IT was Thursday, and according to a custom which dated back for five centuries, the Tribunal of the Waters was going to meet at the doorway of the Cathedral named after the Apostles.

The clock of the Miguelete pointed to a little after ten, and the inhabitants of the huerta were gathering in idle groups or seating themselves about the large basin of the dry fountain which adorned the plaza, forming about its base an animated wreath of blue and white cloaks, red and yellow handkerchiefs, and skirts of calico prints of bright colours.

Others were arriving, drawing up their horses, with their rush-baskets loaded with manure, satisfied with the collection they had made in the streets; still others, in empty carts, were trying to persuade the police to allow their vehicles to remain there; and while the old folks chatted with the women, the young went into the neighbouring cafÉ, to kill time over a glass of brandy, while chewing at a three-centime cigar.

All those of the huerta who had grievances to avenge were here, gesticulating and scowling, speaking of their rights, impatient to let loose the interminable chain of their complaints before the syndics or judges of the seven canals.

The bailiff of the tribunal, who had been carrying on this contest with the insolent and aggressive crowd for more than fifty years, placed a long sofa of old damask which was on its last legs within the shadow of the Gothic portal, and then set up a low railing, thereby closing in the square of sidewalk which had to serve the purpose of an audience-chamber.

The portal of the Apostles, old, reddish, corroded by the centuries, extending its gnawed beauty to the light of the sun, formed a background worthy of an ancient tribunal; it was like a canopy of stone devised to protect an institution five centuries old.

In the tympanum appeared the Virgin with six angels, with stiff white gowns and wings of fine plumage, chubby-cheeked, with heavy curls and flaming tufts of hair, playing violas and flutes, flageolets and tambourines. Three garlands of little figures, angels, kings, and saints, covered with openwork canopies, ran through three arches superposed over the three portals. In the thick, solid walls, forepart of the portal, the twelve apostles might be seen, but so disfigured, so ill-treated, that Jesus himself would not have known them; the feet gnawed, the nostrils broken, the hands mangled; a line of huge figures who, rather than apostles, looked like sick men who had escaped from a clinic, and were sorrowfully displaying their shapeless stumps. Above, at the top of the portal, there opened out like a gigantic flower covered with wire netting, the coloured rose-window which admitted light to the church; and on the lower part the stone along the base of the columns adorned with the shields of Aragon, was worn, the corners and foliage having become indistinct through the rubbing of innumerable generations.

By this erosion of the portals the passing of riot and revolt might be divined. A whole people had met and mingled beside these stones; here, in other centuries, the turbulent Valencian populace, shouting and red with fury, had moved about; and the saints of the portal, mutilated and smooth as Egyptian mummies, gazing at the sky with their broken heads, appeared to be still listening to the Revolutionary bell of the Union, or the arquebus shots of the Brotherhood.

The bailiff finished arranging the Tribunal, and placed himself at the entrance of the enclosure to await the judges. The latter arrived solemnly, dressed in black, with white sandals, and silken handkerchiefs under their broad hats, they had the appearance of rich farmers. Each was followed by a cortÈge of canal-guards, and by persistent supplicants who, before the hour of justice, were seeking to predispose the judges' minds in their favour.

The farmers gazed with respect at these judges, come forth from their own class, whose deliberations did not admit of any appeal. They were the masters of the water: in their hands remained the living of the families, the nourishment of the fields, the timely watering, the lack of which kills a harvest. And the people of these wide plains, separated by the river, which is like an impassable frontier, designated the judges by the number of the canals.

A little, thin, bent, old man, whose red and horny hands trembled as they rested on the thick staff, was Cuart de Faitanar; the other, stout and imposing, with small eyes scarcely visible under bushy white brows, was Mislata. Soon RoscaÑa arrived; a youth who wore a blouse that had been freshly ironed, and whose head was round. After these appeared in sequence the rest of the seven:—Favara, Robella, Tornos and Mestalla.

Now all the representatives of the four plains were there; the one on the left bank of the river; the one with the four canals; the one which the huerta of Rufaza encircles with its roads of luxuriant foliage ending at the confines of the marshy Albufera; and the plain on the right bank of the Turia, the poetic one, with its strawberries of Benimaclet, its cyperus of Alboraya and its gardens always overrun with flowers.

The seven judges saluted, like people who had not seen each other for a week; they spoke of their business beside the door of the Cathedral: from time to time, upon opening the wooden screens covered with religious advertisements, a puff of incense-laden air, somewhat like the damp exhalation from a subterranean cavern, diffused itself into the burning atmosphere of the plaza.

