of this mountain
village where they lived, perhaps also the hostility of Dolores to their
naive, unexpressed projects, brought them more closely together--

"To-night, at eight o'clock, say if you will be on the square to dance
with me?"

"Yes--" replies the little girl, fixing on her friend eyes of sadness, a
little frightened, as well as of ardent tenderness.

"Sure?" asked Ramuntcho again, whom these eyes make anxious.

"Yes, sure!"

So, he is quieted again this time, knowing that if Gracieuse has said
and decided something one may count on it. And at once the weather seems
to him more beautiful, the Sunday more amusing, life more charming--

The dinner hour calls the Basques now to the houses or to the inns, and,
under the light, somewhat gloomy, of the noon sun, the village seems
deserted.

Ramuntcho goes to the cider mill which the smugglers and pelota players
frequent. There, he sits at a table, his cap still drawn over his eyes,
with his friends: Arrochkoa, two or three others of the mountains and
the somber Itchoua, their chief.

A festive meal is prepared for them, with fish of the Nivelle, ham and
hares. In the foreground of the hall, vast and dilapidated, near the
windows, are the tables, the oak benches on which they are seated; in
the background, in a penumbra, are the enormous casks filled with new
cider.

In this band of Ramuntcho, which is there entire, under the piercing
eye of its chief, reigns an emulation of audacity and a reciprocal,
fraternal devotion; during their night expeditions especially, they are
all one to live or to die.

Leaning heavily, benumbed in the pleasure of resting after the fatigues
of the night and concentrated in the expectation of satiating their
robust hunger, they are silent at first, hardly raising their heads to
look through the window-panes at the passing girls. Two are very young,
almost children like Ramuntcho: Arrochkoa and Florentino. The others
have, like Itchoua, hardened faces, eyes in ambuscade under the frontal
arcade, expressing no certain age; their aspect reveals a past of
fatigues, in the unreasonable obstinacy to pursue this trade of
smuggling, which hardly gives bread to the less skilful.

Then, awakened little by little by the smoking dishes, by the sweet
cider, they talk; soon their words interlace, light, rapid and sonorous,
with an excessive rolling of the _r_. They talk in their mysterious
language, the origin of which is unknown and whi