EVERY morning, at dawn, Roseta, Batiste's daughter, leaped out of bed, her eyes heavy with sleep, and after stretching out her arms in graceful writhings which shook all her body of blonde slenderness, opened the farm-house door.

The pulley of the well creaked, the ugly little dog, which passed the night outside the house, leaped close to her skirts, barking with joy, and Roseta, in the light of the last stars, cast over her face and hands a pail of cold water drawn from that round and murky hole, crowned at the top by thick clumps of ivy.

Afterward, in the light of the candle, she moved about the house preparing for her journey to Valencia.

The mother followed her without seeing her from the bed with all kinds of suggestions. She could take away what was left from the supper: that with three sardines which she would find on the shelf would be sufficient. And take care not to break the dish as she did the other day. Ah! And she should not forget to buy thread, needles and some sandals for the little one. Destructive child!... She would find the money in the drawer of the little table.

And while the mother turned over in bed, sweetly caressed by the warmth of the bedroom, planning to sleep a half-hour more close to the enormous Batiste, who snored noisily, Roseta continued her evolutions. She placed her poor meal in a basket, passed a comb through her light-blond hair, which looked as though the sun had absorbed its colour, and tied the handkerchief under her chin. Before going out, she looked with the tender solicitousness of an elder sister, to see if the little ones who slept on the floor, all in the same room, were well covered. They lay there in a row from the eldest to the youngest, from the overgrown Batistet to the little tot who as yet could hardly talk, like a row of organ pipes.

"Good-bye, until tonight!" shouted the brave girl, and passing her arm through the handle of the basket, she closed the door of the farm-house, placing the key underneath.

It was already daylight. In the bluish light of dawn the procession of workers could be seen passing over the paths and roads, all walking in the same direction, drawn by the life of the city.

Groups of graceful spinning-mill girls passed by, marching with an even step, swinging with jaunty grace their right arms which cut the air like a strong oar, and all screaming in chorus every time that any strapping young fellow saluted them from the neighbouring fields with coarse jests.

Roseta walked to the city alone. Well did the poor child know her companions, daughters and sisters of those who hated her family so bitterly.

Several of them were working in the factory, and the poor little yellow-haired girl, making a show of courage more than once, had to defend herself by sheer scratching. Taking advantage of her carelessness, they threw dirty things into her lunch-basket; made her break the earthenware dish of which she was reminded so many times, and never passed near her in the mill without trying to push her over the smoking kettle where the cocoon was being soaked while they called her a pauper, and applied similar eulogies to her and her family.

On the way she fled from them as from a throng of furies, and felt safe only when she was inside the factory, an ugly old building close to the market, whose faÇades, painted in water-colours the century before, still preserved between peeling paint and cracks certain groups of rose-coloured legs, and profiles of bronzed colour, remnants of medallions, and mythological paintings.

Of all the family, Roseta was the most like her father: a fury for work, as Batiste said of himself. The fiery vapour of the caldron where the cocoon is soaked mounted about her head, burning her eyes; but, in spite of this, she was always in her place, fishing in the depths of the boiling water for the loosened ends of those capsules of soft silk of the mellow colour of caramel, in whose interior the laborious worm, the larva of precious exudation, had just perished for the offence of creating a rich dungeon for its transformation into the butterfly.

Throughout the large building reigned the din of work, deafening and tiresome for the daughters of the huerta, who were used to the calm of the immense plain, where the voice carries a great distance. Below roared the steam-engine, giving forth frightful roaring sounds which were transmitted through the multiple tubing: pulleys and wheels revolved with an infernal din, and as though there were not noise enough, the spinning-mill girls, according to traditional custom, sang in chorus with a nasal voice, the Padre nuestro, the Ave Maria, and the Gloria Patri, with the same musical interludes as the chorus which roamed about the huerta Sunday mornings at dawn.