At half-past eleven, when the divine offices were ended and only some belated devotee was still coming from the temple, the Tribunal began to operate.

The seven judges seated themselves on the old sofa; then the people of the huerta came running up from all sides of the plaza, to gather around the railing, pressing their perspiring bodies, which smelled of straw and coarse sheep's wool, close together, and the bailiff, rigid and majestic, took his place near the pole topped with a bronze crook, symbolic of aquatic majesty.

The seven syndics removed their hats and remained with their hands between the knees and their eyes upon the ground, while the eldest pronounced the customary sentence:

"Let the Tribunal begin."

Absolute stillness. The crowd, observing religious silence, seemed here, in the midst of the plaza, to be worshipping in a temple. The sound of carriages, the clatter of tramways, all the din of modern life passed by, without touching or stirring this most ancient institution, which remained tranquil, like one who finds himself in his own house, insensible to time, paying no attention to the radical change surrounding it, incapable of any reform.

The inhabitants of the huerta were proud of their tribunal. It dispensed justice; the penalty without delay, and nothing done with papers, which confuse and puzzle honest men.

The absence of stamped paper and of the clerk of court who terrifies, was the part best liked by these people who were accustomed to looking upon the art of writing of which they were ignorant with a certain superstitious terror. Here were no secretary, no pens, no days of anxiety while awaiting sentence, no terrifying guards, nor anything more than words.

The judges kept the declarations in their memory, and passed sentence immediately with the tranquillity of those who know that their decisions must be fulfilled. On him who would be insolent with the tribunal, a fine was imposed; from him who had refused to comply with the verdict, the water was taken away forever, and he must die of hunger.

Nobody played with this tribunal. It was the simple patriarchal justice of the good legendary king, coming forth mornings to the door of his palace in order to settle the disputes of his subjects; the judicial system of the Kabila chief, passing sentences at his tent-entrance. Thus are rascals punished, and the honourable triumph, and there is peace.

And the public, men, women, and children, fearful of missing a word, pressed close together against the railing, moving, sometimes, with violent contortions of their shoulders, in order to escape from suffocation.

The complainants would appear at the other side of the railing, before the sofa as old as the tribunal itself.

The bailiff would take away their staffs and shepherds' crooks, which he regarded as offensive arms incompatible with the respect due the tribunal. He pushed them forward until with their mantle folded over their hands they were planted some paces distant from the judges, and if they were slow in baring their head, the handkerchief was wrested from it with two tugs. It was hard, but with this crafty people it was necessary to act thus.

The line filing by brought a continuous outburst of intricate questions, which the judges settled with marvellous facility.

The keepers of the canals and the irrigation-guards, charged with the establishment of each one's turn in the irrigation, formulated their charges, and the defendants appeared to defend themselves with arguments. The old men allowed their sons, who knew how to express themselves with more energy, to speak; the widow appeared, accompanied by some friend of the deceased, a devoted protector, who acted as her spokesman.

The passion of the south cropped out in every case.

In the midst of the accusation, the defendant would not be able to contain himself. "You lie! What you say is evil and false! You are trying to ruin me!"

But the seven judges received these interruptions with furious glances. Here nobody was permitted to speak before his own turn came. At the second interruption, he would have to pay a fine of so many sous. And he who was obstinate, driven by his vehement madness, which would not permit him to be silent before the accuser, paid more and more sous.

The judges, without giving up their seats, would put their heads together like playful goats, and whisper together for some seconds; then the eldest, in a composed and solemn voice, pronounced the sentence, designating the fine in sous and pounds, as if money had suffered no change, and majestic Justice with its red robe and its escort of plumed crossbowmen were still passing through the centre of the plaza.

It was after twelve, and the seven judges were beginning to show signs of being weary of such prodigious outpouring of the stream of justice, when the bailiff called out loudly to Bautista Borrull, denouncing him for infraction and disobedience of irrigation-rights.

PimentÓ and Batiste passed the railing, and the people pressed up even closer against the bar.

Here were many of those who lived near the ancient land of Barret.

This trial was interesting. The hated new-comer had been denounced by PimentÓ, who was the "atandador"[G] of that district.

The bully, by mixing up in elections, and strutting about like a fighting cock all over the neighbourhood, had won this office which gave him a certain air of authority and strengthened his prestige among the neighbours, who made much of him and treated him on irrigation days.

