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 "They are turning back; it is done," Inez whispered.

The two girls rose from their knees. The four little candle-bearers came running, the flames of their tapers streaming, flying from the church door as they might have fled from a tomb. Maria darted away to meet her sister and calm her voiceless fright. Doña Magdalena advanced and spoke gently to the people, who loved her for her merciful intercessions in the past.

"She is in the care of Our Blessed Señora," Doña Magdalena said. "Go home now, good children, and leave her to her prayers."

They went away through the moonlit vineyard, drawing together in little groups of families and friends to talk in low voice of the courageous sweet lady who had walked in the pangs of her own blood to carry her appeal for poor Don Juan to the very gates of heaven.

"If anybody thinks it is not such a great thing to do," said an earnest old man whose face was wrinkled like a dried fig, "let him press his bare elbow with the weight of his body here." He scuffed his sandalled foot on the hard ground, rough with particles of disintegrated granite from the crumbling ledges of the hills.

Doña Magdalena stood a moment at her door, looking toward the church. If a thought impelled her to go to Gertrudis' side, her supreme faith that Our Señora would lift and sustain her seemed to make it almost a sacrilege. She went in, closing the