"For once in my life," said the peasant, "I had all my wits about me. I overheard that cockatoo of an Emilio saying that he often took a stroll in the abbey gardens, after his day's work. He was lying; but I didn't want the other young fellows to begin prowling about up there."
"They'll prowl all the more now."
"They never will, your Worship," affirmed José flatly. "They're the poorest lot I ever saw. There isn't a man among them. Why, at Pedrinha das Areias, if we had heard of a ghost, a dozen of us would have turned out to see how ghosts looked after they have been soused with buckets of cold water. Here they're fops and cowards. No, your Worship. From to-night the abbey is safe."
Antonio marveled at José's shrewdness. It was of a piece with his shrewdness in choosing the sun-baked sand-pit for burying the boxes of the Viscount. All the same he felt it his duty, as José's spiritual director, to rebuke him mildly, saying:
"But there's no ghost there at all."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth before he regretted them. Fresh from his well-meaning prevarication with Senhor Jorge, who was he to censure others? He hoped José would not notice the inconsistency; but he hoped in vain.
"I never said there was any ghost," chuckled José. "I said there was a monk, all in black, in his stall. You know what monk I mean, your Worship."
"But Emilio Carneiro doesn't," said Antonio.
They laughed loudly together and strode on, talking with unwonted gaiety under the bright moon. Had not the master rid himself of match-makers, and had not the man made the abbey safer than ever?
"Sing," begged the monk.