It was New Year's eve.
All the day had endured that sombre sky which is so often the sky of the Basque country—and which harmonizes well with the harsh mountains, with the roar of the sea, wicked, in the depths of the Bay of Biscay.
In the twilight of this last day of the year, at the hour when the fires retain the men around the hearths scattered in the country, at the hour when home is desirable and delicious, Ramuntcho and his mother were preparing to sit at the supper table, when there was a discreet knock at the door.
The man who was coming to them from the night of the exterior, at the first aspect seemed unknown to them; only when he told his name (Jose Bidegarray, of Hasparitz) they recalled the sailor who had gone several years ago to America.
“Here,” he said, after accepting a chair, “here is the message which I have been asked to bring to you. Once, at Rosario in Uruguay, as I was talking on the docks with several other Basque immigrants there, a man, who might have been fifty years old, having heard me speak of Etchezar, came to me.
“'Do you come from Etchezar?' he asked.
“'No,' I replied, 'but I come from Hasparitz, which is not far from Etchezar.'
“Then he put questions to me about all your family. I said:
“'The old people are dead, the elder brother was killed in smuggling, the second has disappeared in America; there remain only Franchita and her son, Ramuntcho, a handsome young fellow who must be about eighteen years old today.'
“He was thinking deeply while he was listening to me.