"Be of good cheer, dear Madam. The work that you commissioned me to do has been well done and all of the prisoners excepting one are now at liberty. Unfortunately, one of our friends lost his life just before the wide doors of the prison were burst open ... no one seems to know how this came about, but we found his dead body across the very entrance as if, indeed, he had been about to join our ranks outside when death overtook and stopped him." "Which of the prisoners was killed?" asked the woman who had been waiting there for his coming, eagerly and apprehensively. "I do not suppose that you were acquainted with the young fellow ..." answered the good Father Felix, soothingly, "he was called Victorio Colenzo ... he was the lover of a girl I know very well and she was with the crowd, who followed me; she dashed into the entrance of the prison and held his head, which had been almost severed from its body, in her lap until she fainted and became mercifully unconscious of her horrible surroundings ... the poor girl was almost crazed with agony and regret, for she had flouted him to some extent because of his revolutionary sentiments...." He had gotten that far in his narrative little thinking of the intense interest it had for the woman listening to it, until he happened to look earnestly at her when he saw, in an instant, that it held for her great personal appeal; he stopped at that knowledge and waited for her to explain the situation if so be she wished to do so; at length, between low-drawn sobs, she said, falteringly: "You say Victorio Colenzo was the lover of some light girl you know? Indeed, you are much mistaken. Instead of being any girl's lover, he belonged solely to me. He was my own dearly beloved husband, Father Felix. I had not yet told you of our marriage for I wanted you to think of me only in my own personal right, but I am the widow of the man whose shameful and horrible death you have just been describing to me ... I am the weeping widow of Victorio Colenzo, Father Felix, and, if it be in my power, his death shall be avenged in blood!" As she ceased speaking she put her hands before her face and gave way, utterly, to her great sorrow, for she had but spoken the solemn truth although no one of her many acquaintances suspected that she was a married woman at all. Father Felix was dumbfounded by the intelligence the young woman had just given to him and pitied her from the very bottom of his tender heart and he blamed his blundering tongue for giving to her such a shock as he had just been the cause of; at the same time he could not blame himself as much as he might have done had he not known of the marriage contract of Estrella and this same man of whom he had been speaking; he hastened to place this young girl in the right light before his companion by saying: