When we left Florence my mother could walk eighteen or twenty miles a day.

She did it for weeks.

But then she wore out, and I had to haul her in my cart; but it was only for three days.

She gave up and died before we started out, the morning of the fourth day.

We buried her by the roadside without a coffin--that was hard, to put her old, gray head right down into the ground with no protection.