found it out, but he
brought the old man before the court and made him declare the truth:
he was our father. Our happiness was ended. I gave up my inheritance,
my sister lost her fiance, and with our father we left the pueblo,
to live where he might. The thought of the unhappiness he had brought
upon us shortened our father's days, and my sister and I were left
alone. She could not forget her lover, and little by little I saw
her droop. One day she disappeared, and I searched everywhere for
her in vain. Six months afterward, I learned that at the time I lost
her there had been found on the lake shore of Calamba the body of a
young woman drowned or assassinated. A knife, they said, was buried
in her breast. From what they told me of her dress and her beauty,
I recognized my sister. Since then I have wandered from province to
province, my reputation and my story following in time. Many things
are attributed to me, often unjustly, but I continue my way and take
little account of men. You have my story, and that of one of the
judgments of our brothers!"

Elias rowed on in a silence which was for some time unbroken.

"I believe you are not wrong when you say that justice should interest
herself in the education of criminals," said Crisostomo at length;
"but it is impossible, it is Utopia; where get the money necessary
to create so many new offices?"

"Why not use the priests, who vaunt their mission of peace and
love? Can it be more meritorious to sprinkle a child's head with water
than to wake, in the darkened conscience of a criminal, that spark
lighted by God in every soul to guide it in the search for truth? Can
it be more humane to accompany a condemned man to the gallows than
to help him in the hard path that leads from vice to virtue? And the
spies, the executioners, the guards, do not they too cost money?"

"My friend, if I believed all this, what could I do?"

"Alone, nothing; but if the people sustained you?"

"I shall never be the one to lead the people when they try to obtain
by force what the Government does not think it time to give them. If I
should see the people armed, I should range myself on the side of the
Government. I do not recognize my country in a mob. I desire her good;
that is why I build a school. I seek this good through instruction;
without light there is no route."

"Without struggle, no liberty; without liberty, no light. You say you
know your country little. I believe you. You do not