- When you want something done right, you do it yourself. So the lieutenant waits until dark and pays a personal visit to Padre José.
- Unfortunately, the former priest's wife and the ever-mocking children eavesdropping don't allow for a private chat between the two of them.
- At hearing that he's wanted at the police station, Padre José and his wife protest his innocence, and the lieutenant, to avoid a scene, tells them the truth. They're skeptical.
- The wife worries it's a trap: get her husband to break the law and then, bam!
- Padre José has a moment's feeling of mercy, stating that he is a priest, in truth. But, the moment passes and he refuses.
- In a jail cell, the lieutenant brings the priest the bad news. Padre José will be a no show, the trial has been concluded, and the priest found guilty. He'll die tomorrow.
- But, hey, the police chief cares. He's brought the dead man some brandy.
- The spirits do little good. Watered down, perhaps? Or just not sufficient for a man doomed soon to die by a firing squad? Why can say?
- With no one to absolve him for his sins, the priest confesses to the air, trying to be concrete in the descriptions of his sins, but falling back into stock generic phrases.
- Late at night or early in the morning, he falls asleep and dreams of being at a café table inside a cathedral with six preparatory meals before him. He eats these while a priest says Mass at the altar as if he's not there, as if the Mass is for other people, not him. Coral Fellows serves him wine. They talk of Morse code, and then the priest at the altar and the whole congregation tap the warning Coral had taught him in the barn.
- The priest asks what it means, Coral tells him it means news, and he wakes up with a feeling of hope.
- This ain't no sanitized saint book, though. The terror fills him completely again once he remembers where he is.
- He's disappointed in himself because he has nothing to present to God.