Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
been allowed to attend his master in prison; had on the fatal morning followed the firing squad, and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses growing along the wall of the Franciscan convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big, patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two of whose existence within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been the mothers or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were a few children, too, more or less naked, crying and clinging to the legs of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign of a child in his patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing through, with her spoiled, pouting face of a favorite maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.
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