g mournfully. She was not superstitious,
but she had heard so much about presentiments and black dogs that
terror seized her. She shut the door hastily and sat down by the
light. Night favors credulity and the imagination peoples the air
with specters. She tried to pray, to call upon the Virgin and upon
God to watch over her sons, especially her little Crispin. Then she
forgot her prayers as her thoughts wandered to think about them, to
recall the features of each, those features that always wore a smile
for her both asleep and awake. Suddenly she felt her hair rise on her
head and her eyes stared wildly; illusion or reality, she saw Crispin
standing by the fireplace, there where he was wont to sit and prattle
to her, but now he said nothing as he gazed at her with those large,
thoughtful eyes, and smiled.

"Mother, open the door! Open, mother!" cried the voice of Basilio
from without.

Sisa shuddered violently and the vision disappeared.

CHAPTER XVII

Basilio

La vida es sueno.

Basilio was scarcely inside when he staggered and fell into his
mother's arms. An inexplicable chill seized Sisa as she saw him enter
alone. She wanted to speak but could make no sound; she wanted to
embrace her son but lacked the strength; to weep was impossible. At
sight of the blood which covered the boy's forehead she cried in a
tone that seemed to come from a breaking heart, "My sons!"

"Don't be afraid, mother," Basilio reassured her. "Crispin stayed at
the convento."

"At the convento? He stayed at the convento? Is he alive?"

The boy raised his eyes to her. "Ah!" she sighed, passing from the
depths of sorrow to the heights of joy. She wept and embraced her son,
covering his bloody forehead with kisses.

"Crispin is alive! You left him at the convento! But why are you
wounded, my son? Have you had a fall?" she inquired, as she examined
him anxiously.

"The senior sacristan took Crispin away and told me that I could not
leave until ten o'clock, but it was already late and so I ran away. In
the town the soldiers challenged me, I started to run, they fired,
and a bullet grazed my forehead. I was afraid they would arrest me and
beat me and make me scrub out the barracks, as they did with Pablo,
who is still sick from it."

"My God, my God!" murmured his mother, shuddering. "Thou hast saved
him!" Then while she sought for bandages, water, vinegar, and a
feather, she went on, "A finger's breadth more and