k at
the neighboring fields, but without any desire to bend over and pluck
out any of the weeds that were beginning to sprout in the furrows. Much
this land mattered to him now,--the earth in whose bowels he had left
the sweat of his body and the strength of his limbs!... His son was all
he had,--the fruit of a late marriage,--and he was a sturdy youth, as
industrious and taciturn as his father; a soldier of the soil, who
required neither orders nor threat to fulfil his duties; ready to awake
at midnight when it was his turn to irrigate his land and give the
fields drink under the light of the stars; quick to spring from his bed
on the hard kitchen bench, throwing off the covers and putting on his
hemp sandals at the sound of the early rooster's reveille.

Uncle Pascal had never smiled. He was the Latin type of father; the
fearful master of the house, who, on returning from his labors, ate
alone, served by his wife, who stood by with an expression of
submission. But this grave, harsh mask of an omnipotent master concealed
a boundless admiration for his son, who was his best work. How quickly
he loaded a cart! How he perspired as he managed the hoe with a vigorous
forward and backward motion that seemed to cleave him at the waist! Who
could ride a pony like him, gracefully jumping on to his back by simply
resting the toe of a sandal upon the hind legs of the animal?... He
didn't touch wine, never got mixed up in a brawl, nor was he afraid of
work. Through good luck he had pulled a high number in the military
draft, and when the feast of San Juan came around he intended to marry a
girl from a near-by farm,--a maiden that would bring with her a few
pieces of earth when she came to the cabin of her new parents.
Happiness; an honorable and peaceful continuation of the family
traditions; another _Caldera_, who, when Uncle Pascal grew old, would
continue to work the lands that had been fructified by his ancestors,
while a troop of little _Calderitas_, increasing in number each year,
would play around the nag harnessed to the plow, eyeing with a certain
awe their grandpa, his eyes watery from age and his words very concise,
as he sat in the sun at the cabin door.

Christ! And how man's illusions vanish!... One Saturday, as Pascualet
was coming home from his sweetheart's house, along one of the paths of
the _huerta_, about midnight, a dog had bitten him; a wretched, silent
animal that jumped out from behind a sluice; as the you