sediment of filth. But yet He
who from eternity watches the consequences of a deed develop like a
thread through the loom of the centuries, He who weighs the value
of a second and has ordained for His creatures as an elemental
law progress and development, He, if He is just, will demand a
strict accounting from those who must render it, of the millions of
intelligences darkened and blinded, of human dignity trampled upon
in millions of His creatures, and of the incalculable time lost and
effort wasted! And if the teachings of the Gospel are based on truth,
so also will these have to answer--the millions and millions who do
not know how to preserve the light of their intelligences and their
dignity of mind, as the master demanded an accounting from the cowardly
servant for the talent that he let be taken from him.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE HOUSE OF THE STUDENTS

The house where Makaraig lived was worth visiting. Large and spacious,
with two entresols provided with elegant gratings, it seemed to be
a school during the first hours of the morning and pandemonium from
ten o'clock on. During the boarders' recreation hours, from the lower
hallway of the spacious entrance up to the main floor, there was a
bubbling of laughter, shouts, and movement. Boys in scanty clothing
played _sipa_ or practised gymnastic exercises on improvised trapezes,
while on the staircase a fight was in progress between eight or nine
armed with canes, sticks, and ropes, but neither attackers nor attacked
did any great damage, their blows generally falling sidewise upon the
shoulders of the Chinese pedler who was there selling his outlandish
mixtures and indigestible pastries. Crowds of boys surrounded him,
pulled at his already disordered queue, snatched pies from him,
haggled over the prices, and committed a thousand deviltries. The
Chinese yelled, swore, forswore, in all the languages he could jabber,
not omitting his own; he whimpered, laughed, pleaded, put on a smiling
face when an ugly one would not serve, or the reverse.

He cursed them as devils, savages, _no kilistanos_ [33] but that
mattered nothing. A whack would bring his face around smiling, and
if the blow fell only upon his shoulders he would calmly continue
his business transactions, contenting himself with crying out to
them that he was not in the game, but if it struck the flat basket
on which were placed his wares, then he would swear never to come
again, as he poured out up