“It is absurd,” he said, “that that man should have stopped your going to Anselmo. There is no reason why you shouldn’t go to Anselmo. Of course you may go there.”
“I have no horse,” Hi said. “Would you lend me a horse so that I could go there?”
“Do you know the way?” the girl asked.
“No.”
“It must be forty kilometres and a difficult way except through Ribote.”
“I could find it,” Hi said.
The brother and sister looked at each other with some hesitation. Hi was afraid that they were wondering whether to trust a tramp, who came at midnight, with neither collar nor tie, from God knows where.
“I am sorry to say,” he said, “that I have got no money with me, but Mr. Winter, of Quezon, beyond Santa Barbara, knows me, and Señora Piranha and her daughter know me.”
“Rosa Piranha?” the girl said. “You know her?”
“Very well. Do you?”