he penitent's back. His office required no little skill, for he had
to make three cuts the whole length of the back and three the width,
tearing through the skin so as to leave a permanent scar, but not deep
enough to injure the muscle. Ramon, glancing up, saw the gleam of the
candle light on the white quartz, and also in the eyes of the man, which
were bright with eagerness.

Now came the supreme struggle with himself. How could he go through with
this ugly agony? He longed to leap to his feet and fight these ignorant
louts, who were going to mangle him and beat him for their own amusement.
He held himself down with all his will, striving to think of the girl, to
hold his purpose before his mind, to endure.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

He felt the hand of the _sangredor_ upon his neck, and gritted his teeth.
The man's grip was heavy, hot and firm. A flash of pain shot up and down
his back with lightning speed, as though a red hot poker had been laid
upon it. Again and again and again! Six times in twice as many seconds the
deft flint ripped his skin, and he fell forward upon his hands, faint and
sick, as he felt his own blood welling upon his back and trickling in warm
rivulets between his ribs.

But this was not all. To qualify, he knew, he must call for the lash of
his own free will.

"For the love of God," he uttered painfully, as he had been taught, "the
three meditations of the passion of our Lord."

On his torn back a long black snake whip came down, wielded with merciless
force. But he felt the full agony of the first blow only. The second
seemed faint, and the third sent him plunging downward through a red mist
into black nothingness.

CHAPTER XXIV

A few days later one bright morning Ramon was sitting in the sun before
the door of his friend, Francisco Guiterrez, feeling still somewhat sore,
but otherwise surprisingly well. Guiterrez, a young sheep-herder, held the
position of _coadjutor_ of the local _penitente_ chapter, and one of his
duties as such was to take the penitent to his house and care for him
after the initiation. He had washed Ramon's wounds in a tea made by
boiling Romero weed. This was a remedy which the _penitentes_ had used for
centuries, and its efficacy was proved by the fact that Ramon's cuts had
begun to heal at once, and that he had had very little fever.

For a couple of days Ramon had been forced to lie restlessly in the only
bed of the Guite