istaken, he had the year before got Manolo exempted
from military service. The boy's wild, vicious character was fanatically
rebellious against all discipline. In vain Zureda sought to teach him a
trade. Threats and entreaties, as well as all kinds of wise advice, were
shattered against the invincibly gypsy-like will of the young fellow.

"If you don't want to support me," Manolo often used to say, "let me go.
Kick me out. I'll get by, on my own hook."

Often and often Manolo vanished from the little town. He stayed away for
days at a time, engaged in mysterious adventures. People coming in from
neighboring villages reported him as given over to gaming. One night he
showed up with a serious wound in the groin, a deep knife-stab.

"Who did that to you?" demanded Zureda.

The youth answered:

"Nobody's business. _I_ know who it is. Sometime or other he'll get his,
all right!"

To save himself from police investigation, Zureda said nothing about it.
For some weeks, Manolo kept quiet. But early one morning a couple of
rural guards found the body of a man on the river-bank. His body was
covered with stabs. All investigations to find the murderer were
fruitless. The crime remained unavenged. Only Amadeo--who just a bit
after the discovery of the body had discovered Manolo washing a
blood-stained handkerchief in a water-jar--was certain that his son had
done this murder.

Once more the sinister words of Don Adolfo recurred to his mind,
bruising him, maddening him, seeming to bore into his very brain:

"He does not seem to be your son, at all!"

Amadeo pondered this, and decided it was true. The boy did not seem his.
Manolo's outlaw way of living did not stop here. Taking advantage of his
mother's love and of the quiet disposition of Amadeo, almost every day
he showed the very greatest need of money.

"I've got to have a hundred pesetas," he would say. "I've just _got_ to
have them! If you people don't come across, well, all right! I'll get
them, some way. But perhaps you'll be sorry then, you didn't give them
to me!"

He was mad for enjoyment. When his mother tried to warn and advise him,
saying: "Why don't you work, you young wretch? Don't you see how your
father does?"--he would retort:

"I don't call _that_ living, to work! I'd rather go hang myself, than
live the way the old man lives!"

You would have thought Rafaela was his slave, by the lack of decency and
respect he showed her. When he called her, he wo