Hours passed thus. The sun gained the zenith and the streets were ablaze. Belated marketers, with laden baskets atop their heads, were hurrying homeward, hugging the scanty shade of the glaring buildings. Shopkeepers were drawing their shutters and closing their heavy doors, leaving the hot noon hour asleep on the scorching portals. The midday _Angelus_ called from the Cathedral tower. Then, as if shaken into remembrance of the message which the boy had brought him at daybreak, the man hurriedly took his black felt hat from the table, and without further preparation left the room. The stone pavements and narrow brick walks, above which the intense heat hung in tremulous waves, were almost deserted as he hastened toward the Cathedral. The business of the morning was finished; trade was suspended until the sun, now dropping its fiery shafts straight as plummets, should have sunk behind La Popa. As he turned into the Calle Lozano an elderly woman, descending the winding brick stairway visible through the open door of one of the numerous old colonial houses in the lower end of this thoroughfare, called timidly to him. "Marcelena," the priest returned, stopping. "The girl--is she--?" "She is dying," interrupted the woman in a voice broken with sobs. "Dying! Then the child--?" "Yes, Padre, born an hour ago--a boy. It lives. Ah, _Santa Virgen_, such suffering! Pray for us, Mother of God!" murmured the weeping woman, bending her head and repeatedly making the sign of the cross. "Who is with her now?" the priest continued hurriedly. "Only Catalina. The doctor said he would return. He is good to the blessed child. And Padre Lorenzo came--but he would not shrive her little white soul--" "And the father--?" "He does not know," the woman sobbed. "Who would dare to tell him! Think you he would come? That he would own the babe? He would not give one blessed candle to set beside the little mother's poor sweet body! Ah, _Santa Maria_! who will buy Masses for her little soul? Who--?" "But he _shall_ know!" cried the priest, his face livid. "And he shall acknowledge his child and care for it! _Dios--!_ But wait, Marcelena. I can do nothing now. But I will return." Leaving the woman sobbing prayers to the Virgin Mother, the priest hurried on.