Although the villages of the sierras of Andalusia, owing to their elevation, enjoy in summer a milder temperature than those of the plains, during the middle hours of the day the sun reflected from the rocks that abound in this mountainous region, produces a dry and ardent heat, which is more transitory, indeed, but also more irritating than that of the plains. The chief sufferers from its ardors are the wandering reapers, who, after finishing the labors of the harvest in their own province, go in search of work to the provinces where the harvest has not yet been gathered in. The greater number of the reapers of the province of Granada go to the sierra of Ronda, where they are welcomed, and where their toilsome labors are well rewarded, so that they are able to lay by some money, unless indeed sickness, that scourge of the poor, prostrates them and consumes their earnings or terminates their existence.  
In a more pious age a small hospital for poor strangers was established in Bornos, which is one of the villages that, like a fringe, border the slope of the sierra; an hospital which remained closed in winter, but which in summer received many of the poor reapers who were prostrated by the intense heat, and who had no home or family in the village.
 
On a hot summer day, early in the thirties, a woman with a kind and gentle countenance was seated at the door of her cottage, in the village above mentioned, engaged in chopping the tomatoes and peppers and crumbling the bread for the wholesome, nutritious, and savory gazpacho which was to serve for the family supper; her two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five, were playing not far from her in the street.
 
As Bornos is almost entirely surrounded by orchards and orange groves, planted on the slopes of the tableland on which the village is seated, and which at this hour are irrigated by the clear and abundant waters of its springs, every breeze brought with it the perfume of the leaves and the melodious strains of the birds singing their evening hymn to the sun, filling the air with coolness, as if kind Mother Nature made of her trees a fan to cool the brow of her favorite child, man. The front of the house was already steeped in shadow, while the sun still gilded the irregular crests of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley that, like patient camels, supported the load of vines, olive groves, and cornfields confided to them by man.
 
The mother, occupied with her task, had not observed that a poorly clad little boy had joined her children and that they were talking together.
 
"Who are you?" said the Bornos boy to the stranger; "I have never seen you before. What is your name?"
 
"Michael; and yours?"
 
"Gaspar."
 
"And my name is Catherine," said the little girl, who desired also to make the strange boy's acquaintance.
 
"I know the story of St. Catherine," said the latter.
 
"Oh, do you? Tell it to us."
 
The boy recited the following verses:
 
    "To-morrow will be St. Catherine's day,
    When to heaven she will ascend and St. Peter will say,
    'What woman is that who asks to be let in?'
    'I am Catherine,' she will answer, 'and I want to come in.'
    'Enter, little dove, in your dove-cote, then.'"
 
"What a lovely story!" exclaimed the girl. "Don't you know another?"
 
"Look, Catherine," cried her brother, who was eating roasted beans; "there is a little dead snail in this bean, a roasted snail."
 
"Will you give me some beans?" begged the strange child.
 
"Yes, here are some. Are you very, very fond of roasted beans?"
 
"Yes, very; but I asked you for them because I am very hungry."
 
"Why, have you had no dinner?"
 
"No."
 
"Nor any breakfast, either?"
 
"No."
 
"Mother, mother," cried both the children together, running to their mother; "this poor li............