Ramuntcho's lodging¹ place was, in the house of his mother and above the stable, a room neatly² whitewashed³; he had there his bed, always clean and white, but where smuggling⁴ gave him few hours for sleep. Books of travel or cosmography, which the cure of the parish lent to him, posed on his table—unexpected in this house. The portraits, framed, of different saints, ornamented⁵ the walls, and several pelota-players' gloves were hanging from the beams of the ceiling, long gloves of wicker and of leather which seemed rather implements⁶ of hunting or fishing.
 
Franchita, at her return to her country, had bought back this house, which was that of her deceased parents, with a part of the sum given to her by the stranger at the birth of her son. She had invested the rest; then she worked at making gowns or at ironing linen⁷ for the people of Etchezar, and rented, to farmers of land near by, two lower rooms, with the stable where they placed their cows and their sheep.
 
Different familiar, musical sounds rocked Ramuntcho in his bed. First, the constant roar of a near-by torrent⁸; then, at times, songs of nightingales, salutes⁹ to the dawn of divers¹⁰ birds. And, in this spring especially, the cows, his neighbors, excited doubtless by the smell of new-mown hay, moved all night, were agitated¹¹ in dreams, making their bells tintillate continually.
 
Often, after the long expeditions at night, he regained¹² his sleep in the afternoon, extended in the shade in some corner of moss¹³ and grass. Like the other smugglers, he was not an early riser for a village boy, and he woke up sometimes long after daybreak, when already, between the disjointed planks¹⁴ of his flooring, rays of a vivid and gay light came from the stable below, the door of which remained open always to the rising sun after the departure of the cattle to their pastures. Then, he went to his window, pushed open the little, old blinds made of massive chestnut¹⁵ wood painted in olive, and leaned on his elbows, placed on the sill of the thick wall, to look at the clouds or at the sun of the new morning.
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