alm leaves. His clothing consisted of a
ragged coat and wide pantaloons, like those worn by the Chinese, torn
in many places. Wretched sandals covered his feet. His countenance
remained hidden in the shadow of his wide hat, but from this shadow
there flashed intermittently two burning rays. Placing a flat basket
on the ground, he would withdraw a few paces and utter strange,
incomprehensible sounds, remaining the while standing entirely alone as
if he and the crowd were mutually avoiding each other. Then some women
would approach the basket and put into it fruit, fish, or rice. When
no one any longer approached, from the shadows would issue sadder
but less pitiful sounds, cries of gratitude perhaps. Then he would
take up the basket and make his way to another place to repeat the
same performance.

Maria Clara divined that there must be some misfortune there, and
full of interest she asked concerning the strange creature.

"He's a leper," Iday told her. "Four years ago he contracted the
disease, some say from taking care of his mother, others from lying
in a damp prison. He lives in the fields near the Chinese cemetery,
having intercourse with no one, because all flee from him for fear of
contagion. If you might only see his home! It's a tumbledown shack,
through which the wind and rain pass like a needle through cloth. He
has been forbidden to touch anything belonging to the people. One day
when a little child fell into a shallow ditch as he was passing,
he helped to get it out. The child's father complained to the
gobernadorcillo, who ordered that the leper be flogged through the
streets and that the rattan be burned afterwards. It was horrible! The
leper fled with his flogger in pursuit, while the gobernadorcillo
cried, 'Catch him! Better be drowned than get the disease you have!'"

"Can it be true!" murmured Maria Clara, then, without saying what she
was about to do, went up to the wretch's basket and dropped into it
the locket her father had given her.

"What have you done?" her friends asked.

"I hadn't anything else," she answered, trying to conceal her tears
with a smile.

"What is he going to do with your locket?" Victoria asked her. "One
day they gave him some money, but he pushed it away with a stick;
why should he want it when no one accepts anything that comes from
him? As if the locket could be eaten!"

Maria Clara gazed enviously at the women who were selling food-stuffs
and shrugged her shoulders