"It's that fellow's fault!" she grumbled to herself. "It's all his fault ... I hope he's good and dead by this time! I'm sure I'd help to make him so, most willingly! What did he want to come into her young life and almost ruin it for? The low-lived pup!"
They started out, as dusk was falling, the day they reached Havana, to go to San Domingo, and, then, home; Father Felix went with them as far as his refectory, and there he bade them a cheerful good-bye and said he'd come up, soon, and see them in their home again.
Ruth, somehow, feared to say good-bye to the good Priest and kept his hand in hers much longer than was her wont with any man ... he was a bulwark for anyone who clung to him for strength ... his was a nature strong and good and clean and kind.... Ruth felt this more than usually, that evening, and dreaded to go on without him; he noticed this strange mood in her and said with cheery acquiescence:
"Perhaps I'd better go on up the hill with you, my Daughter. I can as well as not. No one awaits me except my little choir-boys and they have managed a long time without me. If you will wait a moment while I look about a bit, I'll just go on up with you and see you nicely settled in your own old place and then I'll come back here and settle down myself."
Suiting his actions to his words, the good Priest looked around and climbed the hill with Ruth and her small retinue; the path seemed so familiar with the shadows falling all around it, that she laughed and said to Father Felix:
"I am a coward, after all ... afraid of friendly wind-mills like Don Quixote ... having had to do so much with Spaniards may have made me like them in some degree at least.... I wonder if Cervantes was afraid, himself, of things that no one ought to be afraid of! I wonder if Sancho Panza was afraid, too ... was Rozinante...."
And, then, she stopped, for they had reached what had been, once, the outer gate of her palatial residence; there was no gate there ... there was no residence ... there was no life there ... it was the tomb of hope and home for her; the dwelling had been razed completely ... in its stead were only smouldering ruins ... all her precious memories ... her visible and tangible reminders of her parents ... had been swept away ... she had paid an awful price for helping those who needed help from her.
Father Felix stood beside her with his hand upon her shoulder ... he could not say a word of consolation or of any sort of help ... he was dumbfounded by it all; old Mage sunk down upon the ground and wept, and Tid-i-wats came close to Ruth and rubbed against her garments; stooping, then, she picked her little pet up and held her closely clasped within her sheltering arms; then she went to her old nurse and said to her:
"Do not despair, my dear old Friend. God will provide for us, some way. This is a dreadful thing, but we must make the very best of it that we can possibly. I will try to think of some way whereby we may be sheltered for this one night that is before us and then I hope to find some way to rebuild a portion of the residence we used to have here on this blessed spot. Let's bear this, dear old Friend. Let's think we gave our home to save this country for the people who inhabit it and may their homes be just as full of peace and comfort and joy and gladness as this one that is gone has been for all who came beneath its friendly roof."
The Father Felix stood beside her and said: