BATISTE lost all hope of living peacefully on his land.

The entire huerta once more arose against him. Again he had to isolate himself in his farm-house, to live in perpetual solitude like one cursed by a plague, or like some caged wild-beast, at whom every one shook his fist from afar.

His wife told him on the following day how the wounded bully was conducted to his house. He himself, from his home, had heard the shouts and the threats of the people, who had solicitously accompanied the wounded PimentÓ.... It was a real manifestation. The women, already aware of what had happened through the marvellous rapidity with which news spreads over the huerta, ran out on the road to see Pepeta's brave husband at close range, and to express compassion for him as for some hero sacrificed for the good of others.

The same ones who had spoken insultingly of him some hours before, scandalized by his wager of drunkenness, now pitied him, inquired whether he was seriously hurt, and clamoured for revenge against that starving pauper, that thief, who not content with taking possession of that which was not his, tried to win respect by terror, and by attacking good men.

PimentÓ was magnificent. He suffered great pain, and went about supported by his friends with his head bandaged, transformed into an eccehomo, as the indignant gossips declared; but he made an effort to smile, and answered every incitement to revenge with an arrogant gesture, declaring that he took the castigation of the enemy upon himself.

Batiste did not doubt that these people would seek vengeance. He was familiar with the usual methods of the huerta. The courts of the city were not made for this land; prison was a small matter when a question of satisfying a grudge was concerned. Why should a man make use of a judge or a civil guard, if he had a good eye and a shotgun in his house? The affairs of men should be settled by the men themselves.

And as all the huerta thought thus, vainly on the day following the quarrel did two guards with enamelled tricorns pass and repass over the paths leading from Copa's tavern to the farm-house of PimentÓ, making sly inquiries of the people who were in the fields. No one had seen anybody; no one knew anything. PimentÓ related with brutal bursts of laughter how he had broken his own head coming home from the tavern, declaring it to be the consequence of his bet; the brandy had made him stagger, and strike his head against the trees on the road. So the rural police had to turn back to their little barracks at Alboraya without any clear information concerning the vague rumours of quarrel and bloodshed which had reached them.

This magnanimity of the victim and his friends alarmed Batiste, who made up his mind to live perpetually on the defensive.

The family, shrinking from contact with the huerta, withdrew within the house as a timid snail withdraws within its shell.

The little ones did not even go to school. Roseta stopped going to the factory, and Batistet did not go a pace away from the fields. Only the father went out, showing himself as calm and confident about his security as he was careful and prudent for the others.

But he made no trips to the city without carrying the shotgun with him, which he left with a friend in the suburbs. He literally lived with his weapon. The most modern thing in his house, it was always clean, shining and cared for with that affection which the Valencian farmer, like the Barbary tribesman, bestows upon his gun.

Teresa was as sad as she had been upon the death of the little one. Every time that she saw her husband cleaning the double-barrelled shotgun, changing the cartridges, or making the trigger play up and down to be sure it would work smoothly, there arose in her mind the image of the prison, the terrible tale of old Barret; she saw blood and cursed the hour in which they had thought of settling upon these accursed lands. And then came the hours of fear on account of the absence of her husband, those long afternoons spent awaiting the man who did not return, going out to the door of the farm-house to explore the road, trembling each time that there sounded from the distance some report from the hunters of sparrows, fearing that it was the beginning of a tragedy, the shot which shattered the head of the father of the family or which would take him to prison. And when Batiste finally appeared, the little ones would shout with joy, Teresa would smile, wiping her eyes, the daughter would run out to embrace her father, and even the dog leaped close to him, sniffing restlessly, as though he scented about his person the danger which he had just encountered.

And Batiste, serene and firm, but without arrogance, laughed at his family's anxiety, and became bolder and bolder as the famous quarrel receded into the past.

He considered himself secure. As long as he carried "the bird with the two voices," as he called his shotgun, he could calmly walk throughout all the huerta. When he went out in such good company, his enemies pretended not to know him. At times he had even seen PimentÓ from a distance, walking through the huerta, exhibiting like a flag of vengeance his bandaged head, but the bully, in spite of his recovery from the blow had fled, fearing the encounter perhaps even more than Batiste.

All were watching him from the corner of their eye, but he never heard from the fields adjoining the road a single word of insult. They shrugged their shoulders with scorn, bent over the earth, and worked feverishly until he was lost from sight.

