"I was the other monk," he said. "In the monastery they called me Father Antonio."
As he spoke he released his captive and stood up. José stumbled to his feet like a man dazed, and faced Antonio in the rain with bent head and fidgeting hands.
"Give me my clothes," ordered the monk.
The peasant drew forth an almost dry bundle of clothes from a hollow tree and would have helped Antonio to put them on. But the monk waved him aside and was soon inside the garments.
"Follow me," he said.
In spite of his bleeding feet he set a breakneck pace down the hill. At the boundary wall of the abbey, where the torrent foamed through the broken arch, he halted; and if the pair had not been able to leap from boulder to boulder like mountain-goats they could not have regained the open heath. The night grew blacker; and twice or thrice, where there were patches of clay, they slipped and fell. But no bones were broken; and in less than three quarters of an hour from the beginning of their fight the two men were at Antonio's door.
II
The heap of pine-cones burning on Antonio's narrow hearth crackled pleasantly and gave out fragrant vapors. But, as the monk crouched over it chafing his nerveless hands, he could not help thinking of the blaze he had seen in the vast fireplace of a famous old English banqueting-hall at the close of a chilly, rainy day. The recollection increased his resentment against the shaggy José, who was waiting for his new master's word as meekly as a drenched sheep-dog on a moor. Antonio's pity was submerged for the moment under his disgust at having had to fight for life, half-naked, in a tropical downpour.
"Here are some dry clothes," he said sharply, opening a chest and throwing out the suit in which he had ridden to Villa Branca. And, while José was changing, he stamped upstairs to do the same.