Don Antonino was behind his black counter measuring wine.

His wife was with him now and helping him, a cheerful, clean woman having a fair complexion, grey hair and round sharp eyes with red lids--a stranger in Calabria like her husband.

She held the neck of a great pear-shaped demijohn, covered with straw, of which the lower part rested on the counter.

Antonino held a quart jug to be filled while she lowered the mouth, and he poured the measure each time into a barrel through a black tin funnel.

They both counted the measures in audible tones, checking each other as it were.