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"I sentenced both Dimas and Ventura to life imprisonment for being accessory to the murder of the Spanish officer above named, Lieutenant Piera. Villa officiated as arch-fiend on the grewsome occasion. I am quite sure I would have hung Villa without any compunction at that time, if I could have gotten hold of him. I tried to get hold of him, but Governor Taft's attorney-general, Mr.
Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern. It is a chapel, now, however the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena used to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were digging and delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated to St. Dimas, the penitent thief.
"Then I saw that it was Dimas; yet to this wicked criminal there remained but little of the shepherd child whom I had seen in all his innocence upon the hillside.
"'O Dimas, how art thou changed! cried the Master, yet there was in his voice no tone of rebuke save that which cometh of love. "Then Dimas wept, and in that hour he forgot his pain.
"'Greater joy than this shall be thine, Dimas, said the little Master; 'but first must all things be fulfilled. "All through that Christmas night did the angels come and go with their sweet anthems; all through that Christmas night did the stars dance and sing; and when it came my time to steal away, the hillside was still beautiful with the glory and the music of heaven."
The shepherd's bones are dust, the flocks are scattered, the old olive-tree is gone, the flowers of the hillside are withered, and none knoweth where the grave of Dimas is made. But last night, again, there shined a star over Bethlehem, and the angels descended from the sky to earth, and the stars sang together in glory.
"And shining on that dead and peaceful face, I bethought me of the little Master's words that he had spoken under the old olive-tree upon the hillside: 'Your eyes behold the promised glory now, O Dimas, I whispered, 'for with the Master you walk in Paradise." Ah, little Dear-my-Soul, you know you know whereof the moonbeam spake.
The angels, coming hither, hung gold and silver and jewels and precious stones upon the old olive, where swung the stars; so that the glory of that sight, though I might live forever, I shall never see again. When Dimas heard and saw these things he fell upon his knees, and catching the hem of the little Master's garment, he kissed it.
"'Thy father sleeps, said the little Master, 'and it is well that it is so; for that I love thee, Dimas, and that thou shalt walk with me in my Father's kingdom, I would show thee the glories of my birthright. "Then all at once sweet music filled the air, and light, greater than the light of day, illumined the sky and fell upon all that hillside.
Then past Capes Dimas and Kadijah, across the Gulf of Cabes, and so on to Tripoli, which was reached and passed soon after the party had risen from breakfast.
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