"I did my best to make him enjoy his travels," responded Antonio, "but, at the same time, I was reasonably careful."
"You've made a man of him, anyway," said the proud parent. "He used to be the biggest muff in England. Believe me or not: but I've never had to knock him down until this morning."
"This morning you knocked him down?" echoed Antonio, aghast. As a Portuguese he had been accustomed to see parents obey their children.
"Thank God, yes," said Mr. Crowberry heartily. "He was too damnably impudent about claret. But pick up this money. I don't want it, and I won't have it."
The Englishman's determination was unshakable, so Antonio picked up the coins and the draft. But he did so with reluctance: for it made doubly hard his task of announcing that he sought release from the firm of Castro.
Mr. Crowberry was first incredulous, then contemptuous, and finally furious. He tried every device, from ridicule to blasphemy, in order to dissuade Antonio from his purpose. But the monk respectfully and gratefully stood firm. His heart, he said, was in the South. He hoped to buy a derelict farm which adjoined the vineyards of the suppressed abbey where he had made wine before coming to Oporto. More: he had even thought of approaching the Government for a lease of the monks' vineyards, with an option of outright purchase at the end of ten years. His intention, he added, was to make a Portuguese claret of supreme quality, such as should please an unprejudiced English palate more than the wines of Bordeaux, the growths of the grandest châteaux hardly excepted. He ended by very modestly begging Mr. Crowberry to act as his London agent on liberal terms.
Senhor Castro, on whom Mr. Crowberry ultimately devolved the task of shaking their assistant's resolution, was less unwilling to see Antonio go. He was a timid man: and although the operation with the Waterloo port had brought him an unexpected five hundred pounds at a very awkward moment of pressure in his private finance, he was fearful lest the next bold campaign should lead all concerned into disaster. Accordingly he presented his faithful servant with twenty pounds, to go with Mr. Crowberry's hundred guineas, and assured him of his friendly interest in all that Antonio might attempt in the South.
Mounted upon a stout little white horse which he knew he could sell at a profit after finishing his journey, Antonio set his face southward one misty October morning. In his belt he carried two hundred and seventy-three pounds of English bank-notes and gold, as well as a few thousand reis in Portuguese silver for his expenses on the road. But although this beltful was so much larger than he had dared to hope for, he returned at once to the severe frugality of the days before he set sail for England. He hardly ever lay or ate in an inn. Tethering the docile little horse to a tree, he would take his night's rest in some out-of-the-way thicket. His meals were once more of black bread, snowy cheese, and ruby wine. These he would vary by occasional purchases of fruit. The last of the fresh figs and the first of the dried were in the markets, and the monk's halfpenny bought two heaped handsful of either.
With forebodings of change in his heart, Antonio made the short detour which would bring him to the parish of the old cura. His fear was not belied. The spruceness of the gardens and the crystal clearness of the presbytery windows were infallible signs that a new reign had begun.
"When did the old padre die?" asked Antonio of a fisherman who was lounging against the church wall.