The only person who spoke to him was old Tomba, the crazy shepherd, who recognized him despite his sightless eyes, as though he could scent the atmosphere of calamity around Batiste. And it was ever the same.... Was he not going to abandon the accursed lands?

"You are making a mistake, my son; they will bring you misfortune."

Batiste received the refrain of the old man with a smile.

Grown familiar with peril, he had never feared it less than he did now. He even felt a certain secret joy in provoking it, in marching directly toward it. His tavern exploit had changed his character, previously so peaceful and long-suffering; awakened in him a boastful brutality. He wished to show all these people that he did not fear them, that even as he had burst open PimentÓ's head, so was he ready to take up arms against the whole huerta. Since they had driven him to it, he would be a bully and a braggart long enough for them to respect him and allow him to live peacefully ever afterward.

And possessed of this dangerous determination, he even abandoned his lands, passing the afternoons along the roads of the huerta under the pretext of hunting, but in reality to exhibit his shotgun and his look of a man who has few friends.

One afternoon, while hunting swallows in the ravine of Carraixet, the darkness surprised him.

The birds seemed to be following the mazes of some capricious quadrille as they flew about restlessly, reflected in the deep and quiet pools bordered with tall rushes. This ravine, which cut across the huerta like a deep crack, gloomy, with stagnant water, and muddy shores, where there bobbed up and down some rotting, half-submerged canoe, presented a desolate and wild aspect. No one would have suspected that behind the slope of the high banks, farther on beyond the rushes and the cane-brake, lay the plain with its smiling atmosphere and its green vistas. Even the light of the sun seemed dismal, as it sank to the depths of the ravine, sifting through the wild vegetation and pallidly reflecting itself in the dead waters.

Batiste spent the afternoon firing at the wheeling swallows. A few cartridges still remained in his belt, and at his feet, forming a mound of blood-stained feathers, he already had two dozen birds. What a supper! How happy the family would be!

It grew dark in the deep ravine: from the pools, a fetid vapour came forth, the deadly respiration of malarial fever. The frogs croaked by the thousand, as though saluting the stars, contented at not hearing the firing which interrupted their song, and obliged them to dive head-long, disturbing the smooth crystal of the stagnant pools.

Batiste picked up his "bag" of birds, hanging them from the belt, and ascending the bank with two leaps, set out over the paths on his return trip to the farm-house.

The sky, still permeated with the faint glow of twilight, had the soft tone of violet; the stars gleamed, and over the immense huerta there rose the many sounds of rustic life which would soon with the arrival of night die away. Over the paths passed the girls returning from the city; and men coming from the fields, the tired horses dragging the heavy carts; and Batiste answered their "Good night," the greeting of all who passed near him, people from Alboraya, who did not know him or did not have the motives of his neighbours for hating him.

He left the village behind him, and as he drew nearer to his farm, the hostility stood out more plainly with every step. The people hissed him without any greeting.

He was in strange country, and like a soldier who prepares to fight as soon as he crosses the hostile frontier, Batiste sought in his sash for the munitions of war, two cartridges with ball and bird-shot, made by himself, and loaded his shotgun.

The big man laughed after doing this. Whoever tried to cut off his way would receive a good shower of lead.

He walked along without haste, calmly, as though enjoying the freshness of the spring night. But this tranquillity did not prevent him from thinking of the risk he was taking, with the enemies he had, in being abroad in the huerta at such an hour.

His keen ear, that of a countryman, seemed to perceive a sound at his shoulder. He turned about quickly, and in the pale star-light, he thought he saw a dark figure, leaping from the road with a stealthy bound and hiding behind a bank.

Batiste laid hold of his shotgun, and lifting the hammer, approached cautiously. No one.... Only at some distance it seemed to him that the plants were waving in the darkness, as though a body were dragging itself among them.

They were following him: some one intended to surprise him treacherously from behind. But this suspicion lasted but a short time. It might be some vagabond dog which fled upon his approach.

Well, it was certain that whatever it was, it was fleeing from him, and so there was nothing for him to do.

He went along over the dark road, walking silently like a man who knows the country in the dark, and for the sake of prudence does not wish to attract attention. As he approached the farm, he felt a certain uneasiness. This was his neighbourhood, but here also were his most tenacious enemies.

Some minutes before arriving at the farm, near the blue farm-house where the girls danced on Sundays, the road became narrow, forming various curves. At one side, a high bank was crowned by a double row of mulberry-trees; on the other, was a narrow canal whose sloping shores were thickly covered with tall cane-brake.

