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158 DAYS. IN THE SUN
who have not hired farms of their own are even
poorer. They live in wretched tumble-down villages
with from ten to thirty thousand inhabitants, and keep
the wolf from the door only with the aid of a miser-
able daily wage. Every morning the steward of the
estate will appear in the market-place of the village.
The job hunters are drawn up to meet him and he
makes his selection for the day. The day’s pay
amounts to about fifteen or thirty cents and a gas-
pacho: a refreshing mixture of water, vinegar, oil,
salt and pepper stirred and cold. ‘This gaspacho,
which is distributed at noon, with the bread the
workers have brought with them, is their entire meal.
Before the laborer has gone to the labor market he
has eaten a plate of bean-soup; and in the evening,
when he gets home, he will again eat a plate of bean-
soup.
A stony path crosses under the railway tracks. In
reality it is a dry river bed. As we pass over the
bridge, a big dog bounds from the dark tunnel in
front of us and inside we can see tall dark figures of
men around a bonfire. Robbers, I thought suddenly.
We turned aside and tried to descend into the river
bed to avoid them. But with eager shouts they pre-
vent us from going down, and force us to come into
the tunnel with them. They are hunters about to
broil a hare for breakfast. They delve inside to find
his heart, cut it into pieces and offer it to us from the
tip of a great Andalusian Jack-the-Ripper knife. We
eat the heart and it really makes us more courageous.
After we have drunk from the mouth of their great
wine-pouch, we are permitted to go. They are happy
to have been able to invite us to their meal, and guide
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