k of a chap1 shepherds

	The shepherds would stay in the high mountains all summer long; they had made themselves comfortable. They lived in a large cave, across the mouth of which they had built a rubble wall with a door and windows. A cleft in the cave roof had been used to make a chimney for a charcoal fire. There were only three of them, two old men and a very young one. They had sent the youngster to fetch the nevados. 'Old Luis is beginning to see the other world, admit it,' said Galceran to the messenger as they went. It was well known that thin air and solitude drove the shepherds crazy after months aloft. By September they would come down burned as brown as walnuts and barely able to speak, flinching at the racket of the streets. Their wives and mothers would comfort them with basins of hot water, with clean clothes and fresh fish baked in crushed lemons and sun-dried apricots from the little gardens behind the simple houses. By and by they would recover, and begin to shout and drink, and cavort with their friends again. But now, of course, they had been in the mountains only a fortnight or so.