This did not prevent them from laughing as they sang, nor from insulting each other in an undertone between prayers, and threatening each other with four long scratches on coming out, for these dark-complexioned girls, enslaved by the rigid tyranny which rules in the farmer's family, and obliged by hereditary conventions to lower their eyes in the presence of men, when gathered together without restraint were regular demons, and took delight in uttering everything they had heard from the cart-drivers and labourers on the roads.

Roseta was the most silent and industrious of them all. In order not to distract her attention from her work, she did not sing; she never provoked quarrels and she learned everything with such facility, that in a few weeks she was earning three reals, almost the maximum for the day's work, to the great envy of the others.

At the lunch-hour these bands of dishevelled girls sallied forth from the factory to gobble up the contents of their earthen-ware dishes. As they formed a loafing group on the side-walk or in the immediate porches, and challenged the men with insolent glances to speak to them, only falsely scandalized, to fire back shameless remarks in return, Roseta remained in a corner of the mill, seated on the floor with two or three good girls who were from another huerta, from the right side of the river, and who did not care a rap for the story of old Barret and the hatred of their companions.

During the first weeks, Roseta saw with a certain terror the arrival of dusk, and with it, the hour for departure.

Fearing her companions, who took the same road as herself, she stayed in the factory for a time, letting them set out ahead like a cyclone, with scandalous bursts of laughter, flauntings of skirts, daring vulgarisms, and the odour of health, of hard and rugged limbs.

She walked lazily through the streets of the city in the cold twilight of winter, making purchases for her mother, stood open-mouthed before the shop windows which began to be illumined, and at last, passing over the bridge, she entered the dark narrow alleys of the suburbs to set forth upon the road of Alboraya.

So far, all was well. But after she came to the dark huerta with its mysterious noises, its dark and alarming forms which passed close to her saluting with a deep "Good night," fear set in, and her teeth chattered.

And it was not that the silence and the darkness intimidated her. Like a true daughter of the country, she was accustomed to these. If she had been certain that she would encounter no one on the road, it would have given her confidence. In her terror, she never thought, as did her companions, of death, nor of witches and phantasms; it was the living who disturbed her.

She recalled with growing fear certain stories of the huerta that she had heard in the factory; the fear that the little girls had of PimentÓ, and other bullies who congregated in the tavern of Copa: heartless fellows who pinched the girls wherever they could, and pushed them into the canals, or made them fall behind the haylofts. And Roseta, who was no longer innocent after entering the factory, gave free rein to her imagination, till it reached the utmost limits of the horrible; and she saw herself assassinated by some one of these monsters, her stomach ripped up and soaked in blood, like those children of the legends of the huerta whose fat sinister and mysterious murderers extracted and used in making wonderful salves and potions for the rich.

In the twilight of winter, dark and oftentimes rainy, Roseta passed over more than half of the road all a tremble. But the most cruel crisis, the most terrible obstacle was almost at the end, and close to the farm—the famous tavern of Copa.

Here was the den of the wild beast. This was the most frequented and the brightest bit of road. The sound of voices, the outbursts of laughter, the thrumming of a guitar, and couplets of songs with loud shouting came forth from the door which, like the mouth of a furnace, cast forth a square of reddish light over the black road, in which grotesque shadows moved about. And nevertheless, the poor mill girl, on arriving near this place, stopped undecided, trembling like the heroines of the fairy-tales before the den of the ogre, ready to set out through the fields in order to make a dÉtour around the rear of the building, to sink into the canal which bordered the road, and to slip away hidden behind the sloping banks; anything rather than to pass in front of this red gullet which gave forth the din of drunkenness and brutality.

Finally she decided; made an effort of will like one who is going to throw himself over a high cliff, and passed swiftly before the tavern, along the edge of the canal, with a very light step, and the marvellous poise which fear lends.

She was a breath, a white shadow which did not give the turbid eyes of the customers of Copa time to fix themselves upon it.

And the tavern passed, the child ran and ran, believing that some one was just behind her, expecting to feel the tug of his powerful paw at her skirt.

