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with the disaster, and his mind was like a child's mind, looking with wonder and hurt into the inscrutable heart of life. Sometimes he wept for the wanting of Carmen, but nothing told him the way to escape.

Often he wondered what her life was now, but he did not worry for her needs. She was as strong as himself and could provide for her necessities. Even in the end, when release finally came, like a miracle in answer to the prayers of his longing, he did not force himself to that terrible, hungry march of many days and half the nights because he was apprehensive for her welfare. She had been clever enough to live all these years; that was certain, surely. But he wanted her kisses again, the passionate strength of her

arms.

He was in good favor when he left the prison, and they told him he was a fine, good fellow, and el comandante gave him out of his generosity a suit of corduroy clothes and a pair of strong shoes and an old Panama with a large, flopping brim. The clothes might have fit him better in other days, but prison had thinned him and narrowed him, it seemed; these clothes were made for a more fortunate man.

He became a good fellow, a fine good fellow, through the luck of an accident. The wife of a recent prisoner, a great, brutish man who was there for stabbing his friend, had come into the jail one day on permission, and when she departed she left seven or eight small knives in her husband's cell.

These were distributed secretly. Ismael was not one of those made partner to the conspiracy, for they said that many years in prison had dried up his spirit, and made him mild and afraid, like an abused dog.

But he was in the corridor when the fierce attempt at freedom was made. The prisoners were lined up in a long row, like a column of desperate schoolboys about to recite a lesson in malevolence and hate. An armed guard stood in front of them; two other guards were inspecting the dirty cells. Ismael, twenty or thirty yards from this group, was cleaning the floor of the corridor with a big mop and a pail of water.

The brutish prisoner who had first

secured the knives gave a whooping roar, and that was the signal for the attempt. The nearest guard, one of those inspecting the cells, was stabbed a dozen times before he could turn and face his destroyers. The second guard had time to pull out his short sword; he confronted the convicts, who closed about him with their menacing knives.

The guard with the gun ran toward Ismael with the idea, no doubt, of securing enough distance to use his weapon. Some one foresaw his purpose, for a dirty arm was upraised, and the knife came singing through the air like a savage dart, and struck the man midway in his back. He fell forward on his face, his arms flew out spasmodically, and the gun dropped with a clatter at Ismael's feet.

Ismael was already vastly excited, and although not previously aware of the proposed attempt, the sudden promise of freedom inflamed him to action. He snatched up the gun and fired it. When he fired, his purpose was to shoot the remaining guard and join in the escape, but his shot had very little aim, and in the close struggle of bodies the erratic bullet struck the huge leader of the conspirators. His bulk collapsed, he fell back negligently into the crowd, bearing another man down with him in his sudden collapse.

The death of their leader and the confusion of this sudden shot terrified the prisoners. They abandoned the remaining beleaguered guard and ran riotously to the far end of the corridor, as if the whole prison garrison had entered in to shoot them down. In a moment a dozen armed guards came running up.

The survivor of the attack seized Ismael's hands and wrung them fervently. El comandante, arriving later, congratulated him upon his justness and courage. The following day he was released from prison.

He did not linger many hours in the city. The crowds did not entice him, nor did he find any allure in the pleasures in which he might have indulged. His only pause was to stand in the plaza for an hour and listen to the band playing an ancient tristes that brought back some of the old reality of life. The gaudy, brass blare delighted him, and he thought of his good luck. At last he was free.

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Then, thinking of his luck, he was suddenly puzzled, like a man who smiles and finds his smile inappropriate. that moment the prison time seemed a very long time, and the years arrayed themselves in his memory in the vesture of their interminable, meaningless days. He was going to Carmen, and there was joy in the thought of going to her, but why had she been taken away from him? His simple mind sought those easy reasons that would have been comprehensible to his simplicity, and found none. He seemed to face something inscrutable and menacing that colored the future with doubts, that lent fear and bitterness to his mood. He found no one to blame, no one upon whom he could fasten the revengeful passion of a simple hate. He felt like a man who faces an antagonist in the dark, whose very proportion cannot be discerned, whose malevolence may be little or great. He left the music in the plaza with downcast, puzzled eyes, and the brass wail of the tristes followed after him for a time like sorrowing, gaudy spirits.

