When Don Gil mounted the steps of his veranda at Palmacristi a tall, thin figure arose to greet him.
"Ah, padre, I am glad that Piomba succeeded in finding you. My dinners are lonely ones."
The padre laughed in the cracked voice of an old man.
"Better is the stalled ox where love is, than a dinner of herbs and poverty therewith."
"Just enough learning to misquote," quoted Don Gil, laughing also, but in a preoccupied manner.
"Perhaps it would be better to say 'just enough appetite.' My dinners are bad enough, since Plumero left me."
"Better to have him leave you, even if under a guard of soldiers, padre, than to let him put you where you can eat no more dinners. What was that, padre? Did you hear anything?"
"Nothing, my boy, but Jorge Toleto calling us to dinner. The willing ear, you know."
Don Gil ushered the old man into the comidor. His tall figure was bent and thin. The shabby black coat, whose seams shone with a generation's wear, flapped its tails about the legs of his scant white trousers. The good priest's figure was one in which absurdity and dignity were inextricably combined. The padre showed his years. He had never quite recovered from the attack made upon him by his trusted servant Plumero, the Good--Plumero, who now languished in the cep' over at Saltona.
The savory meal was ended. The night was warm and close.
"Let us sit upon the veranda and enjoy our cigarillos, padre."
Silencio seemed unlike himself. He was nervous, ill at ease. He had no sooner seated himself than he arose and paced the long veranda, the spark of his cigarette, only, showing his whereabouts. He looked often out to sea, and often in the direction of the _lanterna de señales_, whose ray was hidden from sight by the near hill.
"Do you hear anything, padre? Anything like a cry or a--"
"No, nothing! my boy. And as I was saying, there was my poor fighting cock lying in the corner, worse maltreated than he had ever been in any garito, and when I awoke--"
"That was certainly a gun. You are not rising to leave, padre; why, your cigarillo is not even half finished. I expect you to stay the night. No, no! I will take no denial. Guillermina, prepare the western room for the Padre Martinez."
"You know my weaknesses, muchacho mio. Very well, then, I will." But Silencio was down the steps and some feet away in the darkness, straining his ear for the sound which he knew must come. He took out his watch, and by the light of the veranda lantern noted the time. "Early yet," he muttered under his breath.