ere had gone to him in a body. The brothers were organizing an army,
gathering malcontents, sending emissaries primed with patriotic lies to
the people, and with promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even
a Monterist press had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the
secret promises of support given by "our great sister Republic of the
North" against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers,
cursing in every issue the "miserable Ribiera," who had plotted
to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, for a prey to foreign
speculators.

Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo and the rich silver
mine, heard the din of arms fitfully in its fortunate isolation. It was
nevertheless in the very forefront of the defence with men and money;
but the very rumours reached it circuitously--from abroad even, so
much was it cut off from the rest of the Republic, not only by natural
obstacles, but also by the vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were
besieging Cayta, an important postal link. The overland couriers ceased
to come across the mountains, and no muleteer would consent to risk the
journey at last; even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from
Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps captured by the
parties of the enemy raiding the country between the Cordillera and
the capital. Monterist publications, however, found their way into the
province, mysteriously enough; and also Monterist emissaries preaching
death to aristocrats in the villages and towns of the Campo. Very early,
at the beginning of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed
(through the agency of an old priest of a village in the wilds) to
deliver two of them to the Ribierist authorities in Tonoro. They had
come to offer him a free pardon and the rank of colonel from General
Montero in consideration of joining the rebel army with his mounted
band. No notice was taken at the time of the proposal. It was joined, as
an evidence of good faith, to a petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for
permission to enlist, with all his followers, in the forces being
then raised in Sulaco for the defence of the Five-Year Mandate of
regeneration. The petition, like everything else, had found its way
into Don Jose's hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of
dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some village store),
covered with the crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre,
carried off from his hu