s game-cock, saying neither yes
nor no, only asking whether the boy would earn much money. She had
not dared to insist, but her needy situation and her desire that the
boys should learn to read and write in the town school forced her to
carry out the plan. Still her husband had said nothing.

That night, between ten and eleven o'clock, when the stars were
glittering in a sky now cleared of all signs of the storm of the
early evening, Sisa sat on a wooden bench watching some fagots that
smouldered upon the fireplace fashioned of rough pieces of natural
rock. Upon a tripod, or _tunko_, was a small pot of boiling rice
and upon the red coals lay three little dried fishes such as are
sold at three for two cuartos. Her chin rested in the palm of her
hand while she gazed at the weak yellow glow peculiar to the cane,
which burns rapidly and leaves embers that quickly grow pale. A sad
smile lighted up her face as she recalled a funny riddle about the pot
and the fire which Crispin had once propounded to her. The boy said:
"The black man sat down and the red man looked at him, a moment passed,
and cock-a-doodle-doo rang forth."

Sisa was still young, and it was plain that at one time she had been
pretty and attractive. Her eyes, which, like her disposition, she
had given to her sons, were beautiful, with long lashes and a deep
look. Her nose was regular and her pale lips curved pleasantly. She
was what the Tagalogs call _kayumanguing-kaligatan_; that is, her
color was a clear, pure brown. In spite of her youthfulness, pain
and perhaps even hunger had begun to make hollow her pallid cheeks,
and if her abundant hair, in other times the delight and adornment of
her person, was even yet simply and neatly arranged, though without
pins or combs, it was not from coquetry but from habit.

Sisa had been for several days confined to the house sewing upon
some work which had been ordered for the earliest possible time. In
order to earn the money, she had not attended mass that morning, as
it would have taken two hours at least to go to the town and return:
poverty obliges one to sin! She had finished the work and delivered
it but had received only a promise of payment. All that day she had
been anticipating the pleasures of the evening, for she knew that her
sons were coming and she had intended to make them some presents. She
had bought some small fishes, picked the most beautiful tomatoes in
her little garden, as she knew that Crispin