ld, sent it on for the information of the
gentlemen garrisoning the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made
up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the last day--the last
hours perhaps--of her father's life to the keeping of the bandit, whose
existence was a protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties
alike, against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos
woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band
less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate
defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the man whom
she loved.

In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his head for Hernandez's
fidelity. As to his power, he pointed out that he had remained unsubdued
for so many years. In that letter Decoud's idea of the new Occidental
State (whose flourishing and stable condition is a matter of common
knowledge now) was for the first time made public and used as an
argument. Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist
creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of country
between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast range till that devoted
patriot, Don Martin Decoud, could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco
for the reconquest of the town.

"Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side," wrote Father
Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon or to controvert his
statement; and if the discussion started upon the reading of that letter
in the Amarilla Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the
general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at the idea with joyful
astonishment as upon the amazing discovery of a new hope. Others became
fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at
a straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
with their armed rabble.

All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in
the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the
windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in
case of an offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and
arguments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting
those caballeros who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
into the corredor, where at a litt