danger-signal to his fellows, and one would have thought the suspicion
it aroused must necessarily keep him virtuous. It was a countenance that
would make a man instinctively clap his hand to his pocket.

The other was a Turk, a huge creature, with dark scowling face and
prominent brows; he made a singular figure in his bright fez and baggy
breeches, looking at his fellow prisoners with a frown of hate.

But the doctor had finished seeing his patients and the iron door was
opened for us to go out. We went upstairs to the hospital, a long bare
ward, terribly cheerless. Six men, perhaps, lay in bed, guarded by two
warders; one old fellow with rheumatism groaning in agony, two others
dazed and very still, with high fever. We walked round quickly, don
Felipe as before mechanically looking at their tongues and feeling their
pulse, speaking a word to the assistant and moving on. The windows were
shut and there was a horrid stench of illness and drugs and antiseptics.

We went through long corridors to the female side, and meanwhile the
assistant told the doctor that during the night a woman had been
confined. Don Felipe sat down in an office to write a certificate.

'What a nuisance these women are!' he said. 'Why can't they wait till
they get out of prison? How is it?'

'It was still-born.'

'_Pero, hombre_,' said the doctor crossly. 'Why didn't you tell me that
before? Now I shall have to write another certificate. This one's no
good.'

He tore it up and painfully made out a second with the slow laborious
writing of a man unused to holding a pen.

Then we marched on and came to another smaller _patio_ where the females
were. They were comparatively few, not more than twenty or thirty; and
when we entered a dark inner-room to see the woman who was ill they all
trooped in after us--all but one. They stood round eagerly telling us of
the occurrence.

'Don't make such a noise, _por Dios_! I can't hear myself speak,' said
the doctor.

The woman was lying on her back with flushed cheeks, her eyes staring
glassily. The doctor asked a question, but she did not answer. She began
to cry, sobbing from utter weakness in a silent, unrestrained way. On a
table near her, hidden by a cloth, lay the dead child.

We went out again into the _patio_. The sun was higher now and it was
very warm, the blue sky shone above us without a cloud. The prisoners
returned to their occupations. One old hag was doing a younger woman's
hair;