She was not calm until she heard the barking of the dog at the farm-house, that ugly animal, who by way of antithesis no doubt, was called The Morning Star, and who came bounding up to her in the middle of the road with bounds and licked her hands.

Roseta never told those at home of the terrors encountered on the road. The poor child composed herself on entering the house, and answered the questions of her anxious mother quietly, meeting the situation valorously by stating that she had come home with some companions.

The spinning-mill girl did not want her father to come out nights to accompany her on the road. She knew the hatred of the neighbourhood: the tavern of Copa with its quarrelsome people inspired her with fear.

And on the following day she returned to the factory to suffer the same fears upon returning, enlivened only by the hope that the spring would soon come with its longer days and its luminous twilights, which would permit her to return to the house before it grew dark.

One night, Roseta experienced a certain relief. While she was still close to the city, a man came out upon the road and began to walk at the same pace as herself.

"Good evening!"

And while the mill-girl was walking over the high bank which bordered the road, the man walked below, among the deep cuts opened by the wheels of the carts, stumbling over the red bricks, chipped dishes, and even pieces of glass with which farsighted hands wished to fill up the holes of remote origin.

Roseta showed no disquietude. She had recognized her companion even before he saluted her. It was Tonet, the nephew of old Tomba, the shepherd: a good boy, who served as an apprentice to a butcher of Alboraya, and at whom the mill-girls laughed when they met him upon the road, taking delight in seeing how he blushed, and turned his head away at the least word.

Such a timid boy! He was alone in the world without any other relatives than his grandfather, worked even on Sundays, and not only went to Valencia to collect manure for the fields of his master, but also helped him in the slaughter of cattle and tilled the earth, and carried meat to the rich farmers. All in order that he and his grandfather might eat, and that he might go dressed in the old ragged clothes of his master. He did not smoke; he had entered the tavern of Copa only two or three times in his life, and on Sundays, if he had some hours free, instead of squatting on the Plaza of Alboraya, like the others to watch the bullies playing hand-ball, he went out into the fields and roamed aimlessly through the tangled net-work of paths. If he happened to meet a tree filled with birds, he would stop there fascinated by the fluttering and the cries of these vagrants of the air.

The people saw in him something of the mysterious eccentricities of his grandfather, the shepherd: all regarded him as a poor fool, timid and docile.

The mill-girl became enlivened with company. She was safer if a man walked with her, and more so if it were Tonet, who inspired confidence.

She spoke to him, asking him whence he came, and the youth answered vaguely, with his habitual timidity: "From there ... from there...." and then became silent as if those words cost him a great effort.

They followed the road in silence, parting close to the barraca.

"Good night and thanks!" said the girl.

"Good night," and Tonet disappeared, walking toward the village.

It was an incident of no importance, an agreeable encounter which had banished her fear, nothing more. And nevertheless, Roseta ate supper that night and went to bed thinking of old Tomba's nephew.

Now she recalled the times that she had met him mornings on the road, and it seemed to her that Tonet always tried to keep the same pace as herself, although somewhat apart so as not to attract the attention of the sarcastic mill-girls. It even seemed to her that at times, on turning her head suddenly, she had surprised him with his eyes fixed upon her.

And the girl, as if she were spinning a cocoon, grasped these loose ends of her memory, and drew and drew them out, recalling everything in her existence which related to Tonet: the first time that she saw him, and her impulse of sympathetic compassion on account of the mockery of the mill-girls which he suffered crestfallen and timid, as though these harpies in a troop inspired him with fear; then the frequent encounters on the road, and the fixed glances of the boy, who seemed to wish to say something to her.

The following day, when she went to Valencia, she did not see him, but at night, upon starting to return to the barraca, the girl was not afraid in spite of the twilight being dark and rainy. She foresaw that the companion who gave her such courage would put in an appearance, and true enough he came out to meet her at almost the same spot as on the preceding day.

