II

In a mud-walled hut perched over the brink of the ravine and sheltered

there by a shelving rock, an old Gallegan peasant sat huddled over a

fire and face to face with starvation. The fire, banked in the centre

of the earthen floor, filled all the cabin with smoke, which escaped

only by a gap in the thatch and a window-hole overlooking the ravine.

An iron crock, on a chain furred with soot, hung from the rafters,

where sooty cobwebs, a foot and more in length, waved noiselessly in

the draught. It was empty, but he had no strength to lift it off its

hook; and at the risk of cracking it he had piled up the logs on the

hearth, for the cold searched his old bones. The window-hole showed a

patch of fading day, wintry and sullen: but no beam of it penetrated

within, where the firelight flickered murkily on three beds of dirty

straw, a table like a butcher's block, and, at the back of the hut, an

alcove occupied by three sooty dolls beneath a crucifix--the Virgin,

St. Joseph, and St. James.

The alcove was just a recess scooped out of the _adobe_ wall: and the

old man himself could not have told why his house had been built of

unbaked mud when so much loose stone lay strewn about the mountain-side

ready to hand. Possibly even his ancestors, who had built it, could

not have told. They had come from the plain-land near Zamora, and

built in the only fashion they knew--a fashion which _their_ ancestors

had learnt from the Moors: but time and the mountain's bad habit of

dropping stones had taught them to add a stout roof. For generations

they had clung to this perch, and held body and soul together by the

swine-herding. They pastured their pigs three miles below, where the

ravine opened upon a valley moderately fertile and wooded with oak and

chestnut; and in midwinter drove them back to the hill and styed them

in a large pen beside the hut, in which, if the pen were crowded, they

made room for the residue.

The family now consisted of the old man, Gil Chaleco (a widower and

past work); his son Gil the Younger, with a wife, Juana; their only

daughter, Mercedes, her young husband, Sebastian May, and their

two-year-old boy. The two women worked with the men in herding the

swine and were given sole charge of them annually, when Gil the Younger

and Sebastian tramped it down to the plains and hired themselves out

for the harvest.

But this year Sebastian, instead of harvesting, had departed for

Corunna to join the insurrectionary bands and carry a gun in defence

of his country. To Gil the Elder this was a piece of youthful folly.

How could it matter, in this valley of theirs, what King reigned in

far-away Madrid? And would a Spaniard any more than a Corsican make

good the lost harvest-money? The rest of the family had joined him in

raising objections; for in this den of poverty the three elders thought

of money morning, noon, and night, and of nothing but money; and

Mercedes was young and in love with her husband, and sorely unwilling

to lend him to the wars. Sebastian, however, had smiled and kissed her

and gone his way; and at the end of his soldiery had found himself,

poor lad, in hospital in Leon, one of the many hundreds abandoned by

the Marquis of Romana to the French.

News of this had not reached the valley, where indeed his wife's

family had other trouble to concern them: for a forage party from

the retreating British main guard had descended upon the cabin four

days ago and carried off all the swine, leaving in exchange some

scraps of paper, which (they said) would be honoured next day by the

Assistant-Paymaster: he could not be more than a day's march behind.

But a day had passed, and another, and now the household had gone off

to Nogales to meet him on the road, leaving only the old man, and

taking even little Sebastianillo. The pigs would be paid for handsomely

by the rich English; Juana had some purchases to make in the town; and

Mercedes needed to buy a shawl for the child, and thought it would be

a treat for him to see the tall foreign red-coats marching past.

So they had started, leaving the old man with a day's provision (for

the foragers had cleared the racks and the larder as well as the sty),

and promising to be home before nightfall. But two days and a night had

passed without news of them.

With his failing strength he had made shift to keep the fire alight;

but food was not to be found. He had eaten his last hard crust of

millet-bread seven or eight hours before, and this had been his only

breakfast. His terror for the fate of the family was not acute. Old

age had dulled his faculties, and he dozed by the fire with sudden

starts of wakefulness, blinking his smoke-sored eyes and gazing with

a vague sense of evil on the straw beds and the image in the alcove.

His thoughts ran on the swine and the price to be paid for them by the

Englishman: they faded into dreams wherein the family saints stepped

down from their shrine and chaffered with the foreign paymaster; dreams

in which he found himself grasping silver dollars with both hands. And

all the while he was hungry to the point of dying; yet the visionary

dollars brought no food--suggested only the impulse to bury them out of

sight of thieves.

So vivid was the dream that, waking with a start and a shiver, he

hobbled towards the window-hole and stopped to pick up the wooden

shutter that should close it. Standing so, still half asleep, with his

hand on the shutter-bar, he heard a rushing sound behind him, as though

the mountain-side were breaking away overhead and rushing down upon the

roof and back of the cabin.

