The Shadow of the Czar

to herself in a very odd manner. She took no notice of the approach of Jacintha, and the latter perceived at once that her forebodings were realized. Barbara, her dark hair lying in disorder on her pillow, a bright color burning in her cheek, the light of reason quenched in her eye, was in a high state of fever. She was not speaking in Italian, the language used by her the previous evening, but in another tongue altogether strange to Jacintha. The latter returned quickly to her own room to make it known to Lambro, who had just struggled into his finery. " What else could be expected after sleeping at night in a damp forest? " was his comment. " Fever! and she in that very chamber, too! By God, if the Master should return and find her there! " " Come and listen to her. She is talking in a strange language: she looks at me with piteous eyes as if making some request. Perhaps you can understand her." The old Palicar followed her to Barbara's chamber. His roving life in the Balkan Peninsula had given him a knowledge, more or less imperfect, of all the languagesspoken from the Danube to Maina, but he failed to identify the speech of Barbara with any one of these. " It's not Romaic, nor Turkish, nor Albanian, nor ? " " Listen! " said Jacintha, in a startled voice. Amid the plaintive flow of unintelligible sound there came at irregular intervals a recurrence of the same three syllables. "Rav-en-na!" murmured Jacintha with white lips. ...