Word spreads that Tandang Selo has gone dumb and Juli is bound to service, and the town splits between mourners and shrugs. Rizal names the chapter Pilates because everyone acts as if the harm were nobody's fault and nobody's conscience need carry it. The Civil Guard lieutenant says he only obeyed orders to collect arms, chased bandits when he could, and even marched in five or six suspicious farmers so that if Tales was missing, he was surely not hiding under their clothes. Duty done, face blank.
Fray Clemente, the friar-administrator, shrugs the same way: tulisanes are the guard's business, self-defence is natural, and if Tales had stayed home instead of walking his fields, he would still be free. He admits his complaint may have triggered the disarmament, yet calls the capture heaven's punishment on anyone who resists his corporation's demands. Sister Penchang, the pious employer who now owns Juli's labour, crosses herself and thanks God for the father's arrest so the daughter can be dragged from sin, scolds her botched Hail Mary, locks her to housework until two hundred and fifty pesos are paid, and forbids visits to Selo. When she hears Basilio has gone to Manila with savings to ransom Juli, she sees the devil wearing a student's face and forces the girl to read Tandang Basio Macunat, the friar's warning that Manila study ruins women.
While each voice claims innocence, the friars use Tales' captivity to hand his contested fields to the man who sued for them, suit already won, honour not consulted. Tales returns, sees land that cost his wife and daughter now in another's hands, finds his father mute and his daughter a servant, and receives an order from the town council to leave his house within three days. He says almost nothing all day and sits beside Selo. The machinery keeps moving because every hand insists it only followed orders. When every office washes its hands, who is left holding the land, the debt, and the silence?
