straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.

"No one will look for you here," she said, looking down at him. "Nobody
comes near us. We, too, have been left for dead--here."

He stirred uneasily on his heap of dirty straw, and the pain in his neck
made him groan deliriously.

"I shall show Estaban some day that I am alive yet," he mumbled.

He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain went
by. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connected
with the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for Gaspar
Ruiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had even
been taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village. He
waited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark hut and
disappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He discovered
that, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by closing his
eyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And this discovered
faculty charmed the long, solitary hours of his convalescence. Later on,
when he began to regain his strength, he would creep at dusk from his
hut to the house and sit on the step of the garden door.

In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to
himself with short, abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a
stool, the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbare
clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta,
stood leaning against the side of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with his elbows
propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked to the
two women in an undertone.