you don't forget some things in a
hurry. Oh, yes, when things go right and there's no trouble, you forget
easy enough. You forget the fellows you used to drink with in the
taverns. But we used to be hungry together, _redeu_, hungry; and you
don't forget times like that. Poor Tonet! No! I'm going to stand by
that boy till I get him on his feet and make a man of him, I am. What do
they think!... That I'm an ox, probably, a plain damn fool! All right,
but this damn fool has got a heart under his ribs, he has." And the
Rector, filling with deeper and deeper emotion, rapped on that
well-padded chest of his, and his thorax echoed like a drum.

For as much as a quarter of an hour the two of them walked on in
silence, Roseta frightened at the possible outcome of their
conversation; Pascualo, in a gloomy mood, stumbling along with lowered
head and frowning darkly whenever he raised his eyes, clenching his
fists as though in struggle with an evil thought that would not down.
Thus they reached the Grao and were through it before either of them
spoke.

"And anyhow, Roseta," said the Rector at last, from sheer necessity of
giving some expression to the anguished meditations that were writhing
within him, "and anyhow, it's just as well that it is mere talk. For if
I should find some day, that it's more than that ... _recristo_, nobody
really knows who I am! I'm afraid of myself, sometimes! I'm an
easy-going sort of chap, and never go around looking for trouble. I even
yield a point down on the beach, now and then, because I've a boy to
look out for and have never cared to play the bully, or the tough. But
there are two things in this world that I have, and that I call mine: my
money, and my wife. Let no one dare lay a finger on either of them. On
the way back from Algiers, with that load, I was afraid once the cutter
was going to get us. And do you know what I had made up my mind to do?
Back up against the mast there, with my knife out, and kill and kill and
kill, till they cut me down on top of those bales of 'mayflower' that
for me meant fortune. And then Dolores ... at times when I thought how
nice she looked and what a good woman she was, something of the great
lady about her--I don't know what--that makes her so wonderful, it
occurred to me--why not say it right out?--that some fellow, some day,
might try to get her away from me. Well, sir, I could have throttled her
almost, at the mere idea of such a thing, and then gone out