Adam's Breed

The heat of the summer lay heavy on the forest in spite of its splendid trees. The air was often a-shimmer with heat, and small, winged insects would dance in the shimmer or scud across the surface of the pools. The nights were disturbed by the hooting of owls, flying on their wide, soundless wings; but the streams grew less noisy, and by noontide the ponies must draw in to shelter from the sun. Gian-Luca continued to feed his songbirds while forgetting to feed himself -- for now there was no Maddalena to remind him, and his distaste for food had been growing again lately; he never felt really hungry these days, which was strange considering his life. It began to irk him to walk into Lyndhurst -- and of course the less one ate, the less one needed; there were always berries to be found in the forest, so sometimes he lived on berries. But food he must buy because of his birds, and because of a wild roan pony -- a fierce little fellow, very handy with his hoofs, very anxious not to sell his free soul. And yet, as is often the case with his betters, curiosity would overcome his shyness; he could not keep away from the strange fascination of this man-thing who followed him with carrots. Once a week, when Gian-Luca went in to the post, he would purchase his frugal supplies; carrots for the pony, bread and seed for the birds, and occasionally something for Gian-Luca. His clothes were worn out and his shoes needed soling, very badly indeed they needed soling; but out in the forest he had ceased to wear shoes; he went about barefoot for the joy of the earth, and his love of the forest was increased by this contact of his naked feet with its soil.

His possessions were gradually dwindling away, and somehow they never got replaced. He had given his raincoat to a woman one evening, drenched through she had been, that poor Sister of the Road, and it always hurt him to see such women battered by the wind and the rain. Their faces were sunken or heavily bloated, their tired feet dragged slowly or shuffled to keep up with the shuffling stride of their men. They were miserable, heartsick, homesick creatures, the outcasts of cities, the outcasts of life.