It looked in the darkness like an Indian thicket, a vault of bamboos bending over the road. It was completely dark here; the mass of cane-brake trembled in the light wind of the night, giving forth a mournful sound; the place, so cool and agreeable during the hours of sunlight, seemed to smell of treason.

Batiste, laughing at his uneasiness, mentally exaggerated the danger. A magnificent place to fire a safe shot at him. If PimentÓ should come along here, he would not scorn such a beautiful chance.

And scarcely had he thought of this, when there came forth from among the cane-brake a straight and fleeting tongue of fire, a red arrow which vanished, followed by a report; and something passed, hissing close to his ear. Some one was firing upon him. Instinctively he stooped down, wishing to fuse with the darkness of the ground, so as not to present a target to the enemy. In the same moment a new flash glowed, another report sounded, mingling with the echoes still reverberating from the first, and Batiste felt a tearing sensation in the left shoulder, something like the scratch of steel, scraping him superficially.

But his attention scarcely stopped at this. He felt a savage joy. Two shots ... the enemy was disarmed.

"Christ! Now I've got you!"

He rushed out through the cane-brake, plunged, almost rolling down the slope, and entered the water up to the waist, his feet in the mud and his arms aloft, very high, in order to prevent his shotgun from getting wet, guarding like a miser the two shots until the moment should arrive when he could safely deal them out.

Before his eyes the cane-brake met, forming a close arch almost level with the water. Before him in the darkness, he heard a splashing like that of a dog fleeing down through the canal. Here was the enemy: after him!

And in the stream-bed, he entered on a mad race, plunging along groping through the shadows, leaving his sandals behind him, lost in the mud: his trousers, clinging to his body, and dragging heavily, retarded his movements: and the stiff sharp stalks of the broken cane-brake struck and scratched his face.

At one moment Batiste thought he saw something dark clinging to the cane-brake, striving to rise above the bank. He was attempting to run away: he must fire.... His hands, which felt the itching of murder, carried the shotgun to his face, pulled the trigger, ... the report sounded, and the body fell into the canal, among a shower of leaves and rotting cane.

At him! At him!... Again, Batiste heard the splashing of a fleeing dog: but now with more effort, as though the fugitive, spurred on by desperation, were straining every effort to escape.

It was a dizzy flight, that race amid darkness, through the cane-brake and water. The two kept slipping on the soft ground, unable to cling to the brake without loosening their hold on their guns; the water eddied about them, lashed by their reckless haste, but Batiste, who fell several times on his knees, thought only of reaching out his arms, in order to keep his weapon dry and save the shot which remained.

And thus the human hunters went on, groping through the dismal darkness, until in a turn of the canal, they came out to an open space, where the banks were clear of reeds.

The eyes of Batiste, accustomed to the gloom of the vault, saw with perfect clearness a man who, leaning on his firearm, climbed staggering out of the canal, with difficulty moving mud-clogged legs.

It was he ... he! he as usual!

"Thief!... thief! you shall not escape," roared Batiste, and he discharged his second shot from the bottom of the canal, with the certainty of the marksman who is able to aim well and knows he brings down his booty.

He saw him fall heavily headlong over the bank, and climb on all-fours in order to roll into the water. Batiste wanted to catch him, but his haste was so great that it was he who, making a false step, fell full-length into the midst of the canal.

His head sunk in the mud, and he swallowed the earthy, ruddy liquid; he thought he would die, and remain buried in that miry marsh; but finally, by a powerful effort, he succeeded in standing upright, drawing his eyes blinded by the slime out of the water, then his mouth, panting as it breathed in the night air.

As soon as he recovered his sight, he looked for his enemy. He had disappeared.

He came out of the canal, dripping water and mud, and climbed the slope at the same place where his enemy had emerged: but on reaching the top, he could not see him.

On the dry earth, however, he noticed some black stains, and touched them with his hands: they smelled of blood. Now he knew that he had not missed his aim. But, though he looked about, hoping to see his enemy's corpse, he sought in vain.

That PimentÓ had a tough skin. Dripping mud and mire, he would go along dragging himself up to his own farm-house. Perhaps that vague rustle which he believed he heard in the immediate fields, as though a great reptile were dragging itself over the furrows, came from him. All the dogs were barking at him, filling the huerta with desperate howlings. He had heard him crawling along in the same manner a quarter of an hour before, when doubtless he was intending to kill him from behind. But on seeing himself discovered, he had fled on all-fours along the road, in order to take his stand further on in the leafy cane and to lie in ambush without any risk.

