ince which
time Juli had tried to avoid meeting him. But the curate made her kiss
his hand, he twitched her nose and patted her cheeks, he joked with
her, winking and laughing, and laughing he pinched her. Juli was also
the cause of the beating the good curate had administered to some young
men who were going about the village serenading the girls. Malicious
ones, seeing her pass sad and dejected, would remark so that she
might hear: "If she only wished it, Cabesang Tales would be pardoned."

Juli reached her home, gloomy and with wandering looks. She had
changed greatly, having lost her merriment, and no one ever saw her
smile again. She scarcely spoke and seemed to be afraid to look at
her own face. One day she was seen in the town with a big spot of
soot on her forehead, she who used to go so trim and neat. Once she
asked Sister Bali if the people who committed suicide went to hell.

"Surely!" replied that woman, and proceeded to describe the place as
though she had been there.

Upon Basilio's imprisonment, the simple and grateful relatives had
planned to make all kinds of sacrifices to save the young man, but
as they could collect among themselves no more than thirty pesos,
Sister Bali, as usual, thought of a better plan.

"What we must do is to get some advice from the town clerk," she
said. To these poor people, the town clerk was what the Delphic oracle
was to the ancient Greeks.

"By giving him a real and a cigar," she continued, "he'll tell you
all the laws so that your head bursts listening to him. If you have
a peso, he'll save you, even though you may be at the foot of the
scaffold. When my friend Simon was put in jail and flogged for not
being able to give evidence about a robbery perpetrated near his
house, _aba_, for two reales and a half and a string of garlics,
the town clerk got him out. And I saw Simon myself when he could
scarcely walk and he had to stay in bed at least a month. Ay, his
flesh rotted as a result and he died!"

Sister Bali's advice was accepted and she herself volunteered to
interview the town clerk. Juli gave her four reales and added some
strips of jerked venison her grand-father had got, for Tandang Selo
had again devoted himself to hunting.

But the town clerk could do nothing--the prisoner was in Manila,
and his power did not extend that far. "If at least he were at the
capital, then--" he ventured, to make a show of his authority, which
he knew very well did not extend b