ill revenge me by embracing you."

"Gag him!" yelled the furious alferez, trembling with wrath.

Tarsilo seemed to have desired the gag, for after it was put in place
his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. At a signal from the alferez,
a guard armed with a rattan whip began his gruesome task. Tarsilo's
whole body contracted, and a stifled, prolonged cry escaped from
him in spite of the piece of cloth which covered his mouth. His head
drooped and his clothes became stained with blood.

Padre Salvi, pallid and with wandering looks, arose laboriously, made
a sign with his hand, and left the hall with faltering steps. In the
street he saw a young woman leaning with her shoulders against the
wall, rigid, motionless, listening attentively, staring into space,
her clenched hands stretched out along the wall. The sun beat down
upon her fiercely. She seemed to be breathlessly counting those dry,
dull strokes and those heartrending groans. It was Tarsilo's sister.

Meanwhile, the scene in the hall continued. The wretched boy, overcome
with pain, silently waited for his executioners to become weary. At
last the panting soldier let his arm fall, and the alferez, pale
with anger and astonishment, made a sign for them to untie him. Dona
Consolacion then arose and murmured a few words into the ear of her
husband, who nodded his head in understanding.

"To the well with him!" he ordered.

The Filipinos know what this means: in Tagalog they call it
_timbain_. We do not know who invented this procedure, but we judge
that it must be quite ancient. Truth at the bottom of a well may
perhaps be a sarcastic interpretation.

In the center of the yard rose the picturesque curb of a well,
roughly fashioned from living rock. A rude apparatus of bamboo in
the form of a well-sweep served for drawing up the thick, slimy,
foul-smelling water. Broken pieces of pottery, manure, and other
refuse were collected there, since this well was like the jail,
being the place for what society rejected or found useless, and
any object that fell into it, however good it might have been, was
then a thing lost. Yet it was never closed up, and even at times the
prisoners were condemned to go down and deepen it, not because there
was any thought of getting anything useful out of such punishment,
but because of the difficulties the work offered. A prisoner who once
went down there would contract a fever from which he would surely die.

Tarsilo gazed upon all the