She walked about, too, on foot up the mountain paths.

A woman engineer, it seemed she was.
"What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!" "_Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte_." "Ah, well! if your worship is informed.

_Una Americana_; it need be something of that sort." And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn, keeping a wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable to meet bad men when travelling late on the Campo.
And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he seemed able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify each woman, girl, or growing youth of his domain.

It was only the small fry that puzzled him sometimes.

He and the padre could be seen frequently side by side, meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot of sedate brown children, trying to sort them out, as it were, in low, consulting tones, or else they would together put searching questions as to the parentage of some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and grave, along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his mother's rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach.