"Burned it? Why did you burn it?"

"Because the fat curate ordered me to do so."

"Who is the fat curate?" asked Ibarra.

"Who? Why, the one that beats people with a big cane."

Ibarra drew his hand across his forehead. "But at least you can tell
us where the grave is. You must remember that."

The grave-digger smiled as he answered quietly, "But the corpse is
no longer there."

"What's that you're saying?"

"Yes," continued the grave-digger in a half-jesting tone. "I buried
a woman in that place a week ago."

"Are you crazy?" cried the servant. "It hasn't been a year since we
buried him."

"That's very true, but a good many months ago I dug the body up. The
fat curate ordered me to do so and to take it to the cemetery of the
Chinamen. But as it was heavy and there was rain that night--"

He was stopped by the threatening attitude of Ibarra, who had caught
him by the arm and was shaking him. "Did you do that?" demanded the
youth in an indescribable tone.

"Don't be angry, sir," stammered the pale and trembling
grave-digger. "I didn't bury him among the Chinamen. Better be drowned
than lie among Chinamen, I said to myself, so I threw the body into
the lake."

Ibarra placed both his hands on the grave-digger's shoulders and
stared at him for a long time with an indefinable expression. Then,
with the ejaculation, "You are only a miserable slave!" he turned
away hurriedly, stepping upon bones, graves, and crosses, like one
beside himself.

The grave-digger patted his arm and muttered, "All the trouble dead
men cause! The fat padre caned me for allowing it to be buried while
I was sick, and this fellow almost tore my arm off for having dug it
up. That's what these Spaniards are! I'll lose my job yet!"

Ibarra walked rapidly with a far-away look in his eyes, while the
aged servant followed him weeping. The sun was setting, and over the
eastern sky was flung a heavy curtain of clouds. A dry wind shook the
tree-tops and made the bamboo clumps creak. Ibarra went bareheaded,
but no tear wet his eyes nor did any sigh escape from his breast. He
moved as if fleeing from something, perhaps the shade of his father,
perhaps the approaching storm. He crossed through the town to the
outskirts on the opposite side and turned toward the old house which he
had not entered for so many years. Surrounded by a cactus-covered wall
it seemed to beckon to him with its open windows, while the ilang-ilang
waved its flower-laden