“Yes, the same! will you refuse to assist me now?”

“No, by our blessed Virgin!  I will do all an old woman like me can do; yet united, Inez, we shall be strong.”

Wrapping their mantillas about them, they noiselessly proceeded to the Plaza.  Darkness had closed in, and happily they met not even a straggling soldier, for all, with instinctive dread, shunned the horrid scene.  They paused as Senora Berara stumbled over a dead body, and well-nigh slipped in blood: 

“Jesu Maria! my very bones ache with horror! this is no place for me.  Senorita, how will you know the body?  Oh! let us make haste to leave here!”

“Hush! do you see a white spot gleaming yonder?  Nay, don’t clutch my arm, it is only my handerchief.  I laid it there to mark the place.  Come on, step lightly, or you will press the dead.”

With some difficulty they made their way along the damp, slippery ground, now and then catching at each other for support.  Inez paused on reaching her mark, and bent down for several moments; then raising herself she whispered: 

“Senora, I have wrapped his cloak tightly about him, lift the corners near his feet, while I carry his head.  Be careful, lift gently, and do not let the cloak slip.”

Slowly they lifted the motionless form, and steadily bore it away:  Inez taking the lead, and stepping cautiously.  She left the Plaza and principal streets, and turned toward a broad desolate waste, stretching away from the town, and bare, save a few gnarled oaks that moaned in the March wind.  The moon rose when they had proceeded some distance beyond the last house, and Inez paused suddenly, and looked anxiously about her.

“Sacra Dio!  I trust you have not lost your way!  Holy Mother, preserve us if we have gone wrong.”

“I knew we must be near the place:  it is under yonder tree; fear nothing Senora, come on:”  and a few more steps brought them to the designated spot.

A shallow excavation had been made, sufficient to admit with ease the body of a full-grown man; and on its margin they softly laid their burden down.  Every object shone in the clear moonlight, and stranger scene never moon shone upon.  A dreary waste stretched away in the distance, and sighingly the wind swept over it.  Inez knelt beside the grave, her wan yet still beautiful features convulsed with the secret agony of her tortured soul; the long raven hair floating like a black veil around the wasted form.  Just before her stood the old woman, weird-like, her wrinkled, swarthy face exposed to full view, while the silver hair, unbound by her exertion, streamed in the night breeze.  Loosely her clothes hung about her, and the thin, bony hands were clasped tightly as she bent forward and gazed on the marble face of the dead.  Wonder, awe, fear, pity, all strangely blended in her dark countenance.

Inez groaned, and rocked herself to and fro, as if crushed in body and spirit.  She could not lay him to rest forever without the bitterest anguish, for in life she had worshiped him, and in death her heart clung to the loved form.  Again and again she kissed the cold hand she held.