Batiste was amazed at this unjust denunciation. His pallor was that of indignation. He gazed with eyes full of fury at all the familiar mocking faces, which were pressing against the rail, and at his enemy PimentÓ, who was strutting about proudly, like a man accustomed to appearing before the tribunal, and to whom a small part of its unquestionable authority belonged.

"Speak," said the eldest of the judges, putting one foot forward, for according to a century-old custom, the tribunal, instead of using the hands, signalled with the white sandal to him who should speak.

PimentÓ poured forth his accusation. This man who was beside him, perhaps because he was new in the huerta, seemed to think that the apportionment of the water was a trifling matter, and that he could suit his own blessed will.

He, PimentÓ, the atandador, who represented the authority of the canals in his district, had set for Batiste the hour for watering his wheat. It was two o'clock in the morning. But doubtless the seÑor, not wishing to arise at that hour, had let his turn go, and at five, when the water was intended for others, he had raised the flood-gate without permission from anybody (the first offence), and attempted to water his fields, resolving to oppose, by main force, the orders of the atandador, which constituted the third and last offence.

The thrice-guilty delinquent, turning all the colours of the rainbow, and indignant at the words of PimentÓ, was not able to restrain himself.

"You lie, and lie doubly!"

The tribunal became indignant at the heat and the lack of respect with which this man was protesting.

If he did not keep silent he would be fined.

But what was a fine for the concentrated wrath of a peaceful man! He kept on protesting against the injustice of men, against the tribunal which had, as its servants, such rogues and liars as PimentÓ.

The tribunal was stirred up; the seven judges became excited.

Four sous for a fine!

Batiste, realizing his situation, suddenly grew silent, terrified at having incurred a fine, while laughter came from the crowd and howls of joy from his enemies.

He remained motionless, with bowed head, and his eyes dimmed with tears of rage, while his brutal enemy finished formulating his denunciation.

"Speak," the tribunal said to him. But little sympathy was noted in the looks of the judges for this disturber, who had come to trouble the solemnity of their deliberations with his protests.

Batiste, trembling with rage, stammered, not knowing how to begin his defence because of the very fact that it seemed to him perfectly just.

The court had been misled; PimentÓ was a liar and furthermore his declared enemy. He had told him that his time for irrigation came at five, he remembered it very well, and was now affirming that it was two; just to make him incur a fine, to destroy the wheat upon which the life of his family depended.... Did the tribunal value the word of an honest man? Then this was the truth, although he was not able to present witnesses. It seemed impossible that the honourable syndics, all good people, should trust a rascal like PimentÓ!

The white sandal of the president struck the square tile of the sidewalk, as if to avert the storm of protests and the lack of respect which he saw from afar.

"Be silent."

And Batiste was silent, while the seven-headed monster, folding itself up again on the sofa of damask, was whispering, preparing the sentence.

"The tribunal decrees ..." said the eldest judge, and there was absolute silence.

All the people around the roped space showed a certain anxiety in their eyes, as if they were the sentenced. They were hanging on the lips of the eldest judge.

"Batiste Borrull shall pay two pounds for a penalty, and four sous for a fine."

A murmur of satisfaction arose and spread, and one old woman even began to clap her hands, shouting "Hurrah! hurrah!" amid the loud laughter of the people.

Batiste went out blindly from the tribunal, with his head lowered as though he were about to fight, and PimentÓ prudently stayed behind.

If the people had not parted, opening the way, for him, it is certain that he would have struck out with his powerful fists, and given the hostile rabble a beating on the spot.

He departed. He went to the house of his masters to tell them of what had happened, of the ill will of this people, pledged to embitter his existence for him; and an hour later, already more composed by the kind words of the seÑores, he set forth on the road toward his home.

Insufferable torment! Marching close to their carts loaded with manure or mounted on their donkeys above the empty hampers, he kept meeting on the low road of Alboraya many of those who had been present at the trial.

They were hostile people, neighbours whom he never greeted.

When he passed beside them, they remained silent, and made an effort to keep their gravity, although a malicious joy glowed in their eyes; but as soon as he had gone by, they burst into insolent laughter behind his back, and he even heard the voice of a lad who shouted, mimicking the grave tone of the president:

"Four sous for a fine!"

