- Evading the Red Shirts drives the priest toward the place where he most wants to be: the home of his daughter, Brigitta, and her mother, Maria. This could be awkward!
- Having travelled through the forest for 12 hours, both he and the mule he's riding are tired and take a moment's rest.
- The welcome is not what he hoped for. Maria chides him for his peasant clothing and the villagers eye him with apprehension. No one immediately processes to kiss his hand and ask for his blessing.
- The priest soon finds out why. After offering to say Mass for them in the morning, a villager, obviously afraid, asks if the Mass could be said very early or at night. Then the truth comes out. A hostage at Concepción, Pedro Montez, was murdered.
- The priest's cry is met with laughter from a girl in the village.
- The priest promises to leave in the morning. Maria takes him to her place to sleep and gives him some brandy she's saved for him.
- He wonders if it's all worth it. Should be continue to minister to people his presence engagers and his example corrupts? Is he doing the Lord's work or the devil's? With no answer to these questions, he drinks.
- The priest asks after his daughter again. Maria tells him that he saw her with the others. He shocked that he didn't recognize her. Brigitta is the malicious child who laughed at him. Oops!
- Brigitta enters the room, looks at him with contempt, and asks him if he's the gringo. They clue him in to who this guy is.
- Aware that fleeing will mean leaving his daughter, he asks if he can stay a few days, but Maria is afraid of the danger.
- His child's eyes frighten him. They look as if his own sin is looking at him with no contrition.
- He reaches for her, but she darts back and sticks her tongue out at him. This one has an attitude.
- Maria scolds Brigitta, raising her hand to strike, but the priest stops her, saying they haven't the right.
- He tries to engage her in a game and with chit chat, but she only laughs maliciously. Is this absent father getting what he deserves?
- After Brigitta and then Maria leave him to rest, the priest dwells on the difference between Maria and him. She's proud of being a priest's woman. He's wounded.
- Before dawn, he says Mass, despite rumors of police.
- He speaks to them of heaven and the redemptive quality of suffering.
- A man enters. The police are near. A mile off.
- The priest continues the Mass.
- When done, the room empties while Maria helps hide all signs of the service.
- The priest wants to flee, but Maria bids him to a hut. The village is surrounded. There's no escape.
- Is this the end?
- Maybe. Maybe not. But the lieutenant has arrived, so we're in for a tense scene.
- The huts are searched and emptied. The lieutenant questions everyone, including the priest, who lies and says he's married to Maria.
- He has a close call when Brigitta claims not to know him, but Maria saves the day by telling the police officer to ask her who her father is. She points at the priest.
- The lieutenant tries to instill fear and distrust in the crowd, but when no one speaks, he takes a hostage as promised. He picks a young man, Miguel. His mother screams.
- Feeling the hate of the people, the priest offers himself in place of the boy.
- The lieutenant isn't interested. They go with Miguel.
- The priest learns quickly that no one wants him around. Maria tells him he's a bad priest who will only bring mockery to the church if he's martyred. She sends him away with no case or wine with which he might endanger others.
- Before he leaves for good, the priest tries to speak to and kiss his daughter, and more importantly tell her how important she is to him, how she means more to him than his own soul.
- He senses that he has come too late and rides south.
- Following the trail of the lieutenant, the priest passes through a village and, after some hours, comes to La Candelaria along a tributary of the Grijalva River. There he asks a mestizo (someone of European and Native American descent) with two yellow teeth the distance to Carmen and whether he can get a canoe to cross the river.
- No boats are to be had, however, so the priest must cross the river on the mule.
- The mestizo calls out to him as he's midway across, but the priest, weary, pays him no mind.
- Riding in the forest, the priest dreams of a girl reciting her Catechism. Montez, the man murdered in Concepción, appears behind her, a dry wound on his forehead, gesturing something. The priest feels certain the child is in danger.
- He wakes up.
- The mestizo is behind him, having swum the river.
- He asks to accompany the priest, saying it's better to travel in company.
- The priest agrees, but he's suspicious. He wants to get to Carmen during the night, but the mestizo wants to rest. He agrees to follow the mestizo to a hut where they can sleep.
- The mestizo continually calls him "father," despite the priest's denials. He tells him he could easily test the theory by requesting a confession, which a priest would not be able to refuse.
- Too suspicious to sleep, the priest lies down and examines a piece of paper with notes written on it from the time before the persecution. It's the only tangible evidence he has of what once was and what he hopes will be again.
- The mestizo shivers with sickness. Swimming the river has not served him well.
- It's dream time again! The priest is at a dinner in honor of the tenth anniversary of his ordination. He's a little drunk. He's cracking irreverent jokes, offending parishioners. Montez, the father of the man killed at Concepción, is at his right, talking about the Altar Society and his wish to start a branch of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The priest himself wants to build a better school and a better presbytery (house for the priest) at the parish. Ambitious much? Trouble is brewing up north, you know!
- He awakens, wondering if he didn't go the route of Padre José because he was too ambitious, too proud. Boy, Graham Greene sure knows how to puree the virtues and vices!
- Okay, it's time to escape this potential Judas. The mestizo seems to be asleep, so off the priest goes, quiet as a mouse.
- The mestizo, feverish, grabs his ankle, imploring him not to leave. He begs the priest to hear his confession. The priest refuses, saying he only needs to relieve himself.
- Outside, he finds the mule, but it doesn't have a saddle. And here comes the mestizo. Friend or foe, this guy is determined.
- The priest insists he has to leave. Time is pressing. The mestizo insists on coming with him.
- Feverish and shaking, he can't walk, so the priest puts him on the mule.
- Two miles out from Carmen, the priest decides he cannot endanger the village by going there. He pushes the mule down the path toward Carmen and takes another path himself.
- You can bet your lost breviary the mestizo doesn't like this! He yells after the priest, warning him that he knows his face and won't forget it.