"Silent still?" I said. "Talk to me, then, of your mother, Rima. Do you know that you will see her again some day?"

"Yes, when I die. That is what the priest said."

"Yes, at Voa--do you know? Mother died there when I was small--it is so far away! And there are thirteen houses by the side of the river--just here; and on this side--trees, trees."

This was important, I thought, and would lead to the very knowledge I wished for; so I pressed her to tell me more about the settlement she had named, and of which I had never heard.

"Everything have I told you," she returned, surprised that I did not know that she had exhausted the subject in those half-dozen words she had spoken.

Obliged to shift my ground, I said at a venture: "Tell me, what do you ask of the Virgin Mother when you kneel before her picture? Your grandfather told me that you had a picture in your little room."

"You know!" flashed out her answer, with something like resentment.

"It is all there in there," waving her hand towards the hut. "Out here in the wood it is all gone--like this," and stooping quickly, she raised a little yellow sand on her palm, then let it run away through her fingers.

(Editor：food)