It was from Don Teodoro, and Veronica read it while she drank her tea and Elettra was making a fire in the next room.
The old priest did not refer to the strange story he had told her ten days earlier.

But he recalled her question concerning the people at Muro and their condition.

They were indeed desperately poor, he said, and the winter was a hard one in the mountains.

There were many sick, and there was no hospital,--not so much as a room in which a dying beggar might lie out of the cold.

It was a very pitiful tale, told carefully and accurately.