Don José laughed. “But has not Felizardo changed you? Is he only a savage, then?”
For a moment, the corporal was at a loss, then, “If he had not been educated, he would never have been able to read that letter, and would not have had to take to the hills,” he answered stoutly.
CHAPTER III
HOW CAPTAIN BASIL HAYLE WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS
The corporal never went to Rome, after all, and, as a result, his message to the Holy Father remained undelivered. True, he talked about going often during the ten years which elapsed before he himself was gathered to his mundane fathers, but, somehow, life was very pleasant in his own little village, where there were no ladrones to worry you, and plenty of untravelled folk ready to listen to your stories of ladrones. Moreover, Rome was a long way off, a very long way, and the journey needed many preparations; so, in the end, the only journey he did make was when he went on a visit to Don José Ramirez, who had also come home, rich and very weary.
They talked of Calocan, of San Polycarpio, and of the new gallows, on which Cinicio Dagujob was hanged, of many familiar spots and old friends; but most of all they talked of Felizardo and his doings.
“We were both wrong,” the corporal said. “He came back to Calocan, and we have come back to Spain. Curious, I am seldom wrong; but I was over those matters. Still, even an old soldier of thirty-five years’ service may make mistakes sometimes …. You say Felizardo is still in those same mountains?”
Don José nodded.
“He, at least, will never go back to his home to stay,” the corporal went on. “If there were nothing else, there is the Church, you know.” He shook his head gravely. “Felizardo killed a priest, and even though that Father Pablo was a ladrone, the cloth remains, always. And the Church does not forget. How can she afford to forget, with all those half-heathen souls to be saved?”