rked dryly in Spanish as he turned his back and went toward
the church.

Inside, the sacristans were preparing a catafalque, bordered with
candles placed in wooden sockets. Two large tables had been placed
one above the other and covered with black cloth across which ran
white stripes, with here and there a skull painted on it.

"Is that for the souls or for the candles?" inquired the old man,
but noticing two boys, one about ten and the other seven, he turned
to them without awaiting an answer from the sacristans.

"Won't you come with me, boys?" he asked them. "Your mother has
prepared a supper for you fit for a curate."

"The senior sacristan will not let us leave until eight o'clock,
sir," answered the larger of the two boys. "I expect to get my pay
to give it to our mother."

"Ah! And where are you going now?"

"To the belfry, sir, to ring the knell for the souls."

"Going to the belfry! Then take care! Don't go near the bells during
the storm!"

Tasio then left the church, not without first bestowing a look of pity
on the two boys, who were climbing the stairway into the organ-loft. He
passed his hand over his eyes, looked at the sky again, and murmured,
"Now I should be sorry if thunderbolts should fall." With his head
bowed in thought he started toward the outskirts of the town.

"Won't you come in?" invited a voice in Spanish from a window.

The Sage raised his head and saw a man of thirty or thirty-five years
of age smiling at him.

"What are you reading there?" asked Tasio, pointing to a book the
man held in his hand.

"A work just published: 'The Torments Suffered by the Blessed Souls
in Purgatory,'" the other answered with a smile.

"Man, man, man!" exclaimed the Sage in an altered tone as he entered
the house. "The author must be a very clever person."

Upon reaching the top of the stairway, he was cordially received by the
master of the house, Don Filipo Lino, and his young wife, Dona Teodora
Vina. Don Filipo was the teniente-mayor of the town and leader of one
of the parties--the liberal faction, if it be possible to speak so,
and if there exist parties in the towns of the Philippines.

"Did you meet in the cemetery the son of the deceased Don Rafael,
who has just returned from Europe?"

"Yes, I saw him as he alighted from his carriage."

"They say that he went to look for his father's grave. It must have
been a terrible blow."

The Sage shrugged his shoulders.

"Doesn't such a m