they would have
killed you, they would have killed my boy! The civil-guards do not
think of the mothers."

"You must say that I fell from a tree so that no one will know they
chased me," Basilio cautioned her.

"Why did Crispin stay?" asked Sisa, after dressing her son's wound.

Basilio hesitated a few moments, then with his arms about her and
their tears mingling, he related little by little the story of the
gold pieces, without speaking, however, of the tortures they were
inflicting upon his young brother.

"My good Crispin! To accuse my good Crispin! It's because we're poor
and we poor people have to endure everything!" murmured Sisa, staring
through her tears at the light of the lamp, which was now dying out
from lack of oil. So they remained silent for a while.

"Haven't you had any supper yet? Here are rice and fish."

"I don't want anything, only a little water."

"Yes," answered his mother sadly, "I know that you don't like dried
fish. I had prepared something else, but your father came."

"Father came?" asked Basilio, instinctively examining the face and
hands of his mother.

The son's questioning gaze pained Sisa's heart, for she understood it
only too well, so she added hastily: "He came and asked a lot about
you and wanted to see you, and he was very hungry. He said that if
you continued to be so good he would come back to stay with us."

An exclamation of disgust from Basilio's contracted lips interrupted
her. "Son!" she reproached him.

"Forgive me, mother," he answered seriously. "But aren't we three
better off--you, Crispin, and I? You're crying--I haven't said
anything."

Sisa sighed and asked, "Aren't you going to eat? Then let's go to
sleep, for it's now very late." She then closed up the hut and covered
the few coals with ashes so that the fire would not die out entirely,
just as a man does with his inner feelings; he covers them with the
ashes of his life, which he calls indifference, so that they may not
be deadened by daily contact with his fellows.

Basilio murmured his prayers and lay down near his mother, who was
upon her knees praying. He felt hot and cold, he tried to close his
eyes as he thought of his little brother who that night had expected
to sleep in his mother's lap and who now was probably trembling with
terror and weeping in some dark corner of the convento. His ears were
again pierced with those cries he had heard in the church tower. But
wearied nature soon began