He had spent all his life on these slopes and knew the sounds of

avalanche and land-slips--small land-slips in this Gallegan valley were

common enough. This noise resembled both, yet resembled neither, and

withal was so terrifying that he swung round to face it, aquake in his

shoes--to see the rear wall bowing inwards and crumbling, and the roof

quietly subsiding upon it, as if to bury him alive.

For a moment he saw it as the mirror of his dream, cracking and

splitting; then, as the image of the Virgin tilted itself forward from

its shrine and fell with a crash, he dropped the shutter, and running

to the door, tugged at its heavy wooden bolt. The hut was collapsing,

and he must escape into the open air.

He neither screamed nor shouted, for his terror throttled him; and

after the first rushing noise the wall bowed inwards silently, with

but a trickle of dry and loosened mud. His gaze, cast back across his

shoulder, was on it while he tugged at the bolt. Slowly--very slowly,

the roof sank, and stayed itself, held up on either hand by its two

corner-props. Then, while it came to a standstill, sagging between

them, the wall beneath it burst asunder, St. Joseph and St. James were

flung head-over-heels after the Virgin, and through the rent poured a

broad river of silver.

He faced around gradually, holding his breath. His back was to the

door now, and he leaned against it with outspread palms while his eyes

devoured the miracle.

Dollars! Silver dollars!

He could not lift his gaze from them. If he did, they would surely

vanish, and he awake from his dream. Yet in the very shock of awe, and

starving though he was, the master-habit of his life, the secretive

peasant cunning, had already begun to work. Never once relaxing his

fixed stare, fearful even of blinking with his smoke-sored eyes, he

shuffled sideways toward the window-hole, his hands groping the wall

behind him. The wooden shutter and its fastening bar--a short oak

pole--lay where he had dropped them, on the floor beneath the window.

He crouched, feeling backwards for them; found, lifted them on to

the inner ledge, and, with a half-turn of his body, thrust one arm

deep into the recess and jammed the shutter into its place. To fix

the bolt was less easy; it fitted across the back of the shutter, its

ends resting in two sockets pierced in the wall of the recess. He

could use but one hand; yet in less than a minute he found the first

socket, slid an end of the bolt into it as far as it would go, lifted

the other end and scraped with it along the opposite side of the recess

until it dropped into the second socket. He was safe now--safe from

prying eyes. In all this while--these two, perhaps three, minutes--his

uppermost terror had been lest strange eyes were peering in through

the window-hole: it had cost him anguish not to remove his own for an

instant from the miracle to assure himself. But he had shut out this

terror now: and the miracle had not vanished.

A few coins trickled yet. He crawled forward across the floor,

crouching like a beast for a spring. But as he drew close his old legs

began to shake under him. He dropped on his knees and fell forward,

plunging both hands into the bright pile.

Dollars! real silver dollars!

He lay on the flood of wealth, stretched like a swimmer, his fingers

feebly moving among the coins which slid and poured over the back

of his hands. He did not ask how the miracle had befallen. He was

starving; dying in fact, though he did not know it; and lo! he had

found a heaven beyond all imagination, and lay in it and panted,

at rest. The firelight played on the heave and fall of his gaunt

shoulder-blades, and on the glass eyes of the Virgin, whose head had

rolled half-way across the floor and lay staring up foolishly at the

rafters.

* * * * *

"Mother, open! Ah, open quickly, mother, for the love of God!"

Whose voice was that? Yes, yes--Mercedes', to be sure, his

granddaughter's. She had gone to Nogales ... long ago.... Yet that was

her voice. Had he come, then, to Paradise that her voice was pleading

for him--pleading for the door to open?

"Mother--Father! It is I, Mercedes! Open quickly--It is Mercedes, do

you hear? I want my child--Sebastianillo--my child--quick!"

The voice broke into short agonised cries, into sobs. The door rattled.

At the sound of this last the old man raised himself on his knees. His

eyes fell again on the shining dollars all around him. His throat

worked.

Suddenly terror broke out in beads on his forehead. Someone was shaking

the door! Thieves were there trying the door: they were come to rob him!

He drew himself up slowly. As he did so the door ceased to rattle, and

presently, somewhere near the windy edge of the ravine, a faint cry

sounded.

But long after the door had ceased to rattle, old Gil Chaleco stared

at it, fascinated. And long after the cry had died away it beat from

side to side within the walls of his head, while he listened and life

trickled from him, drop by drop.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night." But he was

listening for it: it would come again....

And it came--with a rough summons on the door, and, a moment later,

with a thunderous blow. The old man stood up, knee-deep in dollars,

lifting both arms to cover his head. As the door fell he seemed to

bow himself toward it, toppled, and slid forward--still with his arms

crooked--amid a rush of silver.