At the Maranon he lived apart from the station, in
a small shed with a metal roof and straw walls, which he called
mon atelier. He had a work-bench there. They had given him several
horse-blankets and a saddle--not that he ever had occasion to ride, but
because no other bedding was used by the working-hands, who were all
vaqueros--cattlemen. And on this horseman's gear, like a son of the
plains, he used to sleep amongst the tools of his trade, in a litter
of rusty scrap-iron, with a portable forge at his head, under the
work-bench sustaining his grimy mosquito-net.
Now and then I would bring him a few candle ends saved from the scant
supply of the manager's house. He was very thankful for these. He did
not like to lie awake in the dark, he confessed. He complained that
sleep fled from him. "Le sommeil me fuit," he declared, with his
habitual air of subdued stoicism, which made him sympathetic and
touching. I made it clear to him that I did not attach undue importance
to the fact of his having been a convict.
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