s.
The bugler, upon beholding her, would leave the lucutory, fearing the
arrogance of her bandit mate, who would take advantage of the occasion
to humiliate him before his former companion. Many times a certain
feeling of curiosity and tenderness got the better of his fear, and he
would advance timidly, looking beyond the thick bars for the head of a
child that came with _la Peluchona_.

"That's my son, sir," he said, humbly. "My Tonico, who no longer knows
me or remembers me. They say that he doesn't resemble me at all. Perhaps
he's not mine.... You can imagine, with the life his mother has always
led, living near the garrisons, washing the soldiers' clothes!... But he
was born in my home; I held him in my arms when he was ill, and that's a
bond as close as ties of blood."

Then he would resume his timid lurking about the locutory, as if
preparing one of his robberies, to see his Tonico; and when he could see
him for a moment, the sight was enough to extinguish his helpless rage
before the full basket of lunch that the evil woman brought to her
lover.

_Magdalena's_ whole existence was summed up in two facts; he had robbed
and he had travelled much. The robberies were insignificant; clothes or
money snatched in the street, because he lacked courage for greater
deeds. His travels had been compulsory,--always on foot, over the roads
of Spain, marching in a chain gang of convicts, between the polished or
white three-cornered hats that guarded the prisoners.

After having been a "pupil" among the buglers of a regiment, he had
launched upon this life of continuous imprisonment, punctuated by brief
periods of freedom, in which he lost his bearings, not knowing what to
do with himself and wishing to return as soon as possible to jail. It
was the perpetual chain, but finished link by link, as he used to say.

The police never organized a round-up of dangerous persons but what
_Magdalena_ was found among them,--a timorous rat whose name the papers
mentioned like that of a terrible criminal. He was always included in
the trail of vagrant suspects who, without being charged with any
specific crime, were sent from province to province by the authorities,
in the hope that they would die of hunger along the roads, and thus he
had covered the whole peninsula on foot, from Cadiz to Santander, from
Valencia to La Coruna. With what enthusiasm he recalled his travels! He
spoke of them as if they were joyous excursions, just like a w