He was as expressive as usual: "Good night!" and went on walking at her side.

Roseta was more loquacious. Where did he come from? What a chance to meet on two succeeding days! And he, trembling, as though the words cost him a great effort, answered as usual: "From there ... from there ..."

The girl, just as timid, felt nevertheless a temptation to laugh at his agitation. She spoke of her fear, and the scares which she had met with on the road during the winter, and Tonet, comforted by the service which he was lending to her, unglued his lips at last, in order to tell her that he would accompany her frequently. He always had business for his master in the huerta.

They took leave of each other with the brevity of the preceding day; but that night the girl went to her bed restless and nervous, and dreamed a thousand wild things; she saw herself on a black road, very black, accompanied by an enormous dog which licked her hands and had the same face as Tonet; and afterward there came a wolf to bite her, with a snout which vaguely reminded her of the hateful PimentÓ; and the two fought with their teeth, and her father came out with a club, and she was weeping as if the blows which her faithful dog received were falling on her own shoulders; and thus her imagination went on wandering. But in all the confused scenes of her dream she saw the grandson of old Tomba, with his blue eyes, and his boyish face covered with light down, first indication of his manhood.

She arose weak and broken as if she were coming out of a delirium. This was Sunday, and she was not going to the factory. The sun came in through the little window of her bedroom, and all the people of the farm-house were already out of their beds. Roseta began to get ready to go with her mother to church.

The diabolical dream still upset her. She felt differently, with different thoughts, as though the preceding night were a wall which divided her existence into two parts.

She sang gaily like a bird while she took her clothes out of the chest, and arranged them upon the bed, which, still warm, held the impress of her body.

She liked these Sundays with her freedom to arise late, with her hours of leisure, and her little trip to Alboraya to hear mass; but this Sunday was better than the others; the sun shone more brightly, the birds were singing with more passion, through the little window the air entered gloriously balsamic; how should one express it! in short, this morning had something new and extraordinary about it.

She reproached herself now for having up to that time paid no attention to her personal appearance. It is time, at sixteen, to think about fixing oneself up. How stupid she had been, always laughing at her mother who called her a dowdy! And as though it were new attire which she looked on for the first time, she drew over her head as carefully as if it were thin lace, the calico petticoat which she wore every Sunday; and laced her corset tightly, as though that armour of high whalebones, a real farmer-girl's corset, which crushed the budding breasts cruelly, were not already tight enough. For in the huerta it is considered immodest for unmarried girls not to hide the alluring charms of nature, so that no one might sinfully behold in the virgin the symbols of her future maternity.

For the first time in her life, the mill-girl passed more than a quarter of an hour before the four inches of looking-glass, in its frame of varnished pine, which her father had presented to her, a mirror in which she had to look at her face by sections.

She was not beautiful, and she knew it; but uglier ones she had met by the dozen in the huerta. And without knowing why, she took pleasure in contemplating her eyes, of a clear green; the cheeks spotted with delicate freckles which the sun had raised upon the tanned skin; the whitish blond hair, which had the wan delicacy of silk; the little nose with its palpitating nostrils, projecting over the mouth; the mouth itself, shadowed by soft down, tender as that on a ripe peach, her strong and even teeth, of the flashing whiteness of milk, and a gleam which seemed to light up the whole face: the teeth of a poor girl!

The mother had to wait; the poor woman was in a hurry, moving about the house impatiently as though spurred on by the bell which sounded from a distance. They were going to miss mass: and meanwhile Roseta was calmly combing her hair, constantly undoing her work, which did not satisfy her; she went on arranging the mantle with tugs of vexation, never finding it to her liking.

In the plaza of Alboraya, upon entering and leaving the church, Roseta, hardly raising her eyes, scanned the door of the meat-market, where the people were crowding in, coming from mass.

There he was, assisting his master, giving him the flayed pieces of meat, and driving away the swarms of flies which were covering it.

How the big simpleton flushed on seeing her.

