child, that is an ice-chest. In the liquor, for perfection, the
water used has first to be frozen. That chest contains ice, and
nothing else."

"Nothing else?" she persisted.

But here Felipe broke in. "The Senorita is off her hinges, father.
Much fasting has made her light-headed. And that brings me to my
business. You know my head, too, is not strong: good enough for a
furlong or two, but not for the mile course. Now if you will shelter
these two innocents whilst I forage we shall make a famous household.
You have rooms here in plenty; the best-hidden in Panama. But none
of us can live without food, and with these two to look after I am
hampered. There are the dogs, too. But Felipe knows a trick or two
more than the dogs, and if he do not fill your larder by sunset, may
his left leg be withered like his right!"

Brother Bartolome considered. "Here are the keys," said he. "Choose
your lodgings and take the boy along with you, for I think the sister
here wishes to talk with me alone."

Felipe took the keys and handed me the small lamp, which I held aloft
as he limped after me along the dark corridor, tapping its flagged
pavement with the nail of his crutch. We passed an iron-studded door
which led, he told me, to the crypt of the chapel; and soon after
mounted a flight of steps and found ourselves before the great folding
doors of the ante-chapel itself, and looked in. Here was daylight
again: actual sunlight, falling through six windows high up in the
southern wall and resting in bright patches on the stall canopies
within. We looked on these bright patches through the interspaces of a
great carved screen: but when I would have pressed into the chapel for
a better view, Felipe took me by the collar.

"Business first," said he, and pointed up the staircase, which mounted
steeply again after its break by the chapel doors. Up we went, and
were saluted again by the smell of burnt cedar-wood wafted through
lancet windows, barred but unglazed, in the outer wall. The inner wall
was blank, of course, being the northern side-wall of the chapel:
but we passed one doorway in it with which I was to make better
acquaintance. And, about twenty steps higher, we reached a long level
corridor and the cells where the brothers slept.

Felipe opened them one by one and asked me to take my choice. All were
empty and bare, and seemed to me pretty much alike.

"We have slept in worse, but that is not the point. Be pleased to
remembe