In the autumn of that year the two men pressed seventeen pipes of rough wine. After putting aside two pipes for their own consumption they sold off the remainder for fourteen pounds. As a result of grafting upon old roots Antonio also pressed about a dozen gallons of good wine for his great experiment. This pressing he jealously cellared in a little cask, of José's making, which had been for months under daily treatment so that the wood should help rather than hurt the wine. Of course, the new vineyard on the sea-shore was too young to yield a harvest: but the plants waxed and throve exceedingly. While Antonio was thus busied, another vintage was going forward almost under his eyes. One morning, about the middle of September, José rushed into the kitchen exclaiming that two women and three men were openly and calmly picking the grapes in the neglected vineyards of the abbey, and that they had somehow opened the outbuildings where the wine-presses and vats were stored. Antonio paced up and down the kitchen twenty times before he could come to a decision. As the secret guardian of the abbey, he could not ignore these trespassers, who, if they were unchallenged, might easily grow bolder until they committed some act of desecration. On the other hand, there were dangers attending his interference with people who might turn out to be acting in a legal manner. He decided, however, to go up to the abbey and use his own eyes. Before setting out he slipped into his pocket a good Havana cigar, one of a boxful which had been pressed upon him in England. The foreman of the vintagers was sitting in the shade of the monastery buildings, smoking a pipe of Brazilian tobacco. "Good days, Senhor," said Antonio in a friendly tone. "Your Worship is luckier than I am. I made the Fazenda an offer for this vineyard, and they didn't even ask me to sit down." "The Ministerio da Fazenda in Lisbon?" asked the foreman. "No, in Villa Branca." The foreman laughed a meaning laugh, Antonio changed his ground. "We're pressing about twenty pipes down there in the valley," he said pointing out the farm. "But it's poor stuff. The vines have been neglected for years." "So have these," the foreman grumbled. "Yet we're expected to take home wine fit for the Queen." Antonio described his experiment in the vineyard on the sea-shore, and asked for the foreman's opinion and advice so deferentially that the man was pleased and flattered. When the monk rose to go the foreman suddenly said: "The Senhor mustn't say I told him. But I don't wonder the chief of the Fazenda at Villa Branca bowed him out. The chief takes every grape in this vineyard every year, by his own authority, without paying a vintem to anybody. That's how Portugal is robbed. We might as well have Dom Miguel back again."