He was away two days. When he returned it was with so abashed an air that Antonio thought the hiding places had been found empty. But the lifting of the straw told a different tale. Although José had lost his farm, he had saved the household gods and heirlooms. There were two carved coffers filled with fine linen; a box of old Portuguese faience in which the Persian influence was still strong; five musty books of fusty piety; a fowling-piece, much more dangerous to the sportsman than to the game; and some great, round, solid, honest vessels of copper and pewter which shone, after José had polished them, like suns and moons. IV Three years' hard labor turned Antonio's tangled vineyards and languishing orangeries into an earthly paradise. The red roses nearly covering the white walls of his golden-thatched farm-house, the round plot of well-kept turf in front, the bright flower-beds and the trim gate, gave quite an English appearance to the little farmstead. All the potsherds and rubbish had been removed from the bed of the stream, while the cascades and pools had been made fewer and grander. Trellises, pergolas, and arches everywhere showed that José had been no less industrious than his master. Up in the village the gossips had plenty of news to keep them busy. The successive arrivals of Antonio's wine-press from France, of his vine-slips from vineyards all over Europe, and of his books and papers from England were so many nine-days' wonders. Fifty wild stories were set going as to his parentage, his past, and his prospects: but it never entered anybody's head that he had dwelt for years, almost in their midst, as a monk of Saint Benedict. Antonio was regular in church-attendance: but he took care to conceal nearly all his piety. For example, he denied himself the consolation of occasionally serving the cura's Mass, lest his good Latin and his intelligent grasp of every point in the ritual should betray him. He communicated more frequently than was usual in the parish: but no one ever thought of numbering him among those few devotees in the village who were profanely called _os beatos e as beatas_--the Saints and Blessed Ones.