Batiste felt suddenly afraid. He was alone, in the midst of the plain, completely disarmed; his shotgun, without cartridges, was no more now than a weak club. PimentÓ couldn't return, but he had friends.

And overcome by sudden fear, he began to run, seeking as he crossed the fields the road which led to his farm.

The plain trembled with alarm. The four shots in the darkness of the evening had thrown all the neighbourhood into commotion. The dogs barked more and more furiously; the doors of the farm-houses opened, emitting black figures, who certainly did not come forth with empty hands.

With whistling and shouts of alarm, the neighbours summoned each other from a great distance. Shots at night might be signals of fire, of thieves, of who knows what? certainly nothing good. And the men sallied forth from their homes ready for anything, with the forgetfulness of self and solidarity of those who live in solitude.

Batiste, terrified by this movement, ran toward his farm, bending over, in order to pass unnoticed along the shelter of the banks or the high mounds of straw.

He already saw his home, with the open door illumined, and in the centre of the red square, the black forms of his family.

The dog sniffed him and was the first to salute him. Teresa and Roseta gave shouts of joy.

"Batiste, is it you?"

"Father! Father!"

And all rushed toward him, toward the entrance of the farm-house, under the old vine-arbour, through whose vines the stars shone like glow-worms.

The mother, with the woman's keen ear, restless and alarmed by the tardiness of her husband, had heard from far, far off, the four shots, and her heart "had given a leap," as she expressed it. All the family had rushed toward the door, anxiously scanning the dark horizon, convinced that the reports which alarmed the plain had some connection with the father's absence.

Mad with joy upon seeing him and hearing his voice, they did not notice his mud-stained face, his unshod feet, or his clothing, dirty and dripping mire.

They drew him within. Roseta hung herself upon his neck, breathing lovingly, with her eyes still moist.

"Father!... Father!"

But he was not able to restrain a grimace of pain, an ay! suppressed but full of suffering. Roseta had flung her arm about his left shoulder, in the same place where he had felt the tearing of steel, and which he now felt more and more crushingly heavy.

When he entered the house, and came into the full candlelight, the woman and the children gave a cry of astonishment. They saw the blood-stained shirt....

Roseta and her mother burst out crying. "Most holy queen! Sovereign mother! They have killed him!"

But Batiste, who felt the pain in his shoulder growing more and more insufferable, hushed their lamentations and ordered them with a dark gesture to see at once what had happened to him.

Roseta, who was the bravest, tore open the coarse rough shirt, leaving the shoulder uncovered. How much blood! The girl grew pale, trying not to faint; Batistet and the little ones began to weep, and Teresa continued her howlings as though her husband were in his death agony.

But the wounded man would not tolerate their lamentations and protested rudely. Less weeping: it was nothing: not serious, and the proof of this was that he could move his arm, although he felt, all the time, a greater weight in his shoulder. It was just a scratch, an abrasion, nothing more. He felt too strong for the wound to be deep. Look ... water, cloth, lint, the bottle of arnica which Teresa was guarding as a miraculous remedy in her room ... move about quickly! This was no time to stand gaping with open mouths.

Teresa, returning to her room, searched the depths of her chests, tearing up linen cloths, untying bandages, while the girl washed and washed again the lips of the bleeding wound, which was cut like a sabre-slash across the fleshy shoulder.

The two women checked the hemorrhage as best they could, bandaged the wound, and Batiste breathed with satisfaction, as though he were already cured. Worse blows than this had descended upon him in this life.

And he began to admonish the little ones to be prudent. Of what they had seen, not a word to anybody. There are subjects which it is best to forget. And he repeated the same to his wife, who talked of sending word to the doctor; it would amount to the same thing as attracting the attention of the court. It would cure itself. His constitution was wonderful. What was important was that no one should get mixed up in what occurred down below. Who knows in what condition the other man was by this time?

While his wife was helping him to change his clothes and prepared his bed, Batiste told her all that had occurred. The good woman opened her eyes with a frightened expression, sighed, thinking of the danger encountered by her husband, and cast anxious glances at the closed door of the farm-house, as if the rural police were about to enter through it.

Batistet, meanwhile, with precocious prudence, picked up the gun, and dried it in the candlelight, striving to wipe away from it all signs of recent usage, of that which had occurred.

