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Years passed. The nine days’ feast of the Blessed Virgin, one of the most charming of all the year, was being celebrated with unusual pomp in the church at Tres Hermanos. Since the death of Padre Francisco, no priest had been regularly stationed there; but at the expense of Doña Isabel, one had been sent there to remain through the nine days sacred to Mary, and the people gave their whole time to devotional exercises, much to the neglect of the usual hacienda work. The crops in the fields were untended, while the men crowded to Mass in the morning, and spent their afternoons at the tavern-shop playing monté and drinking pulque; while the women and children streamed in and out of the church,—the women to witness the offering of flowers upon the altar, the children to lay them there, happy once in the year to be chief in the service of the beautiful Queen of Heaven. For though the image above the altar was blackened by time and defaced by many a scar, the robes were brilliant, and glittered with variously colored jewels of glass; the crown was untarnished, and the little yellow babe in the mother’s arms appealed to the strong maternal sentiment which lies deep in the heart of every Mexican woman.