his vengefulness led him to throw himself upon his victim with the fury of a tiger after his prey, beating him on the head with the hilt of the saber until the blood ran in streams and formed pools upon the pavement. The priest, more dead than alive, shuddered from head to foot, and appeared to be struggling in a tremendous fight between life and death; he had hardly enough strength to get his tongue to ask for God's mercy. At this most critical juncture, and when it seemed as if death were inevitable, the martyr received absolution from Father Diez, who witnessed the blood-curdling picture with his heart pierced with grief at the sight of the sufferings of his innocent brother, feeling as must the condemned man preparing for death who sees the hours fly by with vertiginous rapidity. The blood flowing from the wounds on the priest's head appeared to infuriate and blind the heart of Delfin who, rising from his victim's body, sped away to the armory in the court house, seized a rifle, and came back furious to brain him with the butt and finish killing the priest; but God willed to free his servant from death at the hands of those cannibals, so that generous Lieutenant Navarro interfered, took the rifle away from him and caught Delfin by the arm, threatening him with some words spoken in Tagalog. Then Navarro, to appease Delfin's anger, turned the priest over with his face to the ground and gave him a few strokes with the bamboo, and feigning anger and indignation, ordered him away. "Those who witnessed the horrible tragedy, the brutality of the tyrant and the prostration of the friar were persuaded that the latter would never survive his martyrdom. The religious man himself holds it as a veritable portent that he outlived such a terrible trial; but even this did not satisfy them as subsequently the Secretary again called Father Ceferino to subject him to a further scrutiny, as ridiculous as it was malicious, though it did not go beyond words or insults."