The night was a bad one for all the family; Batiste was delirious; he had a fever, and tossed about furiously as if he still were running along the bed of the canal, pursuing the man. He terrified the little ones with his cries, so they were not able to sleep, as well as the women who, seated close to his bed, and offering him every moment some sugared water, the only domestic remedy which they could invent, passed a white night.

On the following day, the door of the farm-house was closed all morning. The wounded man seemed to be better: the children, their eyes reddened from lack of sleep, remained motionless in the corral, seated on the manure-heap, following dully the motions of the animals which were being raised there.

Teresa watched the plain through the closed door, and entered afterward into her husband's room.... How many people! All the neighbourhood was passing over the road in the direction of PimentÓ's house; a swarm of men could be seen thronging around it. And all of them with sad and frowning faces shouting with energetic motions, from a distance, and casting glances of hatred toward old Barret's farm-house.

Batiste received this news with grunts. Something itched in his breast, hurting him. The movement of the plain toward the house of his enemy meant that PimentÓ was in a serious condition; perhaps he was dead! He was sure that the two shots from his gun were in his body.

And now, what was going to happen? Would he die in prison like poor Barret? No; the customs of the huerta would be respected; faith in justice obtained by one's own hand. The dying man would be silent, leaving it to his friends, the Terrerolas and the others, to avenge him. And Batiste did not know which to fear more, the justice of the city, or that of the huerta.

It was drawing toward evening, when the wounded man, despite the protests and cries of the two women, sprang out of bed.

He was stifling; his athletic body, accustomed to fatigue, was not able to stand so many hours of inactivity. The weight in his shoulder forced him to change his position, as if this would free him from pain.

With a hesitating step, benumbed by lying in bed so long, he went forth from his house and seated himself on the brick-bench beneath the vine-arbour.

The afternoon was disagreeable; the wind blew too freshly for the season; heavy dark clouds covered the sun, and the light was sinking under them, closing up the horizon like a curtain of pale gold.

Batiste looked uncertainly in the direction of the city, turning his back toward the farm-house of PimentÓ, which could be seen clearly now that the fields were stripped of the golden grain which hid it before the harvest.

There might be noted in the wounded man both the impulse of curiosity and the fear of seeing too much; but at last his will was conquered, and he slowly turned his gaze toward the house of his enemy.

Yes; many people swarmed before the door; men, women, children; all the people of the plain who were anxiously running to visit their fallen liberator.

How they must hate him!... They were distant, but nevertheless he guessed that his name must be on the lips of all; in the buzzing of his ears, in the throbbing of his feverish temples he thought he perceived the threatening murmur of that wasp's nest.

And yet, God knew that he had done nothing more than defend himself; that he wished only to keep his own without harming any one. Why should he take the blame of being in conflict with these people, who, as Don JoaquÍn, the master, said, were very good but very stupid?

The afternoon closed in; the twilight, grey and sad, sifted over the plain. The wind, growing continually stronger, carried toward the farm-house the distant echo of lamentations and furious voices.

Batiste saw the people eddying in the door of the distant farm-house, saw arms extended with a sorrowful expression, clenched hands which snatched handkerchief from head and cast it in fury to the ground.

The wounded man felt all his blood mounting toward his heart, which stopped beating for some instants, as if paralysed, and afterward began to thump with more fury, shooting a hot, red wave to his face.

He guessed what was happening yonder: his heart told him. PimentÓ had just died.

Batiste felt cold and afraid, with a sensation of weakness as if suddenly all his strength had left him; and he went into his farm-house, not breathing easily until he saw the door closed and the candle lit.

The evening was dismal. Sleep overwhelmed the family, dead tired from the vigil of the preceding night. Almost immediately after supper, they retired: before nine, all were in bed.

Batiste felt that his wound was better. The weight in the shoulder diminished: the fever was not so fierce; but now a strange pain in his heart was tormenting him.

In the darkness of the bedroom, still awake, he saw a pale figure rising up, at first indefinite, then little by little taking form and colour, till it became PimentÓ as he had seen him the last few days, with his head bandaged and the threatening gesture of one stubbornly bent upon revenge.

The vision bothered him and he closed his eyes in order to sleep. Absolute darkness; sleep was overpowering him, but his closed eyes were beginning to fill the dense gloom with red points which kept growing larger, forming spots of various colours; and the spots, after floating about capriciously, joined themselves together, amalgamated, and again there stood PimentÓ, who approached him slowly, with the cautious ferocity of an evil beast which fascinates its victim.

