little band
huddled together in the gloom within. Jose kept an arm about Carmen.
Ana bent sobbing over her tiny babe. Don Jorge and Rosendo remained
mute and grim. Jose knew that those two would cast a long reckoning
before they died. Juan and Lazaro went from door to window, steadying
the props and making sure that they were holding. The tough, hard,
tropical wood, though pierced in places by _comjejen_ ants, was
resisting.

The sun was already high, and the _plaza_ had become a furnace. The
patience of the mob quickly evaporated in the ardent heat. Don Mario's
wits had gone completely. Revenge, mingled with insensate zeal to
manifest the authority which he believed his intercourse with
Wenceslas had greatly augmented, had driven all rationality from his
motives. Flaming anger had unseated his reason. Descending from the
platform on which stood the church, he blindly drew up his armed
followers and bade them fire upon the church doors.

If Wenceslas, acting-Bishop by the grace of political machination,
could have witnessed the stirring drama then in progress in ancient
Simiti, he would have laughed aloud at the complete fulfillment of his
carefully wrought plans. The cunning of the shrewd, experienced
politician had never been more clearly manifested than in the carrying
out of the little program which he had set for the unwise Alcalde of
this almost unknown little town, whereby the hand of Congress should
be forced and the inevitable revolt inaugurated. Don Mario had seized
the government arms, the deposition of which in Simiti in his care had
constituted him more than ever the representative of federal
authority. But, in his wild zeal, he had fallen into the trap which
Wenceslas had carefully arranged for him, and now was engaged in a mad
attack upon the Church itself, upon ecclesiastical authority as vested
in the priest Jose. How could Wenceslas interpret this but as an
anticlerical uprising? There remained but the final scene. And while
the soft-headed dupes and maniacal supporters of Don Mario were
hurling bullets into the thick doors of the old church in Simiti,
Wenceslas sat musing in his comfortable study in the cathedral of
Cartagena, waiting with what patience he could command for further
reports from Don Mario, whose last letter had informed him that the
arrest of the priest Jose and his unfortunate victim, Carmen, was only
a few hours off.

When the first shots rang out, and the bullets ploughed into t