In the distance he saw, in the doorway of the tavern of Copa, his enemy PimentÓ, with an earthen jug in hand, in the midst of a circle of friends, gesticulating and laughing as if he were imitating the protests and complaints of the one denounced. His sentence was the theme of rejoicing for the huerta: all were laughing.

God! Now he, a man of peace and a kind father, understood why it is that men kill.

His powerful arms trembled, and he felt a cruel itching in the hands. He slackened his pace on approaching the house of Copa; he wanted to see whether they would mock him to his face.

He even thought, a strange novelty, of entering for the first time to drink a glass of wine face to face with his enemies; but the two pound fine lay heavy on his heart and he repented of his generosity. This was a conspiracy against the footwear of his sons; it would take all the little pile of farthings hoarded together by Teresa to buy new sandals for the little ones.

As he passed the front of the tavern, PimentÓ hid with the excuse of filling the jug, and his friends pretended not to see Batiste.

His aspect of a man ready for anything inspired respect in his neighbours.

But this triumph filled him with sadness. How hateful the people were to him! The entire vega arose before him, scowling and threatening at all hours. This was not living. Even in the daytime, he avoided coming out of his fields, shunning all contact with his neighbours.

He did not fear them, but like a prudent man, avoided disputes.

At night, he slept restlessly, and many times, at the slightest barking of the dogs, he leaped out of bed, rushed from the house, shotgun in hand, and even believed on more than one occasion that he saw black forms which fled among the adjoining paths.

He feared for his harvest, for the wheat which was the hope of the family and whose growth was followed in silence but with envious glances from the other farm-houses.

He knew of the threats of PimentÓ, who supported by all the huerta, swore that this wheat should not be cut by him who had sowed it, and Batiste almost forgot his sons in thinking about his fields, of the series of green waves which grew and grew under the rays of the sun and which must turn into golden piles of ripe wheat.

The silent and concentrated hatred followed him out upon the road. The women drew away, with curling lips, and did not deign to salute him, as is the custom in the huerta; the men who were working in the fields adjoining the road, called to each other with insolent expressions which were directed indirectly at Batiste; and the little children shouted from a distance, "Thug! Jew!" without adding more to such insults, as if they alone were applicable to the enemy of the huerta.

Ah! If he had not had the fists of a giant, those enormous shoulders and that expression of a man who has few friends, how soon the entire vega would have settled with him! Each one hoping that the other would be the first to dare, they contented themselves with insulting him from a distance.

Batiste, in the midst of the sadness which this solitude inspired in him, experienced one slight satisfaction. Already close to the farm-house, when he heard the barkings of the dog who had scented his approach, he saw a boy, an overgrown youth, seated on a sloping bank with the sickle between his legs, and holding some piles of cut brushwood at his side, who stood up to greet him.

"Good day, SeÑor Batiste!"

And the salutation, the trembling voice of a timid boy with which he spoke to him, impressed him pleasantly.

The friendliness of this child was a small matter, yet he experienced the impression of a feverish man upon feeling the coolness of water.

He gazed with tenderness at the blue eyes, the smiling face covered by a coat of down, and searched his memory as to who the boy might be. Finally he remembered that he was the grandson of old Tomba, the blind shepherd whom all the huerta respected; a good boy who was serving as a servant to a butcher at Alboraya, whose herd the old man tended.

"Thanks, little one, thanks," he murmured, acknowledging the salute.

And he went ahead, and was welcomed by his dog, who leaped before him, and rubbed himself against his corduroy trousers.

In the door of the cabin stood his wife surrounded by the little ones, waiting impatiently, for the supper hour had already passed.

Batiste looked at the fields, and all the fury he had suffered an hour ago before the Tribunal of the Waters, returned at a stroke and like a furious wave flooded his consciousness.

His wheat was thirsty. He had only to see it; its leaves shrivelled, the green colour, before so lustrous, now of a yellow transparency. The irrigation had failed him; the turn of which PimentÓ, with his sly and evil tricks, had robbed him, would not belong to him until fifteen days had passed, because the water was scarce; and on top of this misfortune all that damned string of pounds and sous for a fine. Christ!

He ate without any appetite, telling his wife the while of the occurrence at the Tribunal.

Poor Teresa listened to her husband, pale with the emotion of the countrywoman who feels a pang in her heart when there must be a loosening of the knot of the stocking which guards the money in the bottom of the chest. Sovereign queen! They had determined to ruin them! What sorrow at the evening-meal!

