ponded by bitter sobs, and would
have rushed to her husband, had not the guards held her back. The
son of Capitana Tinay was crying like a child, which did not help
to check the lamentations of his family. The twins were calm and
grave. Ibarra came last. He walked between two guards, his hand free;
his eyes sought on all sides for a friendly face.

"He is the guilty one!" cried numerous voices. "He is the guilty one,
and his hands are unbound!"

"Bind my arms," said Ibarra to his guards.

"We have no orders."

"Bind me!"

The soldiers obeyed.

The alferez appeared on horseback, armed to the teeth, and followed
by an escort of soldiers. The prisoners' friends saluted them with
affectionate words; only Ibarra was friendless.

"What has my husband done to you?" sobbed Doray. "See my child;
you have robbed him of his father!"

Grief began to turn to hate against the man who was said to have
provoked the uprising.

The alferez gave the order to start.

"Coward!" cried a woman, as the cart moved off. "While the others
fought, you were in hiding! Coward!"

"Curses on you!" cried an old man, running after. "Cursed be the gold
heaped up by your family to take away our peace. Accurst! accurst!"

"May you be hung, heretic!" cried a woman, picking up a stone and
throwing it after him. Her example was promptly followed, and a shower
of dust and pebbles beat against the unhappy man. Crisostomo bore
this injustice without a sign. It was the farewell of his beloved
country. He bent his head and sat motionless. Perhaps he was thinking
of a man beaten in the pueblo streets; perhaps of the body of a girl,
washed up by the waves.

The alferez felt obliged to drive away the crowd, but stones did not
cease to fall, nor insult to sound. One mother only did not curse
Ibarra; the Capitana Maria watched her sons go, with compressed lips
and eyes full of silent tears.

Of all the people in the open windows as he passed, none but the
indifferent and curious showed Ibarra the least compassion. All his
friends had deserted him, even Captain Basilio, who had forbidden
Sinang to weep. When Crisostomo passed the smoking ruins of his home,
that home where he was born, and spent his happy childhood and youth,
the tears, long repressed, gushed from his eyes, and bound as he was,
he had to experience the bitterness of showing a grief that could
not rouse the slightest sympathy.

From a hill, an old man, pale and thin, wrapped in a mant