Batiste tried to free himself from the nightmare.

He did not sleep; he heard his wife snoring close to him, and his sons overcome with weariness, but all the while he was hearing them lower and lower, as if some mysterious force were carrying the farm-house away, far away, to a distance: and he there inert, unable to move, no matter how hard he tried, saw the face of PimentÓ close to his own, and felt in his nostrils his enemy's hot breath.

But was he not dead?... His dulled brain kept asking this question, and after many efforts, he answered himself that PimentÓ had died. Now he did not have a broken head as before: his body was exposed, torn by two wounds, though Batiste was not able to determine where they were; but two wounds he had, two inexhaustible fountains of blood, which opened livid lips. The two gunshots, he already knew it: he was not one to miss his aim.

And the phantom, enveloping his face with its burning breath, fixed a glance upon him which pierced his eyes, and descended lower and lower until it tore his very vitals.

"Pardon, PimentÓ!" groaned the wounded man, terrified by the nightmare, and trembling like a child.

Yes, he ought to forgive him. He had killed him, it was true; but he should consider that he had been the first to attack him. Come! Men who are men ought to be reasonable! It was he who was to blame!

But the dead do not listen to reason, and the spectre, behaving like a bandit, smiled fiercely, and with a bound, landed on the bed, and seated himself upon him, pressing upon the sick man's wound with all his weight.

Batiste groaned painfully, unable to move and cast off the heavy mass. He tried to persuade him, calling him Toni with familiar tenderness, instead of designating him by his nickname.

"Toni, you are hurting me!"

That was just what the phantom wished, to hurt him, and not satisfied with this, he snatched from him with his glance alone his rags and bandages, and afterward sank his cruel nails into the deep wound, and pulled apart the edges, making him scream with pain.

"Ay! Ay!... PimentÓ, pardon me!"

Such was his pain that his tremblings, surging up from the shoulder to his head, made his cropped hair bristle, and stand erect, and then it began to curl with the contraction of the pain until it turned into a horrible tangle of serpents.

Then a horrible thing happened. The ghost, seizing him by his strange hair, finally spoke.

"Come ... come...." it said, pulling him along.

It dragged him along with superhuman swiftness, led him flying or swimming, he did not know which, across a space both light and slippery; dizzily they seemed to float toward a red spot which stood out in the far, far distance.

The stain grew larger, it looked in shape like the door of his bedroom, and after it poured out a dense, nauseating smoke, a stench of burning straw which prevented him from breathing.

It must be the mouth of hell: PimentÓ would hurl him into it, into the immense fire whose splendour lit up the door. Fear conquered his paralysis. He gave a fearful cry, finally moved his arms, and with a back stroke of his hand, hurled PimentÓ and the strange hair away from him.

Now he had his eyes well opened; the phantom had disappeared. He had been dreaming: it was doubtless a feverish nightmare: now he found himself again in bed with poor Teresa, who, still dressed, was snoring laboriously at his side.

But no; the delirium continued. What strange light was illumining his bedroom? He still saw the mouth of hell, which was like the door of his room, ejecting smoke and ruddy splendour. Was he asleep? He rubbed his eyes, moved his arms, and sat up in bed.

No: he was awake and wide awake.

The door was growing redder all the time, the smoke was denser, he heard muffled cracklings as of cane-brake bursting, licked by tongues of flame, and even saw the sparks dance, and cling like flies of fire to the cretonne curtain which closed the room. He heard a desperate steady barking, like a furiously tolling bell sounding an alarm.

Christ!... The conviction of reality suddenly leaped to his mind, and maddened him.

"Teresa! Teresa!... Up!"

And with the first push, he flung her out of bed. Then he ran to the children's room, and with shouts and blows pulled them out in their shirts, like an idiotic, frightened flock which runs before the stick without knowing where it is going. The roof of his room was already burning, casting a shower of sparks over the bed.

To Batiste, blinded by the smoke, the minutes seemed like centuries till he got the door open; and through it, maddened with terror, all the family rushed out in their nightclothes and ran to the road.

Here, a little more serene, they took count.

All; they were all there, even the poor dog which howled sadly as it watched the burning house.

Teresa embraced her daughter, who, forgetting her danger, trembled with shame, upon seeing herself in her chemise in the middle of the huerta, and seated herself upon a sloping bank, shrinking up with modesty, resting her chin upon the knees, and drawing down her white linen night-robe in order to cover her feet.

