and there are two of us."

"Is that right? Well, I don't want to leave."

"Nor I. I'm short of money," answered the smaller. "But let's do this:
let's play for it, the one who loses to leave."

"All right," agreed the other, rather ungraciously. "Then let's
get inside. Have you any matches?" They went in to seek in the
semi-obscurity for a suitable place and soon found a niche in which
they could sit. The shorter took some cards from his salakot, while
the other struck a match, in the light from which they stared at
each other, but, from the expressions on their faces, apparently
without recognition. Nevertheless, we can recognize in the taller
and deep-voiced one Elias and in the shorter one, from the scar on
his cheek, Lucas.

"Cut!" called Lucas, still staring at the other. He pushed aside some
bones that were in the niche and dealt an ace and a jack.

Elias lighted match after match. "On the jack!" he said, and to
indicate the card placed a vertebra on top of it.

"Play!" called Lucas, as he dealt an ace with the fourth or fifth
card. "You've lost," he added. "Now leave me alone so that I can try
to make a raise."

Elias moved away without a word and was soon swallowed up in the
darkness.

Several minutes later the church-clock struck eight and the bell
announced the hour of the souls, but Lucas invited no one to play nor
did he call on the dead, as the superstition directs; instead, he took
off his hat and muttered a few prayers, crossing and recrossing himself
with the same fervor with which, at that same moment, the leader of the
Brotherhood of the Holy Rosary was going through a similar performance.

Throughout the night a drizzling rain continued to fall. By nine
o'clock the streets were dark and solitary. The coconut-oil lanterns,
which the inhabitants were required to hang out, scarcely illuminated
a small circle around each, seeming to be lighted only to render the
darkness more apparent. Two civil-guards paced back and forth in the
street near the church.

"It's cold!" said one in Tagalog with a Visayan accent. "We haven't
caught any sacristan, so there is no one to repair the alferez's
chicken-coop. They're all scared out by the death of that other
one. This makes me tired."

"Me, too," answered the other. "No one commits robbery, no one raises
a disturbance, but, thank God, they say that Elias is in town. The
alferez says that whoever catches him will be exempt from floggings
for three mont