AN ox-drawn cart was coming into the court yard behind the imposing administration building as Juan and Padre Mateo approached. This was a solid-wheeled cart, clumsy, heavy, at which the span of oxen strained with tongues thrust out in the agony of their labor, bound horn and horn as they were by the primitive, cruel Spanish yoke that had not been improved in the slightest particular in two thousand years. Baskets of purple grapes, big as wild plums, they appeared to Juan Molinero, were piled high in the cart, behind which there walked a young Indian, a tall and graceful youth, who carried his head so high that he seemed unconscious of his feet among the broken tile, brick and sunken cobblestones with which the court was paved.
Juan Molinero's attention was fixed on the Indian following this juicy load, a figure that expressed so much of suppressed defiance and revolt in its erect carriage, its detached bearing from the enforced task, however pleasant it might seem. The young man's face was gaunt and severe, sealed and impressed with the stamp of silent repression. It
