the extreme end of the long corridor I saw a ray of
light, and, groping my way toward it, entered a cloister, in which a
number of Indians were busily employed making fireworks. The cura had
been taken to the house of his sister-in-law, and we sent one of them
over to give notice of our arrival. Very soon we saw a lantern crossing
the plaza, and recognised the long gown of the padre Brizeno, whose
letter to the padrecito had been the occasion of our coming. It had
been written early in the morning, when there was no hope; but within
the last six hours a favourable change had taken place, and the crisis
had passed. Perhaps no two men were ever more glad than the doctor and
myself at finding their journey bootless. Doctor Cabot was even more
relieved than I; for, besides the apprehension that we might arrive too
late, or barely in time to be present at the cura's death, the doctor
had that of finding him under the hands of one from whom it would be
necessary to extricate him, and still his interference might not be
effectual.

As a matter of professional etiquette, Doctor Cabot proposed to call
upon the English physician. His house was shut up, and he was already
in his hammock, being himself suffering from calentura, for which he
had just taken a warm bath; but before the door was opened we were
satisfied that he was really an Ingles. It seemed a strange thing to
meet, in this little village in the interior of Yucatan, one speaking
our own language, but the circuitous road by which he had reached it
was not less strange.

Doctor Fasnet, or Fasnach as he was called, was a small man,
considerably upward of fifty. Thirty years before he had emigrated to
Jamaica, and, after wandering among the West India Islands, had gone
over to the continent; and there was hardly a country in Spanish
America in which he had not practised the healing art. With an
uncontrollable antipathy to revolutions, it had been his lot to pass
the greater part of his life in countries most rife with them. After
running before them in Colombia, Peru, Chili, and Central America,
where he had prescribed for Carrera when the latter was pursuing his
honest calling as a pig-driver, unluckily he found himself in Salama
when Carrera came upon it with twelve hundred Indians, and the cry of
death to the whites. With a garrison of but thirty soldiers and sixty
citizens capable of bearing arms, Doctor Fasnach was fain to undertake
the defence; but, fortunately, C