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 wife had spoken to him so anxiously before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he on whom she had called aloud to save the children just before she died—even he was dead!

And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, sat through the day in immobility and solitude. He never heard the brazen roar of the bells in town. When it ceased, the earthenware filter in the corner of the kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the vast, porous jar below.

Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements disappeared up the narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; and the rubbing of his shoulders made a small noise as of a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall. While he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. Then, with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. He had to catch at the chairs and tables to regain his seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of the fireplace—but made no attempt to reach the tobacco—thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat down again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pedrito's entry into Sulaco, the last sun of Señor Hirsch's life, the first of Decoud's solitude on the Great Isabel, passed over the Albergo d'ltalia Una on its way to the west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, the lamp up-stairs had burned itself out, and the night beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its obscurity and silence that seemed invincible till the capataz de cargadores, returning from the dead, put them to flight with the sputter and flare of a match.

"Si, viejo. It is me. Wait."