When they came back I tried to tell her about the green sand, but she didn’t seem to be interested and he yawned; so, after talking to the old man for awhile I came away. She didn’t ask me to come again. He was polite but quite formal.
I saw no more of the Normans nor of my Spanish friend for a month. I was in Trenton one afternoon and was walking on the street when who should I run into but the Normans. They were staying with an aunt of hers and I went with them. We sat up pretty late that night while Euphemia told me about the Spaniard. She said she wondered I hadn’t heard about it; part of it, it seemed, had got into the newspapers.
She told me she soon got so she could talk Spanish pretty well. It was not difficult except that miserable ser and estar. They both meant the same thing and you were pretty sure to use the wrong one. I told her it was like the old lady who knew the difference between soldier and shoulder but never could tell which was which. She said the Spaniard talked all the time. He was so polite that at first she liked him pretty well, but he never seemed to like her father and didn’t treat him very well. He claimed to be a hidalgo, which appeared to be some kind of a nobleman. He was terribly stuck on himself. He was a ferocious eater and kept her cooking most of the time. He was always asking for dos huevos fritas or carne de vaca. “He kept me fryin eggs or Dad runnin to town for meat all the time. I believe he could eat a gallon of soup, and it took so much butter to fry the papa fritas that we had none left for anything else. He was fond of fish, too, and was always askin for them. This got so bad that Dad and I concluded we had better take him down to the shore where fish don’t cost so much. By this time something got the matter with him. It had been rather cool and moist up to this time but by the time we were ready to start there was a hot dry spell. Before this you could see everything inside his head except where the bones were in the way. But now white patches like snow began to grow on his face, and pretty soon he began to look like a snow man. His face was perfectly white without a trace of color. It was frightful. I kinda liked his looks before that. You needn’t laugh; you like the good lookin women best, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t like the good lookin men.”
“If he didn’t get what he wanted at once he flew into an awful rage, and it was pretty fierce, I can tell you, to have Snow White rampagin around. So we took him to the shore, or at least we started for the shore. He had a sword that the blacksmith had made for him out of an old scythe of Dad’s and belt around him to hold it. I said we might be arrested for carrying such things around, but Dad said you could not carry concealed weapons, but nothing was said about other kinds, and there was nothing concealed about that sword. So we started off in the wagon, and he sat in the front seat with Dad. Pretty soon I noticed that little white scales was driftin down from him on the floor. It was hot that day but he didn’t seem to feel it in any other way, but all the time those little white scales kept siftin down ’till the floor was all white. I didn’t like to say anything for fear of hurtin his feelings but I got mighty nervous.
“We had been on the way about an hour when he spied some oranges in a store we was passin, and he got out, went in and took them. Didn’t stop to pay, just took them and came out. The store keeper came out and said, politely, that he had forgotten to pay, but Snow White flew into a rage and began to swear frightful. He pulled out his sword and chased the store keeper into his store. Then we drove on, but by this time Dad and I were scared stiff. About an hour later we passed through Swedesboro when a little fellow with a star on his coat came up and told us we were his prisoners. The Spaniard jumped out and ran at him with the sword. The constable was plucky; he pulled out a pistol and fired at the Spaniard, but he didn’t hit him, and the Spaniard chased him a ways down the road. We drove on then but more scared than before. I asked the Spaniard if he wasn’t afraid of being put in jail but he said no, they wouldn’t dare touch a hidalgo.
“Pretty soon we came to a cross road and somebody yelled at us from a clump of bushes ‘Surrender in the name of the law.’ But that didn’t frighten him. He just jumped out and charged that clump and drove the two men in it down the road. By this time we were almost to Pennsgrove. I was so scared that I got off and ran down a side street and Dad after me. We didn’t see any more of him but we was told he drove in as large as life and met the Sheriff, with two deputies. He chased them and cut one of them pretty bad. Then he ran to the wharf, jumped on a fishing boat, cut the cable and started down the river. The revenue cutter got after him and they fired a shot at the boat. This made her fill and she went down but they managed to pull him out. Of course he got very wet. They took him to the jail, gave him some dry clothes and put him in a cell. They captured Dad and me too, but after they had asked us a lot of questions they concluded we wasn’t to blame and let us go. I went to see the Spaniard next day and, say, he was a sight! All the white scales was gone but they had been thicker in some places than in others, and where they had been thickest there was a kind of a pit on his face like a man who had small pox. He looked fierce, but the water had made him look like glass again. There was no snow white stuff on him at all.
“They took him before a J. P. that day and he told them he was a Spanish nobleman who was willing to die for Spain. He said he had sunk many English ships and killed many English and that he was going to do it some more.”
“Now, I don’t know what you think,” Euphemia said to me, “but I think that fellow had been thrown overboard from some ship and was petrified on the bottom of the sea and covered with sand. When you dug him up he just came to life again. He must have been a bird when he was alive, and so he just went on being a bird when he came back to life.”
“Well, the Justice of the Peace thought he must be crazy so he sent him to the asylum. But he didn’t stay there long. He broke loose one night, made for the shore, killed two men who was sleepin in a small vessel, pulled up the anchor and put to sea and hasn’t been heard of since.”