with my own affairs, and paid him little attention. But come,
tell me all about it."

With the truth slowly dawning upon his clouded thought, Jose related
the grewsome experiences of the past three days.

_"Ca-ram-ba!"_ Don Jorge whistled softly. "Who would have thought it!
But, was Feliz Gomez sick before he went to Bodega Central?"

"I do not know," replied Jose.

"Yes, senor," interposed Rosendo. "He and Amado Sanchez both had bowel
trouble. Their women told my wife so, after you and I, Padre, had come
up here to the hill. But it was nothing. We have it here often, as you
know."

"True," assented Jose, "but we have never given it any serious
thought."

Don Jorge leaned back and broke into a roar of laughter. "_Por el amor
del cielo!_ You are all crazy, _amigo_--you die like rats of fear! Did
you ever put a mouse into a bottle and then scare it to death with a
loud noise? _Hombre!_ That is what has happened to you!" The hill
reverberated with his loud shouts.

But Jose could not share in the merriment. The awful consequences of
the innkeeper's coarse joke upon the childish minds of these poor,
impressionable people pressed heavily upon his heart. Bitter tears
welled to his eyes. He sprang to his feet.

"Come, Rosendo!" he cried. "We must go down and tell these people the
truth!"

Don Jorge joined them, and they all hastened down into the town.
Ramona Chaves met them in the _plaza_, her eyes streaming.

"Padre," she wailed, "my man Pedro has the sickness! He is dying!"

"Nothing of the kind, Ramona!" loudly cried Jose; "there is no cholera
here!" He hastened to the bedside of the writhing Pedro.

"Up, man!" he shouted, seizing his hand. "Up! You are not sick! There
is no cholera in Simiti! There is none in Bodega Central! Feliz did
not bring it! He and Amado had only a touch of the flux, and they died
of fear!"

The priest's ringing words acted upon the man like magic. He roused up
from his lethargy and stared at the assemblage. Don Jorge repeated the
priest's words, and added his own laughing and boisterous comments.
Pedro rose from his bed, and stood staring.

Together, their little band augmented at every corner by the startled
people, they hurried to the homes of all who lay upon beds of
sickness, spreading the glad tidings, until the little town was in a
state of uproar. Like black shadows before the light, the plague fled
into the realm of imagination from which it had come. By night, all
but