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Doña Consolacion yawned in a corner, exhibiting a dirty mouth and jagged teeth, while she fixed her cold, sinister gaze on the door of the jail, which was covered with indecent drawings. She had succeeded in persuading her husband, whose victory had made him amiable, to let her witness the inquiry and perhaps the accompanying tortures.
A blow and a creak were heard, accompanied by curses the stocks were opened, Doña Consolacion bent forward with the muscles of her neck swelling and her bulging eyes fixed on the half-opened door. A wretched figure, Tarsilo, Bruno's brother, came out between two soldiers. On his wrists were handcuffs and his clothing was in shreds, revealing quite a muscular body.
The unhappy fellow looked about him as if in search of some one, and his eyes fell on Doña Consolacion. He smiled sardonically. Those present were surprised and followed his glance and saw the señora. She was biting her lips. "I have never seen an uglier woman," exclaimed Tarsilo amid the general silence. "I prefer to lie down on this bench as I am doing than to lie by her side, like the alferez."
Door was opened. "His Excellency the Governor will see you now." Why tarry over a short story? Don Nicholas de Ovando pleaded smoothly the Sovereign's most strict command which in any to disobey were plain malfeasance! As he spoke he looked dreamily toward blue harbor and the Consolacion. And as to a ship!
When her husband was dead drunk, or was snoring away in a siesta, and Doña Consolación could not fight with him, then, wearing a blue flannel shirt, she would seat herself in the window, with a cigar in her mouth. She had a dislike of children and so from her window she would scowl and make faces at every girl that passed.
He was very pale and his lips were trembling or murmuring a prayer. The haughtiness of his desperation seemed to have disappeared, or at least to have weakened. A number of times he bent his head, fixed his eyes on the ground, resigned to his suffering. They took him to one side of the stone wall. Doña Consolacion followed smiling.
"There we'll talk about those boys who disappeared." "Could I be the cause?" murmured the young man, staring without seeing the Captain-General, whom he was following mechanically. Doña Consolacion Why were the windows closed in the house of the alferez? Where were the masculine features and the flannel camisa of the Medusa or Muse of the Civil Guard while the procession was passing?
Doña Consolacion then arose and murmured a few words into the ear of her husband, who nodded his head in understanding. "To the well with him!" he ordered. The Filipinos know what this means: in Tagalog they call it timbaín. We do not know who invented this procedure, but we judge that it must be quite ancient. Truth at the bottom of a well may perhaps be a sarcastic interpretation.
They led him to the well-curb, followed by the smiling Doña Consolacion. In his misery he cast a glance of envy toward the heap of corpses and a sigh escaped from his breast. "Talk now," the directorcillo again advised him. "They'll hang you anyhow. You'll at least die without suffering so much." "You'll come out of this only to die," added a cuadrillero.
The crowd having recovered a little from the fright and some one having explained what had caused the rush and tumult, indignation arose in everyone's breast. Stones rained upon the Civil Guards who were being conducted to the tribunal by the cuaderilleros. Some one proposed that they burn the barracks of the Civil Guards and that they roast Doña Consolacion and the alferez alive.
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