years ago, fifteen years, when she returned,
clandestinely, at a fall of night similar to this one. In the first days
of this return, dumb and haughty to her former companions from fear of
their disdain, she would go out only to go to church, her black cloth
mantilla lowered on her eyes. Then, at length, when curiosity
was appeased, she had returned to her habits, so valiantly and so
irreproachably that all had forgiven her.

To greet and embrace her son she smiled with joy and tenderness, but,
silent by nature and reserved as both were, they said to each other only
what it was useful to say.

He sat at his accustomed place to eat the soup and the smoking
dish which she served to him without speaking. The room, carefully
kalsomined, was made gay by the sudden light of a flame of branches in
the tall and wide chimney ornamented with a festoon of white calico.
In frames, hooked in good order, there were images of Ramuntcho's first
communion and different figures of saints with Basque legends; then the
Virgin of Pilar, the Virgin of Anguish, and rosaries, and blessed palms.
The kitchen utensils shone, in a line on shelves sealed to the walls;
every shelf ornamented with one of those pink paper frills, cut in
designs, which are manufactured in Spain and on which are printed,
invariably, series of personages dancing with castanets, or scenes in
the lives of the toreadors. In this white interior, before this joyful
and clear chimney, one felt an impression of home, a tranquil welfare,
which was augmented by the notion of the vast, wet, surrounding night,
of the grand darkness of the valleys, of the mountains and of the woods.

Franchita, as every evening, looked long at her son, looked at him
embellishing and growing, taking more and more an air of decision and
of force, as his brown mustache was more and more marked above his fresh
lips.

When he had supped, eaten with his young mountaineer's appetite several
slices of bread and drunk two glasses of cider, he rose, saying:

"I am going to sleep, for we have to work tonight."

"Ah!" exclaimed the mother, "and when are you to get up?"

"At one o'clock, as soon as the moon sets. They will whistle under the
window."

"What is it?"

"Bundles of silk and bundles of velvet."

"With whom are you going?"

"The same as usual: Arrochkoa, Florentino and the Iragola brothers. It
is, as it was the other night, for Itchoua, with whom I have just made
an engagement. Good-night