"Keep clear of the Law!" they had told him in his youth. The monster
his imagination had summoned up then still stood beside him in his
age.
Having exhausted his monosyllabic and superficial evidence, they
could move him no farther. He became deaf and dumb. He sat before
them, an image cast in some immensely heavy stuff, inanimate. His
lack of visible emotion impressed them. Remembering his exuberance,
it was only the stranger to see him unmoving and unmoved. Only once
did they catch sight of something beyond. As they were preparing to
leave he opened his mouth. What he said was like a swan-song to the
years of his exuberant happiness. Even now there was no colour of
expression in his words, which sounded mechanical.
"Now I have lost everything. My house. My last son. Even my honour.
You would not think I would like to live. But I go to live. I go to
work. That _cachorra_, one day he shall come back again, in the dark
night, to have a look. I shall go to show you all. That _cachorra_!"
(And from that time on, it was noted, he never referred to the
fugitive by any other name than _cachorra_, which is a kind of dog.
"That _cachorra_!" As if he had forfeited the relationship not only
of the family, but of the very genus, the very race! "That _cachorra_!")
He pronounced this resolution without passion.
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