Outside of the city, walking the uneven dirt roads, pressing on into the interior of the republic, his single purpose returned to him with all the old allure. He began to invent his greetings for Carmen, and spoke endearing words aloud to the dirt road and the majestic palms, to brilliant, screaming birds that flew like liberated souls above his head. He called her chica and amorcito and mi tesoro. He saw her petting him and comforting him, unlacing his shoes when he was tired, and making dulces for him to eat.

Sometimes during the journey the driver of an ox-team would take him up into the cart, and then they would talk together of women, flippantly and tell their experiences, and lie about their adventures. Then Ismael never said a word about Carmen Maria, but played himself for a rake, and laughed inwardly when he thought of the secret within his heart.

He came near El Socorro, his own village, early one evening. From the hill whose descent he began he could look down upon the red-roofed morichales, the little houses roofed with tiles. The departing sunlight gilded them, and white figures moved about before the doors.

Beyond was the great river, glittering like a twisted, golden ribbon. Ismael felt his heart beating loudly, as if it tried to speak, and his jetty eyes expanded widely as he looked down upon the old, familiar place.

In entering the village, all his bodily fatigue departed, and he stepped jauntily, as if he returned from a conquering act. Some children who were unborn when he had left stared at him with their fixed, naïve curiosity. A woman whom he did not know pounded corn in front of her little house.

Then he saw old Pedro Rivas, the storekeeper, standing in front of his shop. The old man saw him, shaded his eyes for a moment, rolled them back horribly under his red lids, and threw up his hands in a gesture of passionate astonishment. "Santo Dios!" he cried.

Ismael grinned with delight.

"Ha! old donkey!" he shouted. "The devil and I always come back. You're never a day older, you ancient man. You've looked a thousand years old since I was a boy."

.He shook the old man by both of his seamy hands, and Pedro stared at him meanwhile without a word.

"Then good-by, old one," said Ismael at last. "I must go on to my morichal. Tell me, my Carmen Maria, she 's all right?"

Pedro nodded and stared.

Ismael ran down the wooden steps and swung out into the road. Then Pedro quavered after him.

"You'll find Quintana there."

Ismael did not turn back, but he walked on with a sudden wonder in his mind. Quintana? Yes, he remembered a Quintana, Luiz Quintana, who used to play bolas in the village roads, big, quarrelsome fellow who hated work. He used to say he was made for a gentleman's life, but he had no family and was no more than any one else. Ismael had never been fond of him. What did old Pedro mean? Old Pedro was loco without a doubt.

He came out of the village and hurried along the road that edged close to the river. Here the great plantations began, and huts roofed with moriche clustered like squat fungi under the ranks of lofty palms. Half-naked chil

dren darted into the squares of the low doors, and old women, cooking black beans and corn-bread, crouched in front of the crude, outdoor stoves, endlessly fanning the fires with palm-leaves. With the familiarity of the picture tears came into the eyes of the home-comer and glittered like evanescent opals as they trembled on his cheeks.

Then, climbing up the foot-path from the road, he saw his own morichal, with a new thatch, and the smoke of the evening fire rising like a tenuous veil behind it. A cow and a donkey were standing in the yard; a tame parrot screamed from a mango-tree.

Ismael approached, and a large, strange dog ran around from the back of the house and barked at him. He heard voices; two figures rounded the side of the house, a man and a woman. He saw Carmen Maria, plumper than before, less girlish; she walked in front of her companion, and in another moment Ismael recognized him also. It was indeed Luiz Quintana, wearing a great, yellowish white suit, a pair of old alpargatas, and a wide-brimmed hat. He was larger than he used to be, and strutted more, and he stared into Ismael's face with a surprised, heavy frown.

Those endearing greetings, rehearsed so often in the solitude of troublesome roads, left Ismael's lips like unsubstantial ghosts. He felt that he was suddenly brought face to face with a calamity whose proportions he could not yet perceive. A sinking sensation of fate seemed to stop the beating of his heart.

"Madre mia!" cried Carmen, "it is Blanco!"

