t try to catch him, but he went and surrendered. Let him bust
himself--he'll surely be shot."

The senora shrugged her shoulders. "He doesn't owe me anything. And
what about Paulita?"

"She won't lack a husband. Sure, she'll cry a little, and then marry
a Spaniard."

The night was one of the gloomiest. In the houses the rosary was
recited and pious women dedicated paternosters and requiems to each
of the souls of their relatives and friends. By eight o'clock hardly
a pedestrian could be seen--only from time to time was heard the
galloping of a horse against whose sides a saber clanked noisily,
then the whistles of the watchmen, and carriages that whirled along
at full speed, as though pursued by mobs of filibusters.

Yet terror did not reign everywhere. In the house of the silversmith,
where Placido Penitente boarded, the events were commented upon and
discussed with some freedom.

"I don't believe in the pasquinades," declared a workman, lank and
withered from operating the blowpipe. "To me it looks like Padre
Salvi's doings."

"Ahem, ahem!" coughed the silversmith, a very prudent man, who did not
dare to stop the conversation from fear that he would be considered
a coward. The good man had to content himself with coughing, winking
to his helper, and gazing toward the street, as if to say, "They may
be watching us!"

"On account of the operetta," added another workman.

"Aha!" exclaimed one who had a foolish face, "I told you so!"

"Ahem!" rejoined a clerk, in a tone of compassion, "the affair of
the pasquinades is true, Chichoy, and I can give you the explanation."

Then he added mysteriously, "It's a trick of the Chinaman Quiroga's!"

"Ahem, ahem!" again coughed the silversmith, shifting his quid of
buyo from one cheek to the other.

"Believe me, Chichoy, of Quiroga the Chinaman! I heard it in the
office."

"_Naku_, it's certain then," exclaimed the simpleton, believing it
at once.

"Quiroga," explained the clerk, "has a hundred thousand pesos in
Mexican silver out in the bay. How is he to get it in? Very easily. Fix
up the pasquinades, availing himself of the question of the students,
and, while every-body is excited, grease the officials' palms, and
in the cases come!"

"Just it! Just it!" cried the credulous fool, striking the table
with his fist. "Just it! That's why Quiroga did it! That's why--"
But he had to relapse into silence as he really did not know what to
say about Quiroga.

"And w