, with effusion, presses Arrochkoa's two hands.

Detcharry has remained famous at Erribiague for his stratagems, his
ambuscades, his captures of contraband goods, out of which came, later,
his income that Dolores and her children enjoy.

And Arrochkoa assumes a proud air, while Ramuntcho lowers his head,
feeling that he is of a lower condition, having no father.

"Are you not in the customhouse, as your deceased father was?" continued
the old man in a bantering tone.

"Oh, no, not exactly.--Quite the reverse, even--"

"Oh, well! I understand!--Then, shake once more--and it's a sort
of revenge on Detcharry for me, to know that his son has gone into
smuggling like us!--"

They send for cider and they drink together, while the old men tell
again the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales
of nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different
from that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more
clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and
Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens
the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem
to them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas,
repeated infinitely as in the antique songs expressive of sorrow. And,
as soon as they cease talking, the slight sounds in the sleep of the
country come from peaceful and fresh darkness. The crickets chirp;
one hears the torrent bubbling at the base of the inn; one hears the
dripping of springs from the terrible, overhanging summits, carpeted
with thick foliage.--It sleeps, the very small village, crouched and
hidden in the hollow of a ravine, and one has the impression that the
night here is a night blacker than elsewhere and more mysterious.

"In truth," concludes the old chief, "the customhouse and smuggling, at
bottom, resemble each other; it is a game where the smartest wins, is
it not? I will even say that, in my own opinion, an officer of customs,
clever and bold, a customs officer like your father, for example, is as
worthy as any of us!"

After this, the hostess having come to say that it was time to put out
the lamp--the last lamp still lit in the village--they go away, the old
defrauders. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa go up to their rooms, lie down and
sleep, always in the chirp of the crickets, always in the sound of
fresh waters that run or that fall. And Ramuntcho, as in his house at