The pair who had met were of quite different stamp.
One, who was about forty, of a refined but rather parvenu type, was dressed in a well-cut suit of thin, dark grey material, and wore a straw hat much ripened by the sun. He was idly smoking a long valenciano, and betrayed surprise, though feigned, at the meeting. The other was a typical fisherman in the blue blouse and blue béret, the national headdress of all the Basque people. He still wore his heavy sea-boots, in which, however, he walked jauntily, for his age was not more than thirty, and his dark, handsome countenance was bright, enthusiastic, and well bronzed.
On meeting, the man in the sun-ripened straw hat, and of much superior class, turned quickly and walked beside him.
As he did so a tall Jesuit priest, a man with a swarthy, sinister face and a long, rather shabby cassock—Father Gonzalo by name—chanced to pass.
Carlos Somoza, the fisherman, saluted him reverently, but beneath his breath he exclaimed in Spanish:
“May the Holy Madonna curse him for ever!”
“Why?” inquired the man in grey, whose name was Garcia Zorrilta, a native of Toledo, who had come in secret from Madrid in order to meet his fisherman friend.
“Because he may recognise you. There may be a hitch.”
“Bah! There will be no hitch. There cannot be. You people here in the country are so often faint-hearted. We in the capital are not. All goes well, and success must be ours. It is but a simple matter of waiting—waiting in patience.”
“Yes—but Father Gonzalo is a man whom I do not like.”