omise yourself alone!"

"Yes," cried Don Filipo bitterly, "and it will be so as long as fear
and prudence are supposed to be synonymous. Each thinks of himself,
nobody of any one else; that is why we are weak!"

"Very well! Think of others and see how soon the others will let
you hang!"

"I've had enough of it!" cried the exasperated lieutenant. "I shall
give my resignation to the alcalde to-day."

The women had still other thoughts.

"Aye!" said one of them. "Young people are always the same. If his
good mother were living, what would she say? When I think that my son,
who is a young hothead, too, might have done the same thing----"

"I'm not with you," said another woman. "I should have nothing against
my two sons if they did as Don Crisostomo."

"What are you saying, Capitana Maria?" cried the first woman, clasping
her hands.

"I'm a poor stupid," said a third, the Capitana Tinay, "but I know
what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell my son not to study any
more. They say men of learning all die on the gallows. Holy Mary,
and my son wants to go to Europe!"

"If I were rich as you, my children should travel," said the Capitana
Maria. "Our sons ought to aspire to be more than their fathers. I
have not long to live, and we shall meet again in the other world."

"Your ideas, Capitana Maria, are little Christian," said Sister
Rufa severely. "Make yourself a sister of the Sacred Rosary, or of
St. Francis."

"Sister Rufa, when I'm a worthy sister of men, I will think about
being a sister of the saints," said the capitana, smiling.

Under the booth where the children had their feast the father of the
one who was to be a doctor was talking.

"What troubles me most," said he, "is that the school will not be
finished; my son will not be a doctor, but a carter."

"Who said there wouldn't be a school?"

"I say so. The White Fathers have called Don Crisostomo
plibastiero. There won't be any school."

The peasants questioned each other's faces. The word was new to them.

"And is that a bad name?" one at last ventured to ask.

"It's the worst one Christian can give another."

"Worse than tarantado and saragate?"

"If it weren't, it wouldn't amount to much."

"Come now. It can't be worse than indio, as the alferez says."

He whose son was to be a carter looked gloomy. The other shook his
head and reflected.

"Then is it as bad as betalapora, that the old woman of the alferez
says?"

"You remember the wor