The priest attempted to speak, offered his purse and his aid, but the old
man kept on abusing him, making gestures with his hands as if throwing;
stones at him.

Then the priest retired, followed by the curses of the beggar.

The companion of old Judas died the following day. He buried her himself,
in front of her door. They were people of so little account that no one
took any interest in them.

Then they saw the man take his pigs out again to the lake and up the
hillsides. And he also began begging again to get food. But the people
gave him hardly anything, as there was so much gossip about him. Every
one knew, moreover, how he had treated the priest.

Then he disappeared. That was during Holy Week, but no one paid any
attention to him.

But on Easter Sunday the boys and girls who had gone walking out to the
lake heard a great noise in the hut. The door was locked; but the boys
broke it in, and the two pigs ran out, jumping like gnats. No one ever
saw them again.

The whole crowd went in; they saw some old rags on the floor, the
beggar's hat, some bones, clots of dried blood and bits of flesh in the
hollows of the skull.

His pigs had devoured him.

"This happened on Good Friday, monsieur." Joseph concluded his story,