guitars; in the little square where the tall cross lifted the pale figure of Our Señor, they danced with the girls, the old ones sitting by with nods and smiles and low words, in the comfortable relaxation that comes after long watching, and hardship, and pain.
Padre Ignacio at that hour was pacing in troubled meditation the length of his vast empty room where the great hewn cedar beam crossed from east to west. The light of his candle was dim among the rafters, peaked high over his head; the shadow of the cross-beam threw half the chamber in gloom.
Padre Ignacio marched up and down the room, his sandals scuffing in a little soft sound of attrition on the dim red tiling of the floor. His hands were at his back, his head was bent. Between the north window, looking out on the Indian village beyond the church, and the cedar beam his course lay. At the beam he turned toward the east window, his shoulder close against the wood, brown as his own skin; at the east window he turned again to the north, following the triangle marked in the tiling by his tramping through many years.
Close by the north window his little table, with his few precious books upon it, stood, convenient for the light of tired eyes. This was a low window, where one must bend the back to see the hills. It was crossed by iron bars beaten at the mission forge. Under the east window, on the farthest side of the cedar beam, Padre Ignacio's narrow bed was placed. This couch, a rawhide stretched on a crude frame, stood where the first gleam of dawn
