The church was closed, for the padres had been driven out by the revolution two years before and had never returned. So the coffin was laid on the ground at the great barred doors, a naïve little object begging for a mite of the holy emanation that still clung about the great building as some vague odour of incense. The mother let tallow drip upon the frame, then stuck the candle upright into it. She opened the big umbrella and set it down so that the stinging sun-rays of noon should not shine through the thin cloth of the coffin into the closed eyes of Carnota. The man crouched down against the church wall, the boy sat on the shovel, and the woman squatted on her heels by her husband. It was noon, and the perpendicular sun dripped molten lead upon the land. The tin roof of the church crackled, white with heat; the tin roof of the school crackled back to it; the heat, reverberated from one to the other, fell into the space between, and the pink-and-blue rosettes on the coffin shrunk like sensitive things. A big fly buzzed near and the woman wafted it away. A little fly struck the candle and boiled to death in the molten tallow. From a hole in the church wall a big gee-kaw lizard uttered his hoarse, spasmodic cry three times, then stopped, smothered by the heat. Ten feet away a carabao plumped into a mud hole with a cool, squashy sound. A heavy silence fell upon the plaza, punctuated only by the raucous breathing of a big American cavalry-horse, dying of the surra by the cuartel. The door of the schoolhouse opened, and the Maestro came out. Almost at the same time the Lieutenant stepped out of the cuartel. He stopped to look at the horse and the Maestro joined him. The animal, a big gray, was standing with his four legs wide apart, like the tripod of a camera. His ribs stood out like the ribs of a long-stranded derelict; his legs were puffed up as big as barrels, and a viscous fluid oozed from his nostrils. A cloud of flies buzzed about this already half-carrion flesh. The Maestro looked into the patient, bulging, blood-shot eyes. "He will die?" he asked. "Yes, they all die," said the officer. "Why don't you have it shot?" The officer smiled, a trifle embarrassed. "Well," he said, "you know they're great on red-tape in the army. If the horse dies naturally, the post-surgeon can fill out a comparatively brief report; if he orders it shot, he will have to write out some five foolscap pages. The Doc, you know, is pretty lazy; so he chooses the short report." "I see," said the Maestro. They separated. The forlorn group at the church door drew a shrug of the shoulders from the officer. The Maestro stopped and approached it. The woman nudged the man with her elbow. "The Maestro!" she whispered, awestruck. They scrambled to their feet and stood respectfully before him. Their downcast eyes peered at him half-anxious, half-wondering. For he was a strange person, the Maestro. Carnota had often told about him.