Heart of the World | Page 7

I have no relations and no friends, and, above all, I am
sure that you will deal justly and gently by my people here, for I have
watched your bearing towards those who work under you at the mine.
Moreover, I have conditions to make which will not be the less binding
on you because they are not set out in the will, namely, that you should
live here yourself and carry on the work that I have begun, for so long
as may be possible, and that, if you are forced to sell the place by any
unforeseen circumstance, or to leave it away by testament, you should
do so to an Englishman only, and one of whom you know something.

Do you accept?"
"Indeed, yes, and I know not how to thank you."
"Do not thank me at all, thank your own character and honest face
which have led me to believe that I can make no better disposal of my
property. And now go, for I am tired, but come to see me again
to-morrow morning after the priest has left."
So Jones, who had entered that room possessed of a hard-earned eight
hundred a year, departed from it the owner of a property which, before
long, became worth as many thousands annually, as any who have
visited him at Santa Cruz can testify. Three days later Don Ignatio
passed away peacefully, and was laid to his rest in the chapel of the
/hacienda/.

This, then, was how the story of the city, Heart of the World, and of
Don Ignatio and his friend, James Strickland, who saw it, came into the
hands of him whom we have called Jones.
Here follows a translation of the manuscript.
CHAPTER I
HOW THE PLOT FAILED
I, Ignatio, the writer of this history, being now a man in my
sixty-second year, was born in a village among the mountains that lie
between the little towns of Pichaucalco and Tiapa. Of all that district
my father was the hereditary /cacique/, and the Indians there loved him
much.
When I was a lad, perhaps nine years old, troubles arose in the country.
I never quite understood them, or I may have forgotten the
circumstances, for such things were always happening, but I think that
they were caused by some tax which the government at Mexico had
imposed upon us unjustly. Anyhow, my father, a tall man with fiery

eyes, refused to pay a tax, and, after a while, a body of soldiers arrived,
mounted upon horses, who shot down a great number of the people,
and took away some of the women and children.
Of my father they made a prisoner, and next day they led him out while
my mother and I were forced to look on, and sat him by the edge of a
hole that they had dug, holding guns to his head and threatening to
shoot him unless he would tell them a secret which they were anxious
to learn. All he said, however, was that he wished that they would kill
him at once, and so free him from the torment of the mosquitoes which
hummed around him.
But they did not kill him then, and that night they put him back in a
prison, where I was brought to visit him by the /padre/, Ignatio, his
cousin and my godfather. I remember that he was shut up in a dirty
place, so hot that it was difficult even to breathe, and that there were
some drunken Mexican soldiers outside the door, who now and again
threatened to make an end of us Indian dogs.
My godfather, the priest Ignatio, confessed my father in a corner of the
cell, and took something from his hand. Then my father called me to
him and kissed me, and with his own fingers for a few moments he
hung about my neck that thing which the priest had taken from him,
only to remove it again and give it to Ignatio for safe-keeping, saying:
"See that the boy has it, and its story with it, when he comes of age."
Now my father kissed me again, blessing me in the name of God, and
as he did so great tears ran down his face. Then the priest Ignatio took
me away, and I never saw my father any more, for the soldiers shot him
next morning, and threw his body into the hole that they had dug to
receive it.
After this, my godfather, cousin, and namesake, Ignatio, took me and
my mother to the little town of Tiapa, of which he was priest, but she
soon died there of a broken heart.
In Tiapa we lived in the best house in the place, for it was built of stone
and