loud and distinct: it was a baroc-
cino (gig) returning late from Siena with
some of our people; Antonio butler, Adamo
keeper, and Fileppo gardener.

"Oh, signori, signori!" gasped Antonio,
"we have just seen the donnina; there, just
below, between the Satyro (a great statue)
and this chapel here. We saw her as plainly
as we see you, standing in the middle of
the road: with her head bent."

"Yes," broke in Adamo, shaking himself
as if waking out of a nightmare, " yes,
indeed! Santa Maria! I was leading the horse
—for the road is so rough, and the shadows
are so dark—when I saw, in the moonlight,
a woman with something over her head, like
the peasant-women wear, come out of this
wall and glide across the road, close before
me. She disappeared over the parapet
among the woods. Anima mia! she was
there, beside me, for the horse saw her too,
and so started and shied, that he nearly
threw the gig over the parapet."

"Indeed, signori," said Antonio, " the
gig jerked, and I was almost thrown out.
I saw the donnina too."

"Yes, but not so plainly as I did," cried
Adamo. "I tell you she passed close,
close to my hand, under the horse's nose;
with a cloth on her head and a spindle in
her hand. She passed across the road over
that deep fall, which must have killed any
mortal creature."

These two men had been soldiers, were
no cowards, and were ready to face any
mortal foe bravely. They were comforted
with wine, and sent to bed. We then sent
for the head man—the Fattore—to ask
what it all meant?

It meant that from father to son, so long
back that no one can tell where it began, it
had been known among the peasants that
these woods are haunted by a ghost in the
shape of a woman of small stature, known
as the donnina, who generally appears
towards dusk, after the Ave Maria, at
special spots, and usually in stormy weather.
She had been often seen where the
servants had seen her, in the wood on the
road to Siena; also in a deep hollow or
borro, the bed of a torrent, dry in summer,
and blocked with masses of rock and rolling
stones, brought down by the upper
streams—an ugly lonesome place, with
exceedingly steep banks, overgrown with
scanty shrubs.

She generally appears, we were told, in
black, her head covered, her face bent
down over a spindle, which she seems to
turn as she moves. Nobody has ever seen
her face. There is nothing terrific or horrible
about her, save the fact that she is
supernatural. She always glides slowly away, so
slowly, as to be distinctly seen disappearing
among rocks, or over walls, in the woods.
Not a year passes that she is not seen several
times, especially towards early winter.

We spoke with those to whom she has
most frequently appeared. An old man,
by name Currini, a mason, specially
remembered that once as he was returning home,
he saw a woman whom he supposed, in the
fading light, to be his daughter, sitting on
the wall of a rough little bridge that
crosses the stream in the borro, spinning.
Her back was turned towards him. " Ah,
Teresa mia, are you waiting for me?" he
said, patting out his hand to touch her
shoulder. The hand fell upon air, the
figure rose (the back still turned towards
him), and slowly glided away down the
steep bank of the borro, and vanished
among the big rocks heaped up there. He
has often seen the donnina since, but never
has been conscious of feeling the horror he
felt then.

Then we talked with a keeper called
Carlo di Ginestreto, a fine Saxon-looking
fellow, with honest round blue eyes and a
shock of uncombed yellow hair. This Carlo
has his home on the hill over the borro,
and had seen the donnina among the trees
there, three months ago. " Once," he said,