feet with
difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.

"Lean on me, my poor dear," said the old wife, offering her arm.

The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step
without their aid.

Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.

The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling
out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering. Rene was doing
the same on the other side of the road. Chichi went on alone, the wind
whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape
from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a
name. Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to
gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably--revealing
thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty,
of consummated love following her course through this land of death and
desolation.

In the distance sounded feebly her father's voice:

"Not yet?"

The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son's
resting place as soon as possible.

A half hour thus dragged by without any result--always unfamiliar names,
anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments. Don Marcelo was
no longer able to stand. Their passage across the irregularities of the
soft earth had been torment for him. He was beginning to despair. . . .
Ay, they would never find Julio's remains! The parents, too, had been
scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after
cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name.
. . . No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along
the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.

It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, "Here. . . . Here it is!"
The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family
were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier,
and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with
letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of
his comrades-at-arms--"DESNOYERS." . . . Then in military abbreviations,
the rank, regiment and company.

A long silence. Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on
the cross--those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep. Till
then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her
as though overcome by the immensity of a grief inca