e plane-tree leaves strewing the
soil.--Then, a whistled appeal.--

What, already!--Already one o'clock in the morning--!

Quite resolved now, she opened the door to the chief smuggler with a
smile of greeting that the latter had never seen in her:

"Come in, Itchoua," she said, "warm yourself--while I go wake up my
son."

A tall and large man, that Itchoua, thin, with a thick chest, clean
shaven like a priest, in accordance with the fashion of the old time
Basque; under the cap which he never took off, a colorless face,
inexpressive, cut as with a pruning hook, and recalling the beardless
personages archaically drawn on the missals of the fifteenth century.
Above his hollow cheeks, the breadth of the jaws, the jutting out of the
muscles of the neck gave the idea of his extreme force. He was of the
Basque type, excessively accentuated; eyes caved-in too much under the
frontal arcade; eyebrows of rare length, the points of which, lowered
as on the figures of tearful madonnas, almost touched the hair at the
temples. Between thirty and fifty years, it was impossible to assign an
age to him. His name was Jose-Maria Gorosteguy; but, according to the
custom he was known in the country by the surname of Itchoua (the Blind)
given to him in jest formerly, because of his piercing sight which
plunged in the night like that of cats. He was a practising Christian, a
church warden of his parish and a chorister with a thundering voice. He
was famous also for his power of resistance to fatigue, being capable of
climbing the Pyrenean slopes for hours at racing speed with heavy loads
on his back.

Ramuntcho came down soon, rubbing his eyelids, still heavy from a
youthful sleep, and, at his aspect, the gloomy visage of Itchoua was
illuminated by a smile. A continual seeker for energetic and strong boys
that he might enroll in his band, and knowing how to keep them in spite
of small wages, by a sort of special point of honor, he was an expert in
legs and in shoulders as well as in temperaments, and he thought a great
deal of his new recruit.

Franchita, before she would let them go, leaned her head again on her
son's neck; then she escorted the two men to the threshold of her door,
opened on the immense darkness,--and recited piously the Pater for them,
while they went into the dark night, into the rain, into the chaos of
the mountains, toward the obscure frontier.

CHAPTER II.

Several hours later, at the first uncertain fl