The foreman of the vintagers was sitting in the shade of the monastery buildings, smoking a pipe of Brazilian tobacco.
"Good days, Senhor," said Antonio in a friendly tone. "Your Worship is luckier than I am. I made the Fazenda an offer for this vineyard, and they didn't even ask me to sit down."
"The Ministerio da Fazenda in Lisbon?" asked the foreman.
"No, in Villa Branca."
The foreman laughed a meaning laugh, Antonio changed his ground.
"We're pressing about twenty pipes down there in the valley," he said pointing out the farm. "But it's poor stuff. The vines have been neglected for years."
"So have these," the foreman grumbled. "Yet we're expected to take home wine fit for the Queen."
Antonio described his experiment in the vineyard on the sea-shore, and asked for the foreman's opinion and advice so deferentially that the man was pleased and flattered. When the monk rose to go the foreman suddenly said:
"The Senhor mustn't say I told him. But I don't wonder the chief of the Fazenda at Villa Branca bowed him out. The chief takes every grape in this vineyard every year, by his own authority, without paying a vintem to anybody. That's how Portugal is robbed. We might as well have Dom Miguel back again."
A burden rolled from Antonio's heart. So long as the Villa Branca official had an interest in snubbing off possible leasers or buyers the monastery would be safe. He readily promised never to reveal the source from which he had learned so spicy a secret; and, after deeply impressing the foreman by giving him a cigar which had truly seen both Cuba and England, he returned home.