As she passed the second time, he remained like one who has been charmed, with a leg of mutton in his hand, while his stout employer, waiting in vain for him to pass it to him, poured forth a round volley of oaths, threatening the youth with a cleaver.

She was sad that afternoon. Seated at the door of the farm-house, she believed she saw him several times prowling about the distant paths, and hiding in the cane-brake to watch her. The mill-girl wished that Monday might arrive soon, so she might go back to the factory, and come home over the horrible road accompanied by Tonet.

The boy did not fail her at dusk on the following day.

Even nearer to the city than upon the other nights, he came forth to meet her.

"Good evening!"

But after the customary salutation, he was not silent. The rogue had made progress on the day of rest.

And slowly, accompanying his expressions with grimaces, and scratches upon his trousers legs, he tried to explain himself, although at times a full two minutes passed between his words. He was happy at seeing her well. (A smile from Roseta and a "thanks," murmured faintly.) "Had she enjoyed herself Sunday?" ... (Silence.) "He had had quite a dull time. It had bored him. Doubtless, the custom ... then ... it seemed that something had been lacking ... naturally he had taken a fancy for the road ... no, not the road: what he liked was to accompany her...."

And here he stopped high and dry: it even seemed to him that he bit his tongue nervously to punish it for its boldness and pinched himself for having gone so far.

They walked some distance in silence. The girl did not answer; she went along her way with the gracefully affected air of the mill-girls, the basket at the left hip, and the right arm cutting the air with the swinging motion of a pendulum.

She was thinking of her dream; she imagined herself again to be in the midst of that delirium, seeing wild phantasies; several times she turned her head, believing that she saw in the twilight the dog which had licked her hands, and which had the face of Tonet, a remembrance which even made her laugh. But no; he who was at her side was a good fellow capable of defending her; somewhat timid and bashful, yes, with his head drooping, as though it hurt him to bring forth the words which he had just spoken.

Roseta even confused him the more. Come now; why did he go out to meet her on the way? What would the people say? If her father should be informed, how annoyed he would be!

"Why? Why?" asked the girl.

And the youth, sadder and sadder, and more and more timid, like a convicted culprit who hears his accusation, answered nothing. He walked along at the same pace as the girl, but apart from her, stumbling along the edge of the road. Roseta almost believed that he was going to cry.

But when they were near the barraca, and as they were about to separate, Tonet had an impulse: as he had been intensely silent, so now he was intensely eloquent, and as though many minutes had not elapsed, he answered the question of the girl:

"Why?... because I love you."

As he said it he approached her so closely that she even felt his breath on her face and his eyes glowed as if through them all the truth must go out to her; and after this, repenting again, afraid, terrified by his words, he began to run like a child.

So then he loved her!... For two days the girl had been expecting the word, and nevertheless, it gave her the effect of a sudden, unexpected revelation. She also loved him, and all that night, even in dreams, she heard him murmuring a thousand times, close to her ears, the same words:

"Because I love you."

Tonet did not await her the following night. At dawn Roseta saw him on the road, almost hidden behind the trunk of a mulberry-tree, watching her with anxiety, like a child who fears a reprimand and has repented, ready to flee at the first gesture of displeasure.

But the mill-girl smiled blushingly, and there was need of nothing more.

All was said: they did not tell each other again that they loved each other, but this matter decided their betrothal, and Tonet no longer failed a single time to accompany her on the road.

The stout butcher of Alboraya blustered with anger at the sudden change in his servant, so far so diligent, and now ever inventing pretexts to pass hours and ever more hours in the huerta, especially at night.

But with the selfishness of happiness, Tonet cared no more for the oaths and threats of his master than the mill-girl did for her father, for whom she felt more fear than respect.

Roseta always had some nest or other in her bedroom, which she claimed to have found upon the road. This boy did not know how to present himself with empty hands, and explored all the cane-brake and the trees of the huerta in order to present her, his betrothed, with round mats of straw and twigs, in whose depths were some little rogues of fledgelings whose rosy skin was covered with the finest down, peeping desperately as they opened their monstrous beaks, always hungry for more crumbs of bread.

