The collection contains ten stories in all. In the first, ‘Lobosandaus’, a schoolteacher, the nephew of the Canon Penitentiary of Ourense Cathedral, travels to the small border town of Lobosandaus, where he lodges with the innkeeper, Aparecida, and her good-for-nothing husband, the local mayor, Luís. His arrival is swiftly followed by the supposed suicide of the local gelder, Nicasio Remuñán, whom the schoolteacher had taken a liking to. The two figures he doesn’t like are the priest, Don Plácido Mazaira, whom he finds cold, and the doctor, Luís Lorenzo, who seems to despise living in the country. When he is not teaching, he spends much of his time at the inn, around the kitchen range, with lots of travelling salesmen, listening to the local gossip supplied by the young servant girl Clamoriñas and the old servant Hixinio. He learns that Aparecida and Luís have a son, Turelo, who is married to Dorinda, and a sickly daughter, Obdulia, who is bedridden. Once, on his way to the lavatory, he bumps into the tall, thin figure of Obdulia with her pale face and shrunken eyes. He begins to feel a certain dislike for the inhabitants of the town, all of whom seem to him to have cow eyes. Only the buxom figure of Dorinda still holds an attraction for him.

One day, with a slight improvement in the weather, Obdulia suddenly rises from her sick-bed and begins to strut about, drinking wine and talking with a powerful, manly voice. With Turelo away in Portugal, Obdulia is caught in a straw loft, having her way with Dorinda. She then appears on the balcony of a house in the main square and holds forth on the agrarian cause and the abolition of fiefdom. Everyone comes to the conclusion that Obdulia has been possessed by the spirit of the gelder, Nicasio Remuñán, who had a fascination for Dorinda. One morning, however, Obdulia is found hanging in the same cedar copse by the river where Nicasio Remuñán had been found. The general feeling is that Turelo has murdered them both out of jealousy for his wife, but he is possessed in turn by the gelder’s spirit and begins to make passionate love to his wife and to strut about town in the same manner. Unable to endure this possession of his body, Turelo hangs himself in the copse by the river. The story ends with the schoolteacher feeling a similar attraction for Dorinda. He is afraid he is the next to be possessed by the gelder’s spirit and pleads with his uncle to come and rescue him.

In ‘Blue Tights’, two hearty young men set out on horseback to woo two sisters who live in a house a little set apart from the rest of the village. The house has a tinplate eagle on its roof. The two sisters are reputed to be witches. They are orphans and live alone. When the two men arrive, the sisters seem to have been expecting them. They invite them into the kitchen and they while away the time together next to the hearth, eventually, as the night progresses, falling asleep. They are woken by the neighing of the horses. The sisters seem afraid. The fire has died down, so one of the sisters goes to fetch more wood, and the men see that under her skirt she is wearing blue woollen tights above her knees and has blackened skin. They make fun of them, and the sisters kick them out, hoping that the night will eat them up. On their way back to their village, they laugh about the story they’re going to tell about the sisters, but suddenly a thick, dirty mist descends, the world explodes like a soap bubble and they have the feeling the night really is eating them up. When day returns, they find themselves back at the shack belonging to the sisters.

In ‘Flax’, Misia is a young woman who has lost one leg. She is sick of her life in Ourense and prefers to live in the village, on the border with Portugal. Her only friend there is a young man called N., who brings her gifts, a mole which he says is a rabbit, or wine with honey. They touch one another. Misia is jealous of the other women, the ones who gather at night to spin the flax into linen and who make fun of N. the simpleton. She is furious with him one morning for leaving her alone to spend time with the spinners and for letting the fire die down. She has a horror of Ourense, of sitting and making conversation with tutors and visitors, and feels unable to speak. She also has a horror from the past, an air-raid shelter in Madrid, where perhaps she lost her leg and her parents.

In ‘The Monk of Diabelle’, a monk from Celanova Monastery is convinced that the future of the Couto Mixto, some borderlands between Galicia and Portugal, lies in a Federal Republic of Portugal and not with the Spanish Crown. He is infuriated by the machinations of the president of the Spanish Section of the Boundary Commission, Fidencio Bourman, who he thinks has duped the head of the Portuguese Section, Leão Cabreira, by suggesting that he preside over the commission and by plying him with sherry. All his loyalty lies with the secretary of the Portuguese Section, Guilherme António da Silva Couvreur, whose ideals he shares. However, they are unable to prevail over Bourman and his lackey; Couvreur is removed from his post, and the monk of Diabelle takes to the hills, gathering a band of burglars and highwaymen around him and killing supporters of the Liberals and the Bourbons. He is eventually captured in a cowherd’s hut and sentenced to death by garrotte in Ourense. His last wish – to write a letter to Couvreur – is denied.