He thought he heard voices all around him, and amongst them that of his mother warning him to leave untouched the sacred Child, and get up on his feet and flee. But above these he heard the laughter of Santina mocking him as an empty-handed, white-livered fool, who came with foolish tales of visions to hide his quaking soul.
Better that his arms should shrivel, that his sight should be blinded, that his body should be shrunken and stricken with the judgment of heaven, than that he should live to hear her red lips laugh and call him a feckless coward.
With all the life which was in him shrinking and sickening in deadly fear, he stooped down, groped in the dark until he found the image, grasped its metal breast and limbs, and dragged it upward from the encircling earth.
It was of the size of a human child of a year old.
He plucked it roughly upward, for his terror made him rude and fierce, and held it in his arms, whilst he wondered in his great awe and horror that no judgment of affronted heaven followed on his desperate act.
All was still well with him; he saw, he heard, he breathed, he lived; the cool night air was blowing about him, the clouds were letting fall a faint fine mist-like rain.
He undid the belt about his loins—a mere piece of webbing with a buckle—strapped it around the body of the Gesu, and taking the ends thereof between his firm, strong teeth, sought in the dark for the place whence he had descended, and found it.
He climbed the wall with slow, laborious, and painful effort, the dead weight of the silver figure encumbering him as he mounted with cat-like skill, cutting his hands and bruising his skin against the rough, undressed stones.
He dropped carefully down on the earth beneath, and began the descent of the hill.
'When I can bring the little Christ back, I can get the tools,' he thought. It seemed a small matter.