The two little ones, frightened, took refuge in the arms of their elder brother, and the father rushed about like a madman, roaring maledictions.

Thieves! How well they had known how to do it! They had set fire to the farm-house from all four sides, it had burst into flames from top to bottom; even the corral with its stable and its sheds was crowned with flames.

From it there came forth desperate neighings, cacklings of terror, fierce gruntings; but the farm-house, insensible to the wails of those who were roasting in its depths, went on sending up curved tongues of fire through the door and the windows; and from its burning roof there rose an enormous spiral of white smoke, which reflecting the fire took on a rosy transparency.

The weather had changed: the night was calm, the wind did not blow and the blue of the sky was dimmed only by the columns of smoke, between whose white wisps the curious stars appeared.

Teresa was struggling with her husband, who, recovered from his painful surprise, and spurred on by his interests, which incited him to commit follies, wished to enter the fiery inferno. Just one moment, nothing more: only the time necessary to take from the bedroom the little sack of money, the profit of the harvest.

Ah! Good Teresa! Even now it was no longer necessary to restrain the husband, who endured her violent grasp. A farm-house soon burns; straw and canes love fire. The roof came down with a crash,—that erect roof which the neighbours looked upon as an insult—and out of the enormous bed of live-coals arose a frightful column of sparks, in whose uncertain and vacillating light the huerta seemed to move with fantastic grimaces.

The sides of the corral stirred heavily as if within them a legion of demons were rushing about and striking them. Engarlanded with flame the fowls leaped forth, trying to fly, though burning alive.

A piece of wall of mud and stakes fell, and through the black breach there came forth like a lightning flash, a terrible monster, ejecting smoke through its nostrils, shaking its mane of sparks, desperately beating its tail like a broom of flame, which scattered a stench of burning hair.

It was the horse. With a prodigious bound, he leaped over the family, and ran madly through the fields, instinctively seeking the canal, into which he fell with the sizzling hiss of red-hot iron when it strikes water.

Behind him, dragging itself along like a drunken demon emitting frightful grunts, came another spectre of fire, the pig, which fell to the ground in the middle of the field, burning like a torch of grease.

There remained now only the walls and the grape-vines with their twisted runners distorted by fire, and the posts, which stood up like bars of ink over the red background.

Batistet, in his longing to save something, ran recklessly over the paths, shouting, beating at the doors of the neighbouring farm-houses, which seemed to wink in the reflection of the fire.

"Help! Help! Fire! Fire!"

His shouts died away, raising a funereal echo, like that heard amid ruins and in cemeteries.

The father smiled cruelly. He was calling in vain. The huerta was deaf to them. There were eyes within those white farm-houses, which looked curiously out through the cracks; perhaps there were mouths which laughed with infernal glee, but not one generous voice to say "Here I am!"

Bread! At what a cost it is earned! And how evil it makes man!

In one farm-house there was burning a pale light, yellowing and sad. Teresa, confused by her misfortune, wished to go there to implore help, with the hope of some relief, of some miracle which she longed for in their misfortune.

Her husband held her back with an expression of terror. No: not there. Anywhere but there.

And like a man who has fallen low, so low that he already is unable to feel any remorse, he shifted his gaze from the fire and fixed it on that pale light, yellowish and sad; the light of a taper which glows without lustre, fed by an atmosphere in which might almost be perceived the fluttering of the dead.

Good-bye, PimentÓ! You were departing from the world well-served. The farm-house and the fortune of the odious intruder were lighting up your corpse with merrier splendour than the candles bought by the bereaved Pepeta, mere yellowish tears of light.

Batistet returned desperate from his useless trip. Nobody had answered.

The plain, silent and scowling, had said good-bye to them for ever.

They were more alone than if they had been in the midst of a desert; the solitude of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature.

They must flee from there; they must begin another life, with hunger ever treading at their heels: they must leave behind them the ruin of their work, and the small body of one of their own, the poor little fellow who was rotting in the earth, an innocent victim of the mad battle.

And all of them, with Oriental resignation, seated themselves upon the bank, and there awaited the day, their shoulders chilled with cold, but toasted from the front by the bed of live coals, which tinged their stupefied faces with the reflection of blood; following with the unchangeable passivity of fatalism the course of the fire, which was devouring all their efforts, and changing them into embers as fragile and tenuous as their old illusions of work and peace.

THE END