“'Well,' he said at last, 'since you are going back there, you will say good-day to them for Ignacio.'
“And after offering a drink to me he went away—”
Franchita had risen, trembling and paler than ever. Ignacio, the most adventurous in the family, her brother who had disappeared for ten years without sending any news—!
How was he? What face? Dressed how?—Did he seem happy, at least, or was he poorly dressed?
“Oh!” replied the sailor, “he looked well, in spite of his gray hair; as for his costume, he appeared to be a man of means, with a beautiful gold chain on his belt.”
And that was all he could say, with this naive and rude good-day of which he was the bearer; on the subject of the exile he knew no more and perhaps, until she died, Franchita would learn nothing more of that brother, almost non-existing, like a phantom.
Then, when he had emptied a glass of cider, he went on his road, the strange messenger, who was going to his village. Then, they sat at table without speaking, the mother and the son: she, the silent Franchita, absent minded, with tears shining in her eyes; he, worried also, but in a different manner, by the thought of that uncle living in adventures over there.
When he ceased to be a child, when Ramuntcho began to desert from school, to wish to follow the smugglers in the mountain, Franchita would say to him:
“Anyway, you take after your uncle Ignacio, we shall never make anything of you!—”
And it was true that he took after his uncle Ignacio, that he was fascinated by all the things that are dangerous, unknown and far-off—