Roseta guarded the gift in her room, as though it were the very person of her betrothed, and wept when her brothers, the little people who had the farm-house for a nest, showed their admiration for the birds so strenuously that they ended by stifling them.

At other times, Tonet appeared with his clothes bulging, his sash filled with lupines and peanuts bought in the tavern of Copa, and as they walked along the road, they would eat and eat, gazing into each other's eyes, smiling like fools, without knowing why, often seating themselves upon a bank, without realizing it.

She was the more sensible and scolded him. Always spending money! There were two reals or a little less, which, in a week's time, he had left at the tavern for such treats. And he showed himself to be generous. For whom did he want the money if not for her? When they would be married—which had to happen some day—he would then take care of his money. That, however, would not be for ten or twelve years; there was no need of haste; all the betrothals of the huerta lasted for some time.

The matter of the wedding brought Roseta back to reality. The day her father would learn of it.... Most holy Virgin! he would break her back with a club. And she spoke of the future thrashing with serenity, smiling like a strong girl accustomed to this parental authority, rigid, imposing, and respected, which manifested itself in cuffs and cudgels.

Their relations were innocent. Never did there arise between them the poignant and rebellious desire of the flesh. They walked along the almost deserted road in the dusk of the evening-fall, and solitude seemed to drive all impure thoughts from their minds.

Once when Tonet involuntarily and lightly touched Roseta's waist, he blushed as if he, not she, were the girl in question.

They were both very far from thinking that their daily meeting might result in something more than words and glances. It was the first love, the budding of scarcely awakened youth, content with seeing, speaking, laughing, without a trace of sensual desire.

The mill-girl, who on the nights of fear, had longed so for the coming of spring, saw with anxiety the arrival of the long and luminous twilights.

Now she met her betrothed in full daylight, and there were never lacking companions of the factory or some neighbour along the road, who on seeing them together smiled maliciously, guessing the truth.

In the factory, jokes were started by all her enemies, who asked her with sarcasm when the wedding was to take place and nicknamed her The Shepherdess, for being in love with the grandson of old Tomba.

Poor Roseta trembled with anxiety. What a thrashing she was going to bring upon herself! Any day the news might reach her father's ears. And then it was that Batiste, on the day of his sentence in the Tribunal of the Waters, saw her on the road, accompanied by Tonet.

But nothing happened. The happy incident of the irrigation saved her. Her father, contented at having saved the crops, limited himself to looking at her several times, with his eyebrows puckered, and to notifying her in a slow voice, forefinger raised in air, and with an imperative accent, that henceforth she should take care to return alone from the factory, or otherwise she would learn who he was.

And she came back alone during all the week. Tonet had a certain respect for SeÑor Batiste, and contented himself with hiding in the cane-brake, near the road, to watch the mill-girl pass by, or to follow her from a distance.

As the days now were longer, there were more people on the road.

But this separation could not be prolonged for the impatient lovers, and one Sunday afternoon, Roseta, inactive, tired of walking in front of the door of her house, and believing she saw Tonet in all who were passing over the neighbouring paths, seized a green-varnished pitcher, and told her mother that she was going to bring water from the fountain of the Queen.

The mother allowed her to go. She ought to divert herself; poor girl! she did not have any friends and you must let youth claim its own.

The fountain of the Queen was the pride of all that part of the huerta, condemned to the water of the wells and the red and muddy liquid which ran through the canals.

It was in front of an abandoned farm-house, and was old and of great merit, according to the wisest of the huerta; the work of the Moors, according to PimentÓ; a monument of the epoch when the apostles were baptizing sinners as they went about the world, so that oracle, old Tomba, declared with majesty.

