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evidently she shared the sergeantmajor's opinion. But she woke up as she did every morning; and, as usual, told him that the coffee was ready in the sideboard - all it needed was heating up; then she had got back to sleep; not quite asleep, though, but dozing. She heard her husband moving about in the kitchen, then go downstairs to open the street door of the stable. In five or ten minutes, by the time he had got the mule ready, she had again dropped off to sleep. A clink of metal woke her; it was her husband, come up again to fetch his cigarettes and, fumbling on the bedside table in the dark, had knocked over a little silver Sacred Heart, given to her by an aunt who was Mother Superior at the Immacolata Convent. Almost wide awake, she asked her husband what was the matter. 'Nothing,' was his reply, 'go to sleep. I've forgotten my cigarettes.'
    'Put the light on,' she said, wide awake now. He said there was no need, then asked her whether she had been woken by two shots fired nearby, or by him knocking over the Sacred Heart. That was just like him, she said, capable of blaming himself all day for having woken her. He really had loved her.
    'And did you hear the two shots?'
    'No. In my sleep I hear every sound in the house, my husband's movements, but outside there might be the fireworks for Santa Rosalia and I'd not wake.'
    'What happened next?'
    'I put on the light, the little light beside me, sat up in bed and asked him what had happened, what the two shots had been. My husband said: "I don't know, but running down the street I saw ..."'
    'Who?' The captain rapped in sudden excitement, leaning across the desk towards the woman. Sudden alarm distorted her features; for a moment she looked ugly. The captain leaned back again in his chair and, in a quiet voice, again asked: 'Who?'
    'He said a name I don't remember, or perhaps a nickname. Now I come to think of it, it might have been a nickname.'
    She used the word ingiuria and for the first time the captain needed the sergeantmajor's talents as interpreter.
    'Nickname,' said the sergeantmajor, 'almost everybody here has one, some so offensive that they really are "injuries".'
    'It might have been an ingiuria? said the captain, 'but it might also have been some odd surname sounding like an ingiuria. Had you ever heard your husband use the name or ingiuria before ...? Try to remember. It's very important.'
    'I'm not sure I'd ever heard it before.'
    'Try to remember ... and in the meanwhile tell me what else he said or did.'
    'He said nothing else. He just left.'
    For some minutes, ever since the woman had shown sudden alarm, the sergeantmajor's face had been frozen into an expression of baleful incredulity. That, according to him, had been the moment to put on the screw, to frighten her enough to force it out of her, that name or nickname. Sure as God, she had it stamped on her memory. The captain, on the other hand, was being kinder than ever.
    'Who does he think he is? Arsene Lupin?' thought the sergeantmajor, whose reading days were so far behind him that he mistook burglar for policeman.
    'Try to remember that ingiuria? said the captain, 'and in the meanwhile the sergeantmajor will be kind enough to offer us some coffee.'
    'Coffee too,' thought the sergeantmajor. 'It's bad enough not to give her a proper go over, but coffee ...!'
    'Yes, sir,' was all he said.
    The captain began to talk about Sicily, at its loveliest when most rugged and barren; and how intelligent the Sicilians were. An archaeologist had told him how swift and deft the peasants were during excavations, much more than specialized workmen from the North. It's not true, he said, that Sicilians are lazy or lack initiative.
    The coffee came and he was still talking about Sicily and Sicilians. The woman drank hers with little sips, showing some refinement for a pruner's wife. The captain was now passing Sicilian literature in review from Verga to The Leopard, dwelling on a particular aspect of literature,