glasses large, dead, plane-tree leaves.

A woman, already old, casts at them, from under her black cloth
mantilla, a sad and evil glance:

"Ah," says Arrochkoa, "here is mother! And she looks at us
crosswise.--She may flatter herself for her work!--She punished herself
for she will end in solitude now.--Catherine--who is at Elsagarray's,
you know--works by the day for her; otherwise, she would have nobody to
talk to in the evening--"

A bass voice, behind them, interrupts them, with a Basque greeting,
hollow like a sound in a cavern, while a large and heavy hand rests on
Ramuntcho's shoulder as if to take possession of him: Itchoua, Itchoua
who has just finished chanting his liturgy!--Not changed at all, this
one; he has always his same ageless face, always his colorless mask
which is at once that of a monk and that of a highwayman, and his same
eyes, set in, hidden, absent. His mind also must have remained similar,
his mind capable of impassible murder at the same time as devout
fetichism.

"Ah," he says, in a tone which wishes to be that of a good fellow, "you
have returned to us, my Ramuntcho! Then we are going to work together,
eh? Business is brisk with Spain now, you know, and arms are needed at
the frontier. You are one of us, are you not?"

"Perhaps," replies Ramuntcho. "We may talk of it--"

For several moments his departure for America has become a faint idea in
his mind.--No!--He would rather stay in his native land, begin again
his former life, reflect and wait obstinately. Anyway, now that he knows
where she is, that village of Amezqueta, at a distance of five or six
hours from here, haunts him in a dangerous way, and he hugs all sorts
of sacrilegious projects which, until to-day, he would never have dared
hardly to conceive.

CHAPTER IV.

At noon, he returned to his isolated house to see his mother.

The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had
continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt
better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho might become dreamy, she made
him return to the square to attend the Sunday ball-game.

The breath of the wind became warm again, blew from the south; none of
the shivers of a moment ago remained; on the contrary, a summer sun
and atmosphere, on the reddened woods, on the rusty ferns, on the roads
where continued to fall the sad leaves. But the sky was gathering thick
clouds, which suddenly came out from the rear of the