STORY OF SOBRALIA KIENASTIANA 167 



He considered. There was a certain risk, for the priests 

 might dwell by their idols. But most even of these look 

 upon their Christian rival with reverence. He asked his 

 brother how he was regarded ? Indignantly the latter con- 

 fessed that all these wicked folk treated him with the utmost 

 deference. He had denounced them again and again from 

 the altar, threatened to excommunicate the whole community 

 --but the Bishop promptly crushed that idea. They listened 

 in respectful silence, and went their own way. Pablo came 

 to a resolve. He proposed that they should start before 

 daylight and search for the accursed place. The Cura was 

 startled, but he assented with passionate zeal ; of his stuff, 

 unenterprising, unimaginative, with room for one idea only, 

 martyrs are made. Martyrdom he half expected, and he 

 was ready. Whilst Pablo snored in his hammock, the 

 good man prayed all through the night. 



It was still dark when they set forth, and before even 

 Indians were stirring they had passed beyond the village 

 confines ; but the sun was high when they reached the hills. 

 These are, in fact, a range of low volcanoes, all extinct now ; 

 the most ancient overgrown with trees and brushwood, the 

 most recent still bare. Towards this part the Cura led the 

 way. They passed through blinding gorges where no green 

 thing found sustenance. Cacti and yuccas and agaves, white 

 with dust, clung to the naked tufa. So they went on, 

 mounting always, encouraged from time to time by some 

 faint trace of human passage, which their keen Indian eyes 

 discerned. But from the crest nothing could be seen save 

 gorges such as they had traversed, and long slopes of 

 dazzling rock. 



The quest began to look hopeless, but they persevered. 

 And presently Pablo noted something on the ground, at a 

 distance, beside a clump of Opuntia. It was a bunch of 

 withered flowers. Approaching they saw a cleft in the ridge 



