oked God, they said she
blasphemed. However, they had some consideration for her and waited
for her to give birth to a child before whipping her. You know that
the friars spread the belief that the only way to deal with the
natives is with the whip. Read what Father Gaspar de San Augustin says.

"Thus condemned, the woman cursed the day when she would give
birth to the child, and this not only prolonged her punishment, but
violated her maternal sentiments. The woman delivered the child, and
unfortunately the child was born robust. Two months later the sentence
of whipping which had been imposed upon her was carried out, to the
great satisfaction of the people, who thought that in this way they
were fulfilling their duty. No longer able to be at peace in these
mountains she fled with her two sons to a neighboring province and
there they lived like wild beasts: hating and hated. The older boy,
remembering his happy infancy and its contrast with such great misery,
became a tulisan as soon as he had sufficient strength. Before long
the bloody name of Balat extended from province to province; it was
the terror of the towns and the people, for he took his revenge with
fire and blood. The younger boy, who had received from Nature a good
heart, resigned himself to his lot at his mother's side. They lived
on what the forests afforded them; they dressed in the rags that
travellers threw away. The mother had lost her good name, she was now
known only by such titles as the 'criminal,' the 'prostitute,' and the
'horse-whipped woman.' The younger brother was known only as the son of
his mother, because he had such a pleasant disposition that they did
not believe him to be the son of the incendiary. Finally the famous
Balat fell one day into the hands of Justice. Society had taught him
no good, but he was asked to account for his crimes. One morning as
the younger boy was looking for his mother, who had gone to gather
mushrooms from the forest, and had not yet returned, he found her
lying on the ground by the roadside, under a cotton-tree. Her face
was turned toward the sky, her eyes were torn from their sockets, and
her rigid fingers were buried in the blood-stained earth. It occurred
to the young man to raise his eyes and follow the direction in which
his mother had been looking, and there from a limb of a tree he saw
a basket, and in that basket the bloody head of his brother."

"My God!" exclaimed Ibarra.

"That is what my fath