'Maybe you don't know who I am,' he blustered. 'I am Mariano Vercara e Hijos, of long illustrious name and long and honorable career. I am Jefe Politico of San Antonio, the highest friend of the governor, and high in the confidence of the government of the Republic of Panama. I am the law. There is but one law and one justice, which is of Panama and not the Cordilleras. I protest against this mountain law you call the Cruel Justice. I shall send an army against your Blind Brigand, and the buzzards will peck his bones in San Juan.'

'Remember,' Torres sarcastically warned the irate Jefe, 'that this is not San Antonio, but the bush of Juchitan. Also, you have no army.'

'Have these two men been unjust to any one who has appealed to the Cruel Justice?' the leader asked abruptly.

'Yes,' asseverated the peon. 'They have beaten me. Everybody has beaten me. They, too, have beaten me and without cause. My hand is bloody. My body is bruised and torn. Again I appeal to the Cruel Justice, and I charge these two men with injustice.'

The leader nodded and to his own men indicated the disarming of the prisoners and the order of the march.

'Justice! I demand equal justice!' Henry cried out. 'My hands are tied behind my back. All hands should be so tied, or no hands be so tied. Besides, it is very difficult to walk when one is so tied.

The shadow of a smile drifted the lips of the leader as he directed his men to cut the lashings that invidiously advertised the inequality complained of.

'Huh!' Francis grinned to Leoncia and Henry. 'I have a vague memory that somewhere around a million years ago I used to live in a quiet little old burg called New York, where we foolishly thought we were the wildest and wickedest that ever cracked at a golf ball, electrocuted an

Inspector of Police, battled with Tammany, or bid four nullos with five sure tricks in one's own hand.'

'Huh!' Henry vouchsafed half an hour later, as the trail, from a lesser crest, afforded a view of higher crests beyond. 'Huh! and hell's bells! These gunny-sack chaps are not animals of savages. Look, Henry! They are semaphoring! See that near tree there, and that big one across the canyon. Watch the branches wave.'

Blindfold for a number of miles at the last, the prisoners, still blindfolded, were led into the cave where the Cruel Justice reigned. When the bandages were removed, they found themselves hi a vast and lofty cavern, lighted by many torches, and, confronting them, a blind and white-haired man in sackcloth seated on a rock-hewn throne, with, beneath him, her shoulder at his knees, a pretty mestiza woman.

The blind man spoke, and in his voice was the thin and bell-like silver of age and weary wisdom.

'The Cruel Justice has been invoked. Speak! Who demands decision and equity?'

All held back, and not even the Jefe could summon heart of courage to protest against Cordilleras law.

'There is a woman present,' continued the Blind Brigand. 'Let her speak first. All mortal men and women are guilty of something or else are charged by their fellows with some guilt.'

Henry and Francis were for withstraining her, but with an equal smile to them she addressed the Cruel Just One in clear and ringing tones:

'I only have aided the man I am engaged to marry to escape from death for a murder he did not commit.'

'You have spoken,' said the Blind Brigand. 'Come forward to me.'

Piloted by sackcloth men, while the two Morgans who loved her were restless and perturbed, she was made to kneel at the blind man's knees. The mestiza girl placed his hand on Leoncia's head. For a full and solemn minute silence obtained, while the steady fingers of the Blind One rested about her forehead and registered the pulse-beats of her temples. Then he removed his hand and leaned back to decision.

'Arise, Senorita,' he pronounced. 'Your heart is clean of evil. You go free. Who else appeals to the Cruel Justice?'

Francis immediately stepped forward.

'I likewise helped the man to escape from an undeserved death. The man and I are of the same name, and, distantly, of the same blood.'

He, too, knelt, and felt the soft finger-lobes play delicately over his brows and temples and come to rest finally on the pulse of his wrist.

'It is not all clear to me,' said the Blind One. 'You are not at rest nor at peace with your soul. There is trouble within you that vexes you.'

Suddenly the peon stepped forth and spoke unbidden, his voice evoking a thrill as of the shock of blasphemy from the sackcloth men.

'Oh, Just One, let this man go,' said the peon passionately. 'Twice was I weak and betrayed him to his enemy this day, and twice this day has he protected me from my enemy and saved me.'

And the peon, once again on his knees, but this time at the knees of justice, thrilled and shivered with superstitious awe, as he felt wander over him the light but firm fingertouches of the strangest judge man ever knelt before. Bruises and lacerations were swiftly explored even to the shoulders and down the back.

'The other man goes free,' the Cruel Just One announced. 'Yet is there trouble and unrest within him. It one here who knows and will speak up?'

And Francis knew on the instant the trouble the blind man had divined within him the full love that burned in him for Leoncia and that threatened to shatter the full loyalty he must ever bear to Henry. No less quick was Leoncia in knowing, and could the blind man have beheld the involuntary glance of knowledge the man and woman threw at each other and the immediate embarrassment of averted eyes, he could have unerringly diagnosed Francis' trouble. The mestiza girl saw, and with a leap at her heart scented a love affair. Likewise had Henry seen and unconsciously scowled.

The Just One spoke:

'An affair of heart undoubtedly,' he dismissed the matter. 'The eternal vexation of woman In the heart of man. Nevertheless, this man stands free. Twice, in the one day, has he succored the man who twice betrayed him. Nor has the trouble within him aught to do with the aid he rendered the man said to be sentenced to death undeserved. Bemains to question this last man; also to settle for this beaten creature before me who twice this day has proved weak out of selfishness, and who has just now proved bravely strong out of unselfishness for another.'

He leaned forward and played his fingers searchingly over the face and brows of the peon.

'Are you afraid to die?' he asked suddenly.

'Great arid Holy One, I am sore afraid to die,' was the peon's reply.

'Then say that you have lied about this man, say that his twice succoring of you was a lie, and you shall live.'

Under the Blind One's fingers the peon cringed and wilted.

'Think well,' came the solemn warning. 'Death is not good. To be forever unmoving, as the clod and rock, is not good. Say that you have lied and life is yours. Speak!'

But, although his voice shook from the exquisiteness of his fear, the peon rose to the full spiritual stature of a man.

'Twice this day did I betray him, Holy One. But my name is not Peter. Not thrice in this day will I betray him. I am sore afraid, but I cannot betray him thrice.'

The blind judge leaned back and his face beamed and glowed as if transfigured.

'Well spoken,' he said. 'You have the makings of a man. I now lay my sentence upon you: From now on, through all your days under the sun, you shall always think like a man, act like a man, be a man. Better to die a man any time, than live a beast forever in time. The Ecclesiast was wrong. A dead lion is always better than a live dog. Go free, regenerate son, go free.'

But, as the peon, at a signal from the mestiza, started to rise, the blind judge stopped him.

'In the beginning, O man who but this day has been born man, what was the cause of all your troubles?'

'My heart was weak and hungry, Holy One, for a mixed-breed woman of the tierra caliente. I myself am mountain born. For her I put myself in debt to the haciendado for the sum of two hundred pesos. She fled with the money and another man. I remained the slave of the haciendado, who is not a bad man, — but who, first and always, is a haciendado. I have toiled, been beaten, and have suffered for five long years, and my debt is now become two hundred and fifty pesos, and yet I possess naught but these rags and a body weak from insufficient food.'

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