The ruddy color went out of her cheeks, leaving her face white, as if she had seen a terror. Quintana's frown deepened; he took a step forward.

"What are you doing here?" Ismael asked him.

"He 's my husband," interposed the

woman.

Ismael stared at her, and his lips parted a little with a curve of angry scorn.

"Tell him to get away. Don't try to lie to me such a silly lie. I 've come back, the only husband you ever had."

Then Quintana brutishly folded his arms and fastened his eyes upon those of the other man.

"Eh, hombre?" he questioned. "Don't be so fast. We were married surely enough; the padre married us, and there's my betrothal-ring she's wearing now; you can see for yourself. Tell me what your rights are; I'd like to hear. You have no right to come back here. You 're as good as a dead man; you were said to be dead. Go away yourself!"

His scornful, terrible words seemed to inspire Carmen to an unaccountable venom of speech. Her cheeks flamed again, her plump arms waved about in angry gesticulation, her eyes were opened wide with excitement.

"Yes, why have you come back here?" she cried. "What is it you want coming back like an unholy ghost? Were n't you dead? And if you were n't, did you prize me, you faithless one? Eight years fighting in wars, and disappearing like a lost penny. Now you turn up again, you bad penny, and tell me I'm still married to you!"

She pushed past Quintana, she stepped close to Ismael, and thrust out her angry face until he could feel her quick breath blown out on his cheeks.

"Go ask the padre!" she screamed. "Go ask him who is my husband! It's not much to have a husband. They're worth little enough, but I'll not have one like you. Go away! Go back to your adventures! What do you want with me?"

Ismael stood speechless before these two, the man and wife, as if speech were forever denied him, as if the power of words were inadequate to form sentences to say his profound despair. Now for the first time despair claimed him as a child, and all the accumulation of long disaster entered into his spirit as the bitter meaning and the sense of life. Here was a figure suitable to his simplicity-hopelessness. He could never hope again. He did not understand; he was as bewildered as a man lost in unknown ways, but lost. The fact itself was bitterly sufficient.

Something like fear mingled with his despairing emotions. It would be useless to attack Quintana. Quintana would beat him like a dog. In other days he would not have feared that blusterer's physical strength, but a fate, a devil, was in the arm of that man, and he could not conquer a fate.

As he turned to go, a small boy ran out from the house, calling to Quintana. "Papa! papa!" he cried.

"Get back; go back and put on your dress," the father commanded him.

Ismael turned and walked down the hill toward the river. There was even a child, not his child.

He went along slowly, without any purpose, with a strange emptiness in his heart. Life was suddenly more unreal than any moment in the long, unreal prison years; for then he had lived with his simple, ardent dreams, and now he lived without them.

He walked into the village, and some one in a group of men recognized him and called to him, and he knew that his return was already known. No doubt they would laugh at him. He did not care. He had no concern what they did with him; they might insult him if they wished and call him low names, and he would not care.

But in the village he met the padre, who was already looking for him, with a worried face. The padre told him to walk along at his side so that they might talk together.

Then the padre explained the belief in his death, for no word had come from him, and so many had died when the cause of liberation and humanity met its disastrous end.

"Their marriage was in good faith, poor son," he said. "And now they have the boy. You saw him?"

Ismael nodded. "Then perhaps you had better remain dead; that seems the best to me. The little boy needs a father. But I must help you. Depend upon me; I will help you to find happiness again. I will send you to my brother in Trinidad, and he will give you a place on his plantation and a chance to begin again. Our blessed Lord will not forget you, poor son."

Ismael nodded and seemed to agree, and the padre blessed him then. They separated, and Ismael returned to the river and sat down on the edge of the road, trying to think. But he had no thoughts; his mind was as bare of thoughts as a dead tree is bare of its living leaves. He sat a long while in the darkness, and he heard small animals push through the cane-brake beyond the

road, and restless little monkeys chatter and leap in the palm-trees. Great tropical insects, shaped like little monsters, flew blunderingly into his face, and he did not heed them.

Then he went to sleep, and when he awakened it was day again. A small boy, entirely naked, was standing in the dirt road staring at him. As he rose, the boy ran away, screaming with fright.

