The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where the festival was to take place on the following Sunday.

It is situated very far, in a shady region, at the turn of a deep gorge, at the foot of very high summits.

Arrochkoa was born there and he had spent there the first months of his life, in the time when his father lived there as a brigadier of the French customs; but he had left too early to have retained the least memory of it.
In the little Detcharry carriage, Gracieuse, Pantchita and, with a long whip in her hand, Madame Dargaignaratz, her mother, who is to drive, leave together at the noon angelus to go over there directly by the mountain route.
Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino, who have to settle smuggling affairs at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, go by a roundabout way which will bring them to Erribiague at night, on the train which goes from Bayonne to Burguetta.

To-day, all three are heedless and happy; Basque caps never appeared above more joyful faces.
The night is falling when they penetrate, by this little train of Burguetta, into the quiet, interior country.

The carriages are full of a gay crowd, a spring evening crowd, returning from some festival, young girls with silk kerchiefs around their necks, young men wearing woolen caps; all are singing, laughing and kissing.