In the afternoons, passing along the road, bordered by poplars with their restless foliage of silver, one might see groups of girls with their pitchers held motionless and erect upon their heads, reminding one with their rhythmical step and their slender figures of the Greek basket-bearers.

This defile gave to the Valencian huerta something of a Biblical flavour; it recalled Arabic poetry, which sings of the woman beside the fountain with the pitcher on her head, uniting in the same picture the two most vehement passions of the Oriental: beauty and water.

The fountain of the Queen was a four-sided pool, with walls of red stone, and the water below at the level of the ground. One descended by a half-dozen steps, always slippery and green with humidity. On the surface of the rectangle of stone facing the stairs a bas-relief projected, but the figures were indistinct; it was impossible to make them out beneath the coat of whitewash.

It was probably the Virgin surrounded by angels; a work of the rough and simple art of the Middle Ages; some votive offering of the time of the conquest: but with some generations picking at the stones, in order to mark better the figures obliterated by the years, and others white-washing them with the sudden impulse of barbaric curiosity, had left the slab in such condition that nothing except the shapeless form of a woman could be distinguished, the queen who gave her name to the fountain: the queen of the Moors, as all queens necessarily must be in all country-tales.

Nor was the shouting and the confusion a small matter here on Sunday afternoons. More than thirty girls would crowd together with their pitchers, desiring to be the first to fill them, but then in no hurry to go away. They pushed each other on the narrow stairway, with their skirts tucked in between their limbs, in order to bend over and sink the pitcher into the pool, whose surface trembled with the bubbles of water which incessantly surged up from the bottom of the sand, where clumps of gelatinous plants were growing, green tufts of hair-like fibres, waving in the prison of crystal liquid, trembling with the impulse of the current. The restless water-skippers streaked across the clear surface with their delicate legs.

Those who had already filled their pitchers sat down on the edge of the pool, hanging their legs over the water and drawing them in with scandalized screams whenever a boy came down to drink and looked up at them.

It was a reunion of turbulent gamin. All were talking at the same time; they insulted each other, they flayed those who were absent, revealing all the scandal of the huerta, and the young people, free from parental severity, cast off the hypocritical expression assumed for the house, revealing an aggressiveness characteristic of the uncultured who lack expansion. These angelic brunettes, who sang songs to the Virgin and litanies in the church of Alboraya so softly when the festival of the unmarried women was celebrated, now on being alone, became bold and enlivened their conversation with the curses of a teamster, speaking of secret things with the calmness of old women.

Roseta arrived here with her pitcher, without having met her betrothed upon the road, in spite of the fact that she had walked slowly and had turned her head frequently, hoping at every moment to see him come forth from a path.

The noisy party at the fountain became silent on seeing her. The presence of Roseta at first caused stupefaction: somewhat like the apparition of a Moor in the church of Alboraya in the midst of high mass. Why did this pauper come here?

Roseta greeted two or three who were from the factory, but they pinched their lips with an expression of scorn and hardly answered her.

The others, recovered from their surprise, and not wishing to concede to the intruder even the honour of silence, went on talking as though nothing had happened.

Roseta descended to the fountain, filled the pitcher and stood up, casting anxious glances above the wall, around over all the plain.

"Look away, look away, but he won't come!"

It was a niece of PimentÓ who said this; the daughter of a sister of Pepeta, a dark, nervous girl, with an upturned and insolent nose, proud of being an only daughter, and of the fact that her father was nobody's tenant, as the four fields which he was working were his own.

Yes; she might go on looking as much as she pleased, but he would not come. Didn't the others know whom she was expecting? Her betrothed, the nephew of old Tomba: a fine arrangement!

And the thirty cruel mouths laughed and laughed as though every laugh were a bite; not because they considered it a great joke, but in order to crush the daughter of the hated Batiste.

The shepherdess!... The divine shepherdess!

Roseta shrugged her shoulders with indifference. She was expecting this: moreover, the jokes of the factory had blunted her susceptibility.

