before their mind's eye beautiful and fantastic
cities, and they would ask questions in all innocence as to the food
and habits of those distant people, as though they believed them
beings of a different species.

Towards evening, at the hour of the choir, when the shoemaker was
working alone, Gabriel, tired of the monotonous silence of the
cloister, would go down into the church.

His brother, in a woollen cloak with a white neck band, and a staff as
long as an ancient alguacil's, stood as sentry in the crossways, to
prevent the inquisitive passing between the choir and the high altar.

Two tablets of old gold with Gothic letters, hung on to one of the
pilasters, set forth that anyone talking in a loud voice or making
signs in the church would be excommunicated; but this menace of former
centuries failed to impress the few people who came to vespers and
gossiped behind one of the pillars with some of the church servants.
The evening light, filtering through the stained glass, threw on the
pavement great patches of colour, and the priests as they walked
over this carpet of light would appear green or red according to the
colours flashed from the windows.

In the choir the canons sang for themselves only in the emptiness of
the church; the shutting of the iron gates of the screen, opened to
admit some late-coming priest, echoed like explosions throughout the
building, and above the choir the organ joined in at times between the
plain song, but it sounded lazily, timidly, as though from necessity,
and seemed to lament its feebleness in the gathering twilight.

Gabriel had not completed the round of the Cathedral before he was
joined by his nephew, the Perrero, who left his conversation with
the servers and acolytes, and with the errand boy belonging to the
Secretary of the Chapter, whose fixed seat was at the door of the
Chapter-house. Luna was always very much diverted by the pranks of the
Tato, and the confidence and carelessness with which he moved about
the temple, as though having been born in it deprived him of all
feeling of respect The entry of a dog into the nave caused great
excitement.

"Uncle," said he to Luna, "you shall see how I can open my cloak."

Seizing the two ends of his garment he advanced towards the dog with
the contortions and bounds of a wrestler; the animal, knowing this of
old, endeavoured to escape through the nearest door, but the Tato,
cutting off his retreat, drove him into the nave