want to! I shall get out! _Nombre de Dios!_ If
I live through the night I shall go to the mountains to-morrow!"

"But we must have a coffin to bury the lad! You must let us have
one!"

"No! You cannot enter here, Padre!" shrilled Don Mario, jumping up and
down in his excitement. "Bury him in a blanket--anything--but keep
away from my house!"

Jose turned sadly away and passed through the deserted streets back to
the lonely shed. Rosendo met him at the door. "_Bien, Padre_," he said
quietly, "we are exiled."

"Have you been home yet?" asked Jose.

"_Hombre_, no! I cannot go home now. I might carry the disease to the
senora and the little Carmen. I must stay here. And," he added, "you
too, Padre."

Jose's heart turned to lead. "But, the boy?" he exclaimed, pointing
toward the bed.

"When it is dark, Padre," replied Rosendo, "we will take him out
through the back door and bury him beyond the shales. _Hombre!_ I must
see now if I can find a shovel."

Jose sank down upon the threshold, a prey to corroding despair, while
Rosendo went out in search of the implement. The streets were dead,
and few lights shone from the latticed windows. The pall of fear had
settled thick upon the stricken town. Those who were standing before
their houses as Rosendo approached hastily turned in and closed their
doors. Jose, in the presence of death in a terrible form, sat mute. In
an hour Rosendo returned.

"No shovel, Padre," he announced. "But I crept up back of my house and
got this bar which I had left standing there when I came back from the
mountains. I can scrape up the loose earth with my hands. Come now."

Jose wearily rose. He was but a tool in the hands of a man to whom
physical danger was but a matter of temperament. He absently helped
Rosendo wrap the black, distorted corpse in the frayed blanket; and
then together they passed out into the night with their grewsome
burden.

"Why not to the cemetery, Rosendo?" asked Jose, as the old man took an
opposite course.

"_Hombre_, no!" cried Rosendo. "The cemetery is on shale, and I could
not dig through it in time. We must get the body under ground at once.
_Caramba!_ If we put it in one of the _bovedas_ in the cemetery the
buzzards will eat it and scatter the plague all over the town. The
_bovedas_ are broken, and have no longer any doors, you remember."

So beyond the shales they went, stumbling through the darkness, their
minds freighted with a burden of apprehension mo