ttered shirt and vest. His torn trousers, split at the seam, looked
like the wings of a cold, stricken bird; two strings of cloth dangled
from his waist. As he walked, he described grotesque circles.

"Surely you're not fit to do any work!" Demetrio said, refusing to
allow him to touch the saddles.

"Poor man," the owner cried from within the hut, "he's lost all his
strength.... But he surely works for his pay.... He starts working the
minute God Almighty himself gets up, and it's after sundown now but
he's working still!"

Demetrio went out with Camilla for a stroll about the encampment. The
meadow, golden, furrowed, stripped even of the smallest bushes,
extended limitless in its immense desolation. The three tall ash trees
which stood in front of the small house, with dark green crests, round
and waving, with rich foliage and branches drooping to the very ground,
seemed a veritable miracle.

"I don't know why but I feel there's a lot of sadness around here,"
said Demetrio.

"Yes," Camilla answered, "I feel that way too."

On the bank of a small stream, 'Pifanio was strenuously tugging at a
rope with a large can tied to the end of it. He poured a stream of
water over a heap of fresh, cool grass; in the twilight, the water
glimmered like crystal. A thin cow, a scrawny nag, and a burro drank
noisily together.

Demetrio recognized the limping servant and asked him: "How much do you
get a day?"

"Eight cents a day, boss."

He was an insignificant, scrofulous wraith of a man with green eyes and
straight, fair hair. He whined complaint of his boss, the ranch, his
bad luck, his dog's life.

"You certainly earn your pay all right, my lad," Demetrio interrupted
kindly. "You complain and complain, but you aren't no loafer, you work
and work." Then, aside to Camilla: "There's always more damned fools in
the valley than among us folk in the sierra, don't you think?"

"Of course!" she replied.

They went on. The valley was lost in darkness; stars came out. Demetrio
put his arm around Camilla's waist amorously and whispered in her ear.

"Yes," she answered in a faint voice.

She was indeed beginning to "fall for him" as she had expressed it.

Demetrio slept badly. He flung out of the house very early.

"Something is going to happen to me," he thought.

It was a silent dawn, with faint murmurs of joy. A thrush sang timidly
in one of the ash trees. The animals in the corral trampled on the
refuse. The pig grunted