22
The short southern winter drew to a close. Everything that could fade had faded. The vines stretched a network of dry twigs, the olive trees were ashen, the pines were black. The gray of crags and houses looked bleak under the white dazzle of the mountain-wreath, and the dazzling blue of the sky. Sometimes both were swathed in heavy clouds, and the town was almost set afloat in floods of rain.
It was the time for in-door work, and closer domestic life.
The last days of this season were given up to penitential exercises similar in intention to the Holy Week of the Catholic church, though different in form,—having, in fact, only form enough, and that of the simplest, to suggest the spirit. Like all the instruction given in San Salvador, its object was less to act upon the passive soul
