She had carried some food and water into the hovel upon the day of her last struggle with Manuello and she could creep about the inside of the small building, so that, being hardy and healthy, she had, at that time, subsisted upon the supplies she had on hand, for several days; she was just beginning to crawl carefully out into the surrounding brush where she was glad to find plenty of ripe cactus-fruit and other wild edibles; she was very lonely and frightened but she took her condition as a punishment for the sins she had committed since she had tried to assist Manuello in spite of the fact that she had known him to be a criminal; she told her beads, over and over, using the small rosary which she had always worn about her neck, and, as she kissed the crucifix attached to the beads, she often prayed for the man who was the direct cause of her pitiable condition, for she believed it to be her plain duty to forgive, even though she could not forget, him. CHAPTER XV When Manuello escaped from the temporary hospital near Camp McCalla, he directed his eager steps toward the place of his nativity, because, as it seemed to him, he would be safer there than he had recently been; it seemed to him that if he could reach the deserted hut where he had been in concealment before, he could rest and recover while he made plans for his future, for he had decided that it would be dangerous for him to follow the American army any longer, at least for a time. In devious ways and through the use of means known only to such as he, he managed to reach a point midway between Santiago and Havana in a much shorter time than would have seemed possible to one unversed in the ways of the wilderness; here he encountered, suddenly and unexpectedly, the good Priest whom he had known from childhood, who, also, seemed hurrying in the direction of Havana. The young man kept away from the habitation of men as much as possible after that, and, footsore and weary, but happy in the thought that he had reached his goal, he arrived, at length, just at sunset, in the outskirts of the village of San Domingo; from there he followed the winding path up which little Tessa had so often toiled in his service, he thought of her but did not regret the blow he had given her; in fact, his anger still burned at white heat whenever he remembered how she had disfigured his features, forgetting altogether what she had done for him, because she had not done everything that he had asked her to do.