The things we do!

I sit and think of all these things; of how summer has its joys for a
wanderer, so there's no sort of need to wait till autumn comes.
And here I am writing cool words of these quiet things--for all the world
as if there were no violent and perilous happenings ahead. 'Tis a trick,
and I learned it of a man in the southern hemisphere--of a Mexican called
Rough. The brim of his huge hat was hung with tinkling sequins: that in
itself was a thing to remember. And most of all, I remember how calmly he
told the story of his first murder: "I'd a sweetheart once named Maria,"
said Rough, with that patient look of his; "well, she was no more than
sixteen, and I was nineteen then. She'd such little hands when you touched
them; fingers thin and slight, you know the sort. One evening the master
called her in from the fields to do some sewing for him. No help for it
then; and it wasn't more than a day again before he calls her in same as
before. Well, it went on like that a few weeks, and then stopped.


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