The fields once cleared, Batiste without losing time proceeded to cultivate them. They were somewhat hard; but like an expert farmer, he planned to work them little by little, in sections, and marking out a plot near his farm-house, he began to break up the earth, aided by all his family.
The neighbours made sport of them with an irony which betrayed their irritation. A pretty family! They were gipsies, like those who sleep under the bridges. They lived in that old farm-house like shipwrecked sailors who are holding out in a ruined boat; plugging a hole here, shoring there, doing real wonders to sustain the straw roof, and distributing their poor furniture, carefully polished, in all the rooms which had been before the burrowing place of rats and vermin.
In their industry, they were like a nest of squirrels, unable to keep idle while the father was working. Teresa, the wife, and Roseta, the eldest daughter, with their skirts tucked in between their legs, and hoe in hand, dug with more zeal than day-labourers, resting only to throw back the locks of hair which kept straggling over their red, perspiring foreheads. The eldest son made continuous trips to Valencia with the rush-basket on his shoulder, carrying manure and rubbish which he piled up in two heaps like columns of honour at the entrance to the farm-house; and the three little tots, grave and laborious, as if they understood the situation of the family, went down on all fours behind the diggers, tearing up the hard roots of the burned shrubs from the earth.
This preparatory work lasted more than a week, the family sweating and panting from dawn till night.
Half of the land having been broken up, Batiste fenced in the plot and tilled it with the aid of the willing nag, which was like one of the family.
He had only to proceed to cultivate. They were then in Saint Martin's summer, the time of sowing, and the labourer divided the broken-up earth into three parts. The greater part was for wheat, a smaller patch for beans, and another part for fodder, for it would not do to forget Morrut, the dear old horse: well had he earned it.
And with the joy of those who discover a port after a hard voyage, the family proceeded to the sowing. The future was assured. The fields of the huerta never failed; here bread for all the year would be forthcoming.
On the afternoon which completed the sowing, they saw coming over the adjoining road some sheep with dirty wool, which stopped timidly at the end of the field.
Behind them walked an old man, like dried up parchment, yellowish, with deep sunken eyes and a mouth surrounded by a circle of wrinkles. He was walking with firm steps, but with his shepherd's crook ahead of him, as though feeling his way along the road.
The family looked at him with attention; he was the only person who had ventured to approach the land within the two weeks they were here. On noticing the hesitation of the sheep, he shouted to them to go on.