In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to himself with short, abrupt laughs.  In the passage, sitting on a stool, the mother sighed and moaned.  The daughter, in rough threadbare clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta, stood leaning against the side of the door.  Gaspar Ruiz, with his elbows propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked to the two women in an undertone.

The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a marked insistence on social differences.  Gaspar Ruiz understood this in his simplicity.  From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could give them news of people they knew.  He described their appearance; and when he related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the two women lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their secret hopes.

He had no feeling either way.  But he felt a great devotion for that young girl.  In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, he boasted a little of his bodily strength.  He had nothing else to boast of.  Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great a deference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in camp and in battle.

“I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere, senorita.  I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and write.”

Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to time; the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and Gaspar Ruiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter of these people.

He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also with that feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had contemplated in churches the inanimate and powerful statues of the saints, whose protection is invoked in dangers and difficulties.  His difficulty was very great.

He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever.  He knew also very well that before he had gone half a day’s journey in any direction, he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols scouring the country, and brought into one or another of the camps where the patriot army destined for the liberation of Peru was collected.  There he would in the end be recognized as Gaspar Ruiz—­the deserter to the Royalists—­and no doubt shot very effectually this time.  There did not seem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere.  And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom and resentment as black as night.

They had made him a soldier forcibly.  He did not mind being a soldier.  And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of his docility and his strength.  But now there was no use for either.  They had taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier—­not a good soldier at any rate.  Nobody would listen to his explanations.  What injustice it was!  What injustice!