These were the leading people of San Diego.
Toward the west of San Diego, surrounded by rice fields, lies a village of the dead. A single, narrow path, dusty on dry days, and navigable by boats when it rains, leads thither from the town. A wooden gate, and a fence, half stone and half bamboo, seem to separate the cemetery from the people in the town, but not from the goats and sheep of the parochial priest of the immediate vicinity. These animals go in and out to rummage among the tombs or to make that solitary place glad with their presence.
One day a little old man entered the cemetery, his eyes sparkling and his head uncovered. Upon seeing him, many laughed, while a number of the women knit their eyebrows in scorn. The old man seemed to take no notice of these manifestations, but went directly toward a pile of skulls, knelt down and began to search among the bones. After he had sorted over with considerable care the skulls one by one, he drew his eyebrows together, as though he did not find what he was looking for, moved his head from side to side, looked in all directions, and finally got up and went over toward a grave-digger.
“Eh, there!” he shouted to him.
The grave-digger raised his head.
“Do you know where that beautiful skull is, the one white as the meat of a cocoanut, with a complete set of teeth, which I had over there at the foot of the cross under those leaves?”
The grave-digger shrugged his shoulders.
“Look you!” added the little old man, bringing out of his pocket a handful of silver. “I have more than that, but I will give it to you if you find the skull for me.”
The glitter of the coin made the grave-digger reflect. He looked over in the direction of the bone pile and said: “Isn’t it over there? No? Then I don’t know where it is.”
“Don’t you know? When my debtors pay me, I will give you more,” continued the old man. “It was my wife’s skull, and if you find it for me——”