es, but were of one mind when it was a question of
the curate. Inspired by his wife, the officer ordered that no one
be abroad in the streets after nine at night. The priest, who did
not like this restriction, retorted in lengthy sermons, whenever
the alferez went to church. Like all impenitents, the alferez did
not mend his ways for that, but went out swearing under his breath,
arrested the first sacristan he met, and made him clean the yard of
the barracks. So the war went on. All this, however, did not prevent
the alferez and the curate chatting courteously enough when they met.

And they were the rulers of the pueblo of San Diego.

XII.

ALL SAINTS' DAY.

The cemetery of San Diego is in the midst of rice-fields. It is
approached by a narrow path, powdery on sunny days, navigable on
rainy. A wooden gate and a wall half stone, half bamboo stalks,
succeed in keeping out men, but not the curate's goats, nor the
pigs of his neighbors. In the middle of the enclosure is a stone
pedestal supporting a great wooden cross. Storms have bent the strip
of tin on which were the I. N. R. I., and the rain has washed off
the letters. At the foot of the cross is a confused heap of bones
and skulls thrown out by the grave-digger. Everywhere grow in all
their vigor the bitter-sweet and rose-bay. Some tiny flowerets, too,
tint the ground--blossoms which, like the mounded bones, are known to
their Creator only. They are like little pale smiles, and their odor
scents of the tomb. Grass and climbing plants fill the corners, cover
the walls, adorning this otherwise bare ugliness; they even penetrate
the tombs, through earthquake fissures, and fill their yawning gaps.

At this hour two men are digging near the crumbling wall. One, the
grave-digger, works with the utmost indifference, throwing aside
a skull as a gardener would a stone. The other is preoccupied; he
perspires, he breathes hard.

"Oh!" he says at length in Tagalo. "Hadn't we better dig in some
other place? This grave is too recent."

"All the graves are the same, one is as recent as another."

"I can't endure this!"

"What a woman! You should go and be a clerk! If you had dug up,
as I did, a boy of twenty days, at night, in the rain----"

"Uh-h-h! And why did you do that?"

The grave-digger seemed surprised.

"Why? How do I know, I was ordered to."

"Who ordered you?"

At this question the grave-digger straightened himself, and examined
the rash young