all this would be demanded from them. If the evil had been confined to this village, it would not have been very great, because Batavag was small and had not a very large population, and a majority of the adults were not yet Christian; but the evil spread to other villages which were larger and older in the faith, such as Bolo, Pilitan, and Abuatan, each of which had two thousand inhabitants or more. Hence the matter was of greater importance, and caused more anxiety to the ministers and preachers of the law of God. When they received information as to what was occurring, they went with great secrecy to make an investigation into the evil; and they wrote down the names of the old aniteras or witches, in whom was the whole foundation of this sin. One of the persons who took part in this investigation warned the guilty old women in the village of Batavag; and they, to escape the punishment which they feared, began to stir up the inhabitants of that village. When the religious went there with the purpose of remedying one evil, they found another greater one; for the people of the village of Batavag were in tumult and alarm because of what the witches had said to them, and had determined to flee to their mountains and their ancient dwelling-places. They had been brought to the one that they now had, that they might be more easily, and more to the profit of their souls, taught and baptized and given the sacraments, in sickness and in health; for so long as they were divided as they had been, into tiny hamlets at great distances from each other, it was impossible to do that. But being (as at this time they were) disturbed and alarmed by the witches, and desirous of abandoning the faith, they returned to their ancient sites, which more readily permitted each one to live in the law which he preferred, and none in that which would have been well for him. Yet, in spite of all this, the religious had dealt so well with them, and had shown them so much love and benevolence, that the Indians could not cease to feel and to show kindness for them. Hence, though they were able to kill the religious or to do them any harm they pleased, because the fathers were alone among them without any other protection than their good consciences--which is a great safeguard--the Indians not only did them no harm, but laid hands on nothing of theirs or of their convent. This was, as it were, a declaration that they had fled, not on account of any harm that the ministers had done them, but on account of their fear of the punishment which their bad consciences caused them to dread--a fear increased by what the aniteras or witches, as the most guilty, had falsely said to them with the purpose of alarming them. In point of fact, the religious had had no idea of severe punishment, but simply of remedying such pernicious evils. They pitied them as being new in the faith, and pitied even the very witches as being persons deceived by the devil, little exercised in the law of God,