And letting her spoon fall into the frying-pan of rice, she wept, swallowing her tears. Then she became red with sudden passion, looked out at the expanse of plain with she saw in front of her door, with its white farm-houses and its waves of green, and stretching out her arms, she cried: "Rascals! Rascals!"

The little folks, frightened by their father's scowl, and the cries of their mother, were afraid to eat. They looked from one to the other with indecision and wonder, picked at their noses to be doing something, and all of them ended by imitating their mother and weeping over the rice.

Batiste, agitated by the chorus of sobs, arose furiously, and almost kicked over the little table as he flung himself out of the house.

What an afternoon! The thirst of his wheat and the remembrance of the fine were like two fierce dogs tearing at his heart. When one, tired of biting him, was going to sleep, the other arrived at full speed and fixed his teeth in him.

He wanted to distract his thoughts, to forget himself in work, and he gave himself over with all his will to the task he had in hand, a pigsty which he was putting up in the corral.

But the work did not progress. He was suffocating between the mud-walls; he wanted to look at the fields, he was like those who feel the need to look upon their misfortune, to yield utterly and drink the cup of sorrow to the dregs. And with his hands full of clay, he came out from the farm-yard, and remained standing before the oblong patch of shrivelled wheat.

A few steps away, at the edge of the road, the murmuring canal brimmed with red water ran by.

The life-giving blood of the huerta was flowing far away, for other fields whose masters did not have the misfortune of being hated; and here was his poor wheat, shrivelled, languishing, bowing its green head as if it were making signs to the water to come near and caress it with its cool kiss.

To poor Batiste, it seemed that the sun was burning hotter than on other days. The sun was at the horizon, yet the poor man imagined that its rays were vertical, and that everything was burning up.

His land was cracking open, it parted in tortuous grooves, forming a thousand mouths which vainly awaited a swallow of water.

Nor would the wheat hold its thirst until the next irrigation. It would die, it would become dried up, the family would not have bread; and besides so much misery, a fine on top of everything. And people even find fault if men go to ruin!

Furious he walked back and forth along the border of his oblong plot. Ah, PimentÓ! Greatest of scoundrels! If there were no Civil Guards!

And like shipwrecked mariners, agonizing with hunger and thirst, who in their delirium see only interminable banquet-tables, and the clearest springs, Batiste confusedly saw fields of wheat whose stalks were green and straight, and the water entering, gushing from the mouths of the sloping-banks, extending itself with a luminous rippling, as if it laughed softly at feeling the tickling of the thirsty earth.

At the sinking of the sun, Batiste felt a certain relief, as though it had gone out forever, and his harvest was saved.

He went away from his fields, from his farm-house, and unconsciously, with slow steps, took the road below, toward the tavern of Copa. The thought of the rural police had left his mind, and he accepted the possibility of a meeting with PimentÓ, who should not be very far away from the tavern, with a certain feeling of pleasure.

Along the borders of the road, there were coming toward him swift rows of girls, hamper on arm, and skirts flying, returning from the factories of the city.

Blue shadows were spreading over the huerta; in the background, over the darkening mountains, the clouds were growing red with the splendour of some far distant fire; in the direction of the sea, the first stars were trembling in the infinite blue; the dogs were barking mournfully; and with the monotonous singing of the frogs and the crickets, was mingled the confused creaking of invisible wagons, departing over all the roads of the immense plain.

Batiste saw his daughter coming, separated from all the girls, walking with slow steps. But not alone. It seemed to him that she was talking with a man who followed in the same direction as herself, although somewhat apart, as the betrothed always walk in the huerta, for whom approach is a sign of sin.

When he saw Batiste in the middle of the road, the man slackened his pace and remained at a distance as Roseta approached her father.

The latter remained motionless, as he wanted the stranger to advance so that he might recognize him.

"Good night, SeÑor Batiste."

It was the same timid voice which had saluted him at midday. The grandson of old Tomba. That scamp seemed to have nothing to do but wander over the roads, and greet him, and thrust himself before his eyes with his bland sweetness.

He looked at his daughter, who grew red under the gaze, and lowered her eyes.

"Go home; home, ... I will settle with you!"

And with all the terrible majesty of the Latin father, the absolute master of his children, and more inclined to inspire fear than affection, he started after the tremulous Roseta, who, as she drew near the farm, anticipated a sure cudgeling.

She was mistaken. At that moment the poor father had no other children in the world but his crops, the poor sick wheat, shrivelling, drying, and crying out to him, begging for a swallow in order not to die.

