oved slowly down through the dreary village and crossed the deserted
_plaza_ to his lowly abode.

CHAPTER 34

The low-hung moon, shrouded in heavy vapor, threw an eldritch shimmer
upon the little group that silently bore the body of the martyred
Lazaro from the old church late that night to the dreary cemetery on
the hill. Jose took but a reluctant part in the proceedings. He would
even have avoided this last service to his faithful friend if he
could. It seemed to him as he stumbled along the stony road behind the
body which Rosendo and Don Jorge carried that his human endurance had
been strained so far beyond the elastic limit that there could now be
no rebound. Every thought that touched his sore mind made it bleed
anew, for every thought that he accepted was acrid, rasping,
oppressive. The sheer weight of foreboding, of wild apprehension, of
paralyzing fear, crushed him, until his shoulders bent low as he
walked. How, lest he perform a miracle, could he hope to extricate
himself and his loved ones from the meshes of the net, far-cast, but
with unerring aim, which had fallen upon them?

As he passed the town hall he saw through the open door the captain's
cot, and a guard standing motionless beside it. The captain had
elected to remain there for the night, while his men found a prickly
hospitality among the cowering townsfolk. Jose knew now that the hand
which Don Mario had dealt himself in the game inaugurated by Wenceslas
had been from a stacked deck. He knew that the President of the
Republic had ordered Morales to this inoffensive little town to quell
an alleged anticlerical uprising, and that the execution of the
misguided Alcalde had been determined long before the Hercules had got
under way. He could see that it was necessary for the Government to
sacrifice its agent in the person of the Alcalde, in order to prove
its own loyalty to the Church. And in return therefor he knew it would
expect, not without reason, the cooeperation of the Church in case the
President's interference in the province of Bolivar should precipitate
a general revolt.

But what had been determined upon as his own fate? He had not the
semblance of an idea. From the confession of the ruined Alcalde he now
knew that Don Mario had been poisoned against him from the beginning;
that even the letters of introduction which Wenceslas had given him to
the Alcalde contained the charge of his having accomplished the ruin
of the girl Mar