"I would keep it as a relic. Those who have seen Maria Clara in the
nunnery say she has got so thin and weak that she can scarcely talk
and it's thought that she'll die a saint. Padre Salvi speaks very
highly of her and he's her confessor. That's why Juli didn't want
ito give it up, but rather preferred to pawn herself."

This speech had its effect--the thought of his daughter restrained
Tales. "If you will allow me," he said, "I'll go to the town to
consult my daughter. I'll be back before night."

This was agreed upon and Tales set out at once. But when he found
himself outside of the village, he made out at a distance, on a path,
that entered the woods, the friar-administrator and a man whom he
recognized as the usurper of his land. A husband seeing his wife
enter a private room with another man could not feel more wrath or
jealousy than Cabesang Tales experienced when he saw them moving
over his fields, the fields cleared by him, which he had thought to
leave to his children. It seemed to him that they were mocking him,
laughing at his powerlessness. There flashed into his memory what he
had said about never giving up his fields except to him who irrigated
them with his own blood and buried in them his wife and daughter.

He stopped, rubbed his hand over his forehead, and shut his eyes. When
he again opened them, he saw that the man had turned to laugh and
that the friar had caught his sides as though to save himself from
bursting with merriment, then he saw them point toward his house and
laugh again.

A buzz sounded in his ears, he felt the crack of a whip around his
chest, the red mist reappeared before his eyes, he again saw the