And of this he thought while his wife was getting the supper ready. Roseta was bustling about pretending to be busy, in order not to attract attention and expecting from one moment to the next an outburst of terrible anger. But Batiste, seated before the little dwarfish table, surrounded by all the young people of his family, who were gazing greedily by the candle-light at the earthenware dish, filled with smoking hake and potatoes, went on thinking of his fields.

The woman was still sighing, pondering the fine; making comparisons, without doubt, between the fabulous sum which they were going to wrest from her, and the ease with which the entire family were eating.

Batiste, contemplating the voracity of his children, scarcely ate. Batistet, the eldest son, even appropriated with feigned abstraction of the pieces of bread belonging to the little ones. To Roseta, fear gave a fierce appetite.

Never until then did Batiste comprehend the load which was weighing upon his shoulders. These mouths which opened to swallow up the meagre savings of the family would be without food if that land outside should dry.

And all for what? On account of the injustice of men, because there are laws made to molest honest workmen.... He should not stand this. His family before everything else. Did he not feel capable of defending his own from even greater dangers? Did he not owe them the duty of maintaining them? He was capable of becoming a thief in order to give them food. Why then, did he have to submit, when he was not trying to steal, but to give life to his crops, which were all his own?

The image of the canal, which at a short distance was dragging along its murmuring supply for others, was torturing him. It enraged him that life should be passing by at his very door without his being able to profit by it, because the laws wished it so.

Suddenly he arose, like a man who has adopted a resolution and who in order to fulfil it, stamps everything under foot.

"To irrigate! To irrigate!"

The woman was terrified, for she quickly guessed all the danger of the desperate resolution. For Heaven's sake, Batiste!... They would impose upon him a greater fine; perhaps the Tribunal, offended by his rebellion, would take the water away from him forever! He ought to consider it.... It was better to wait.

But Batiste had the enduring wrath of phlegmatic and slow men, who, when they once lose their composure, are slow to recover it.

"Irrigate! Irrigate!"

And Batistet, gaily repeating the words of his father, picked up the large hoes, and started from the house, followed by his sister and the little ones.

They all wished to take part in this work, which seemed like a holiday.

The family felt the exhilaration of a people which, by a revolution, recovers its liberty.

They approached the canal, which was murmuring in the shade. The immense plain was lost in the blue shadow, the cane-brake undulated in dark and murmuring masses, and the stars twinkled in the heavens.

Batiste went into the canal knee-deep, lowering the gates which held the water, while his son, his wife and even his daughter attacked the sloping banks with the hoes, opening gaps, through which the water gushed.

All the family felt a sensation of coolness and of well-being.

The earth sung merrily with a greedy glu-glu, which touched the heart. "Drink, drink, poor thing!" And their feet sank in the mud, as bent over they went from one side to the other of the field, looking to see if the water had reached every part.

Batiste muttered with the cruel satisfaction which the joy of the prohibited produces. What a load was lifted from him! The Tribunal might come now, and do whatever it wished. His field had drunk; this was the main thing.

And as with the acute hearing of a man accustomed to the solitude, he thought that he perceived a certain strange noise in the neighbouring cane-brake, he ran to the farm, and returned immediately, holding a new shotgun.

With the weapon over his arm, and his finger on the trigger, he stood more than an hour close to the bars of the canal.

The water did not flow ahead; it spread itself out in the fields of Batiste, which drank and drank with the thirst of a dropsical man.

Perhaps those down below were complaining; perhaps PimentÓ, notified as an atandador, was prowling in the vicinity, outraged at this insolent breach of the law.

But here was Batiste, like a sentinel of his harvest, a hero made desperate by the struggle of his family, guarding his people who were moving about in the field, extending the irrigation; ready to deal a blow at the first who might attempt to raise the bars, and re-establish the water's course.

So fierce was the attitude of this great fellow who stood out motionless in the midst of the canal; in this black phantom there might be divined such a resolution of shooting at whoever might present himself, that no one ventured forth from the adjoining cane-brake, and the fields drank for an hour without any protest.

And this is what is yet stranger: on the following Thursday the atandador did not have him summoned before the Tribunal of the Waters.

The huerta had been informed that in the ancient farm-house of Barret the only object of worth was a double-barreled shotgun, recently bought by the intruder, with that African passion of the Valencian, who willingly deprives himself of bread in order to have behind the door of his house a new weapon which excites envy and inspires respect.