But this year Sebastian, instead of harvesting, had departed for Corunna to join the insurrectionary bands and carry a gun in defence of his country. To Gil the Elder this was a piece of youthful folly. How could it matter, in this valley of theirs, what King reigned in far-away Madrid? And would a Spaniard any more than a Corsican make good the lost harvest-money? The rest of the family had joined him in raising objections; for in this den of poverty the three elders thought of money morning, noon, and night, and of nothing but money; and Mercedes was young and in love with her husband, and sorely unwilling to lend him to the wars. Sebastian, however, had smiled and kissed her and gone his way; and at the end of his soldiery had found himself, poor lad, in hospital in Leon, one of the many hundreds abandoned by the Marquis of Romana to the French. News of this had not reached the valley, where indeed his wife's family had other trouble to concern them: for a forage party from the retreating British main guard had descended upon the cabin four days ago and carried off all the swine, leaving in exchange some scraps of paper, which (they said) would be honoured next day by the Assistant-Paymaster: he could not be more than a day's march behind. But a day had passed, and another, and now the household had gone off to Nogales to meet him on the road, leaving only the old man, and taking even little Sebastianillo. The pigs would be paid for handsomely by the rich English; Juana had some purchases to make in the town; and Mercedes needed to buy a shawl for the child, and thought it would be a treat for him to see the tall foreign red-coats marching past. So they had started, leaving the old man with a day's provision (for the foragers had cleared the racks and the larder as well as the sty), and promising to be home before nightfall. But two days and a night had passed without news of them. With his failing strength he had made shift to keep the fire alight; but food was not to be found. He had eaten his last hard crust of millet-bread seven or eight hours before, and this had been his only breakfast. His terror for the fate of the family was not acute. Old age had dulled his faculties, and he dozed by the fire with sudden starts of wakefulness, blinking his smoke-sored eyes and gazing with a vague sense of evil on the straw beds and the image in the alcove. His thoughts ran on the swine and the price to be paid for them by the Englishman: they faded into dreams wherein the family saints stepped down from their shrine and chaffered with the foreign paymaster; dreams in which he found himself grasping silver dollars with both hands. And all the while he was hungry to the point of dying; yet the visionary dollars brought no food--suggested only the impulse to bury them out of sight of thieves.