to sleep again, with the carefree
innocence of children, with no suspicions, and without alarm.

_Sina_ Tona had an unjust weakness for her younger son. In the first
days of her widowhood, when she saw the two little heads sleeping side
by side in the narrow cabin, resting perhaps on the very timbers that
had crushed their father's skull, she had felt an equal tenderness for
them both, as though the deadly bark were to destroy them as it had
killed Pascualo. But when prosperity came, and the memory of the tragedy
grew dim with the years, _sina_ Tona showed unmistakable fondness for
Tonet, a child of feline shrewdness, who treated everybody with
imperious petulance, but for his mother always had the speculative
fondness of a sly cat.

What a joy Tonet was for her, a beach vagabond at seven, spending the
whole day away from home with one gang or another, and coming back at
night with his clothes soaked and torn, and his pockets full of sand!
The older boy, meanwhile, now that his brother had been weaned from him,
would be in the tavern, washing dishes, waiting on customers, feeding
the hens, or watching, with grave responsibility written on his
features, the two frying-pans that were crackling on the stoves.

The mother, sometimes, on suddenly waking from a doze behind the counter
and finding Pascualet in front of her, would start with violent
surprise. Pascualo, for all the world! Just as she had known him as a
boy, before their marriage, when he was "cat" on a fishing vessel! The
same round jolly face, the same stout square-shouldered body, the same
stubby sturdy legs, the same expression of an honest simpleton with a
gift for plodding work that stamped him in advance as a steady reliable
chap, an _hombre de bien_. And the same inside, as well! Good-natured,
too good-natured if anything, and bashful! But a bull-dog when it came
to hanging on to money; and a mad fondness for the sea, prolific mother
of men of courage, strong enough and brave enough to earn their living
from her bosom!

By the time he was thirteen, the tavern had become quite uncongenial to
"the Rector," as he gave to understand with a word dropped here and
there, or with one of those occasional half-finished and incoherent
sentences, which were all that ever came out of that hard head of his.
He had not been born to the tavern business! Something altogether too
tame for him! That might do for Tonet, who didn't like real work
overwell. As for himself,