He dismounted and there he knelt and clasped the bloody ruin of the child to his breast. The year is eighteen eighty-seven. What thoughts must have been his? Who cannot feel his anguish? He returns to Huisiachepic bearing across the mule’s haunches the corpse of the child with which God had blessed his house. Waiting for him in Huisiachepic is the mother of the child and this is the gift he brings her.
