armed rebellion he had been a close prisoner in Dapitan under strict
surveillance by both the military and ecclesiastical authorities. The
prosecutor presented a lengthy document, which ran mostly to words,
about the only definite conclusion laid down in it being that the
Philippines "are, and always must remain, Spanish territory." What
there may have been in Rizal's career to hang such a conclusion
upon is not quite dear, but at any rate this learned legal light was
evidently still thinking in colors on the map serenely unconscious in
his European pseudo-prescience of the new and wonderful development
in the Western Hemisphere--humanity militant, Lincolnism.

The death sentence was asked, but the longer the case dragged on the
more favorable it began to look for the accused, so the president
of the tribunal, after deciding, Jeffreys-like, that the charges had
been proved, ordered that no further evidence be taken. Rizal betrayed
some sunrise when his doom was thus foreshadowed, for, dreamer that
he was, he seems not to have anticipated such a fatal eventuality for
himself. He did not lose his serenity, however, even when the tribunal
promptly brought in a verdict of guilty and imposed the death sentence,
upon which Polavieja the next day placed his _Cumplase_, fixing the
morning of December thirtieth for the execution.

So Rizal's fate was sealed. The witnesses against him, in so far
as there was any substantial testimony at all, had been his own
countrymen, coerced or cajoled into making statements which they have
since repudiated as false, and which in some cases were extorted from
them by threats and even torture. But he betrayed very little emotion,
even maintaining what must have been an assumed cheerfulness. Only
one reproach is recorded: that he had been made a dupe of, that he had
been deceived by every one, even the _bankeros_ and _cocheros_. His old
Jesuit instructors remained with him in the _capilla_, or death-cell,
[13] and largely through the influence of an image of the Sacred Heart,
which he had carved as a schoolboy, it is claimed that a reconciliation
with the Church was effected. There has been considerable pragmatical
discussion as to what form of retraction from him was necessary,
since he had been, after studying in Europe, a frank freethinker, but
such futile polemics may safely be left to the learned doctors. That
he was reconciled with the Church would seem to be evidenced by
the fact that ju