. I half expected her to place a
lighted taper on a tiny float, and send it spinning down the stream,
as is the custom of the maidens on the sacred river Ganges. In the
silence of the morning, in the heart of nature, thousands of miles
away from telegraphs and railroads, where the brilliant-feathered
birds dipped lightly into the unruffled stream, the place seemed like
a sanctuary, a holy of holies, pure, immaculate, and undefiled.

The padre had arisen at six. At his command the sacristans ascended
the bell-tower and proceeded to arouse the town. The padre moved
about his dark, bare room. Rare Latin books were scattered around
the floor. His richly embroidered vestments hung on a long line. The
room was cluttered with the lumber of old crucifixes, broken images of
saints, and gilded floats, considerably battered, with the candlesticks
awry. The floor and the walls were bare. There was a large box of
provisions in the corner, filled with imported sausages done up
in tinfoil, bottles of sugar, tightly sealed to keep the ants from
getting in, small cakes of Spanish chocolate, bottles of of olives
and of rich communion wine. Donning his white robe, he went out to
the ante-room, where, on the table spread with a white napkin, stood
a cup of chocolate and a package of _La Hebra_ cigarettes.

There was a scamper of bare feet as the whole force of dirty
house-boys, sacristans, and cooks rushed in to kneel and kiss the
padre's hand and to receive his blessing. When he had finished
the thick chocolate, one of the boys brought in a glass of water,
fresh and sparkling from a near-by mountain stream. Then Padre Pedro
lighted his cigarette, and read in private for a little while before
the morning mass began. Along the narrow pathway (for there were no
streets) a string of women in black veils was slowly coming to the
church. Stopping before the door, they bowed and made the sign of the
cross. Then they went in and knelt down on the hard tiles. The padre's
full voice, rising and falling with the chant, flooded the gloomy
interior, where pencils of sunlight slanted through the apertures of
the unfinished wall, and fell upon the drowsy wilderness outside.

Returning from the mass, the padre refreshed himself with a small glass
of gin-and-water, as his custom was; nor could the appeal of any one
persuade him to take more than a single glass or to take that at an
earlier or later hour. The ancient _maestra_ had arrived--a wrinkled
ol