She took the pitcher and went down the steps, but at the bottom the little mimicking voice of the niece of PimentÓ held her. How that small insect could sting!

"She would not marry the grandson of old Tomba. He was a poor fool, dying of hunger, but very honourable and incapable of becoming related to a family of thieves."

Roseta almost dropped her pitcher. She grew red as if the words, tearing at her heart, had made all the blood rise to her face; then she became deathly pale.

"Who is a thief? Who?" she asked with trembling voice, which made all the others at the fountain laugh.

Who? Her father. PimentÓ, her uncle, knew it well, and in the tavern of Copa nothing else was discussed. Did they believe that the past could be hidden? They had fled from their own pueblo because they were known there too well: for that reason they had come here, to take possession of what was not theirs. They had even heard that SeÑor Batiste had been in prison for ugly crimes.

And thus the little viper went on talking, pouring forth everything that she had heard in her house and in the huerta: the lies forged by the dissolute fellows at the tavern of Copa, all invented by PimentÓ, who was growing less and less disposed to attack Batiste face to face, and was trying to annoy him, to persecute and wound him with insults.

The determination of the father suddenly surged up in Roseta. Trembling, stammering with fury, and with bloodshot eyes, she dropped the pitcher, which broke into pieces drenching the nearest girls, who protested in a chorus, calling her a stupid creature. But she was in no mood to take notice of such things!

"My father ..." she cried, advancing toward the one who had insulted her. "My father a thief? Say that again and I will smash your face!"

But the dark-haired girl did not have to repeat it, for before she could open her lips, she received a blow in the mouth, and the fingers of Roseta fixed themselves in her hair. Instinctively, impelled by pain, she seized the blond hair of the mill-girl in turn, and for some time the two could be seen struggling together, bent over, pouring forth cries of pain and madness, with their foreheads almost touching the ground, dragged this way and that by the cruel tugs which each one gave to the head of the other. The hair-pins fell out, loosening the braids; the heavy heads of hair seemed like banners of war, not floating and victorious, but crumpled and torn by the hands of the opponent.

But Roseta, either stronger or more furious, succeeded in disengaging herself, and was going to drag her enemy to her, perhaps to give her a spanking, for she was trying to take off her slipper with her free hand, when there occurred an irritating, brutal, unheard-of scene.

Without any spoken agreement, as if all the hatred of their families, all the words and maledictions heard in their homes, had surged up in them at a bound, all threw themselves together upon the daughter of Batiste.

"Thief! Thief!"

In the twinkling of an eye, Roseta disappeared under the wrathful arms. Her face was covered with scratches; she was carried down by the shower of blows, though unable to fall, for the very crush of her enemies impeded her; but driven from one side to the other, she ended by rolling down head-long on the slippery stones, striking her forehead on an angle of the stone.

Blood! It was like the casting of a stone into a tree covered with sparrows. They flew away, all of them, running in different directions, with their pitchers on their heads, and in a short time no one could be seen in the vicinity of the fountain of the Queen but poor Roseta, who with loosened hair, skirts torn, face dirty with dust and blood, went crying home.

How her mother screamed when she saw her come in! How she protested upon being told of what had occurred! Those people were worse than Jews! Lord! Lord! Could such crimes occur in a land of Christians?

It was impossible to live. They had not done enough already with the men attacking poor Batiste, persecuting him and slandering him before the Tribunal, and imposing unjust fines upon him. Now here were these girls persecuting her poor Roseta, as though that unfortunate child had done anything wrong. And why was it all? Because they wished to earn a living and work, without offending anybody, as God commanded.

Batiste turned pale as he looked at his daughter. He took a few steps toward the road, looking at PimentÓ's farm-house, whose roof stood out behind the canes.

But he stopped and finally began to reproach his daughter mildly. What had occurred would teach her not to go walking about the huerta. They must avoid all contact with others: live together and united in the farm-house and never leave these lands which were their life.

His enemies would take good care not to seek him out in his own home.