Chapter 50:

Elias narrates his story and the misfortunes of his ancestors.  His great grandfather, he recounts, woks as a bookkeeper for a Spaniard, when he is accused of arson, and is flogged and paraded in the streets of Manila.  Shamed and disgraced, his wife becomes a prostitute, while one of the sons becomes a notorious bandit.  The other son travels from town to town until he is hired as a laborer, and marries a rich woman.  Elias and his sister are born of this marriage, and both are educated in Manila.  But when their family’s past surfaces, they lose everything.  Elias’s sister commits suicide, while he roams the provinces as a hunted and lonely man.