He found that a decision had entered his mind, as if it had come there like a message in sleep. He would not go to the padre's brother in Trinidad. No, he would not go there, although the padre was kind and wanted to help him; but the padre, after all, did not understand.

It surprised him to know that the padre did not understand. Obscurely, inarticulately, he felt that he had discovered profundities beyond the range of the padre's comprehension-profundities of disillusion that demanded a single remedy only.

He found, however, that before he could wade out into the muddy river and let himself float down into oblivion, he must go secretly to his morichal, see the familiar ground, see the truth of his loss in order to give him a final courage. He walked along the dirt road, going toward the foot-path up the hill.

He climbed the path, and then, deviating through the little patch of tall sugar-cane, approached the house by this concealment, for he shrank from being seen. Peering through the growth of the cane-stalks, he saw the newly thatched roof and heard the parrot scream in the mango-tree. He looked upon the back of the house, and there were Quintana and Carmen Maria standing face to face.

Some rift had come that morning in their harmony, for they were obviously quarreling. Carmen Maria had been fanning the stove, for she still held a long palm-branch in her hand. He could not hear what they told each other, but he saw that Carmen Maria was very angry, for she flung out her arms in wide gestures, and her lips moved swiftly with vehement speech.

Then Quintana made a slight gesture with his hand, and that gesture seemed to inflame Carmen Maria to a pitch of anger that made torrential speech a

dumb way of expression. Abruptly she dropped the palm-leaf, and stepped toward her husband like a wild thing facing to attack. Ismael saw her raise her arm, and in the next moment was astonished to see her strike Quintana with her open hand, and even from the distance he could see the red splotch her angry blow left on the man's cheek.

Quintana did nothing. He dropped his arms at his sides, and his head hung down like the head of a whipped dog.

Then Ismael began to laugh. His laughter came spontaneously and uncontrollably, like an hysteria. The man and wife turned in surprise, and looked toward the sound of the laughing. Ismael, his heart beating loudly, stepped out of the cane.

He ran across the little cleared space that separated him from Carmen Maria and the other man. The grin on his lips changed to a straight, hard line of quick determination.

"Hey, you Quintana!" he yelled as he ran, "clear out of here!"

Stooping, he grasped a thick, knotted stick and ran on toward the astonished husband. Quintana hesitated a moment, and then, convinced of Ismael's purpose, wheeled suddenly and began to run. Ismael pursued, caught up with him, laid the stick over his shoulders, and with the loud howls of the terrified man Ismael mingled the shouts of his insulting abuse. So Quintana ran for a little while, beaten with the stick and with insulting words. Then Ismael gave him the chance to escape, and watched him from the top of the hill as he half ran and fell down toward the river and disappeared under the bank.

Ismael turned back to the house. Carmen Maria, dark, wild, and desired, was standing expectantly, with her eyes. wide, her head lifted, her cheeks a dusky crimson. Ismael dropped the stick, and without a word crushed her in his arms and kissed her lips with a want of her like the want of a starving man for food. When he released her his first words were of Quintana.

"If he comes back again," he said, "I'll kill him surely."

Carmen Maria looked straight into his eyes.

"Aye, thou passionate one," she cried, "I believe you will."

"Tell me the name of your husband!" he demanded fiercely.

She smiled, she caressed his cheeks with her plump hands.

"Ismael, you have come back to me, Ismael!" she murmured. "Amorcito! amorcito!"

He took her in his arms again, and then, holding her close to him, he was filled with a swift wonder of how she came to his arms and how he had won her again. The old sense of inscrutable fate returned to him, and he felt, with an entirety of conviction, that even the padre could not explain. Complex emotions moved like alien figures in the company of his simplicity, but he forgot his perplexities in a moment as he yielded himself once more to the reality of his beloved's close and ardent arms.

They were called from the spell of their embrace by the little boy, who came close to them and began to cry. Ismael had not noticed him before. He looked down at the child, then turned to Carmen. "What 's his name?" he asked. "Guillermo."

Ismael stooped down and pulled the boy up on his knee.

"Guillermo," he said, "who am I?" The child shook his head. "Aye, but you do know," Ismael insisted. "I'm your father."

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