They knelt together between the roots of the pine, after which they replenished the fire, rolled themselves in their blankets, and were soon asleep.
[CHAPTER VII.]
YANKEE INGENUITY AMONG THE PEASANTS.
In the morning, after eating and still further exploring the different apartments of the castle, they bent their steps towards the village of the peasants.
"Would you mention to Gabriel what we found in the secret passage?" asked Ned.
"I don't think I should. I expect he knows more about it than we do."
They found Gabriel and his neighbors all busily engaged. Some were bruising the olives in large mortars; others were treading them in tubs. There was oil everywhere, and the odor was anything but agreeable. Others, after placing the bruised pulp in sacks made of grass or rushes, carried them to the second story of a building, and, placing the sacks in the middle of the floor, piled great stones upon them, which pressed the oil through holes bored in the floor, and it was received in vessels beneath. In consequence of this slow method of procedure, a large portion of the olives was likely to decay before they could be pressed, while not more than half the oil was extracted. As the weight of the stones did not sufficiently compress the pulp, much of it was wasted on the floor, and still more was lost in being soaked up by the multitude of different vessels in which the olives were trampled. This did not, however, obtain in respect to those bruised in the mortars, which were stone.
Gabriel conducted the boys from one building to another, and showed them the olives, belonging to different peasants, which were spread over the floors, where women and little children were picking out the leaves, stones, and decayed ones.
"Why don't you have a mill to grind these olives?" asked Walter, "and screws to press the pulp? A great part of them will rot before you can bruise them in this way; besides, you don't get half the oil, to say nothing of what is wasted, or of the time lost."
Gabriel told them that before the revolution there were mills and presses—the property of the grand seignior—in which all the olives of the peasants were ground and pressed; but they were destroyed at that time.