They entered the cemetery and in the obscurity they searched for a place where they might decide the question with the cards. They soon found a niche upon which they sat down. The shorter one took from his hat some playing cards and the other lighted a match.
Each one looked at the other in the light which the match made, but, judging from the expression on their faces, they did not recognize each other. However, we can recognize in the taller one, the one with the manly voice, Elias; and in the smaller one, Lucas, with the scar on his cheek.
“Cut the cards!” said the latter, without ceasing to look at the other.
He pushed aside some bones which were found on the niche and turned up an ace and a jack for the albur. Elias lighted one match after another.
“On the jack!” said he and, in order to show which of the cards he was betting on, he placed upon it a piece of vertebræ.
“I deal!” said Lucas and, after turning up four or five cards, an ace came up.
“You have lost,” he added. “Now leave me alone so that I may win some money.”
Elias, without saying a word, disappeared in the darkness.
Some minutes afterward, the clock in the church struck eight and the bell announced the hour of prayer. But Lucas did not invite anybody to play with him. He did not call out the shades, as superstition demanded. Instead, he uncovered his head, murmured some prayers and crossed himself with the same fervor as the chief of the Brotherhood of the Most Sacred Rosary would have done at that moment.
The drizzling rain continued all night. At nine o’clock the streets were dark and lonely. The little cocoanut oil lanterns, which each citizen had to hang out in front of his house gave light scarcely a meter around. It seemed as though they had been lighted so one might see the darkness.