When John Bedford rose the next morning he was several years younger. He held himself erect, as became his youth, a little color had crept into the pallid face, and his heart was still full of hope. He had seen the light that Catarina had promised. Surely the world was making a great change for him, and he reasoned again that, his present state being so low, any possible change must be for the better. But the day passed and nothing happened. Diego, the slouching soldier, brought him his food, and, bearing in mind the vague words of Catarina, he noticed it carefully while he ate. There was nothing unusual. It was the same at his supper. The rosy cloud in which his hopes swam faded somewhat, but he was still hopeful. No light had been promised for the second night, but he watched for long hours, nevertheless, and he could not restrain a sense of disappointment when he turned away. A second day passed without event, and a third, and then a fourth. John Bedford was overcome by a terrible depression. Catarina was old and foolish, or perhaps she, too, had shown at last the cunning and trickery that he began to ascribe to all these people. He would stay in that cell all his life, fairly buried alive. A fierce, unreasoning anger took hold of him. He would have flared out at stolid Diego who brought the food, but he did not want those heavy chains put back on his ankles. His head was now healed enough for the removal of the bandage, but a red streak would remain for some time under the hair. Doubtless the hair had saved him from a fracture of the skull. Every time he put his hand to the wound, which was often, his anger against de Armijo rose. It was that cold, silent anger which is the most terrible and lasting of all. Although he was back in the depths, John felt that the brief spell of hope had been of help to him. His wound had healed more rapidly, and he was sure that he was physically stronger. Yet the black depression remained. It was even painful for him to look through the slit at his piece of the slope, which he sometimes called his mountain garden. He avoided it, as a place of hope that had failed. On the sixth day, Diego brought him his dinner a little after the dinner hour. He was sitting on the edge of his cot and he bit into a tamale. His teeth encountered something tough and fibrous, and he was about to throw it down in disgust. Then the words of Catarina, those words which he had begun to despise, came suddenly back to him. He put the tamale down and began to eat a tortilla, keeping his eye on Diego, who slouched by the wall in the attitude of a Mexican of the lower classes, that lazy, dreaming attitude that they can maintain, for hours.