six centuries back, gave to his order, most reasonably
might I hope to find still quick something of the life that was in full
vigor in Mexico only a little more than half that many centuries ago.

We turned off from the Calle Principal by the little old church of La
Cruz, and passed onward across the market-place, where buying and
selling went on languidly, and where a drowsy hum of talk made a
rhythmic setting to a scene that seemed to my unaccustomed eyes less a
bit of real life than a bit lifted bodily from an opera. Facing the
market-place was the ancient church; and the change was a pleasant one,
from the vivid sunlight and warmth of the streets to its cool, shadowy
interior: where the only sign of life was a single old woman, her head
muffled in her _rebozo_, praying her way along the Stations of the
Cross. For more than two hundred and fifty years had prayer been made
and praise been offered here; and as I thought of the many generations
who here had ministered and worshipped--though evil hearts in plenty, no
doubt, both within and without the chancel there had been--it seemed to
me that some portion of the subtle essence of all the soul-longings for
heavenly help and guidance that here had been breathed forth, by men and
women truly struggling against the sinful forces at work in the world,
had entered into the very fabric of that ancient church, and so had
sanctified it.

We crossed to the eastern end of the church, where was a low door-way,
closed by a heavy wooden door that was studded with rough iron nails and
ornamented with rudely finished iron-work; pushing which door open
briskly, as one having the assured right of entry there, Don Rafael
courteously stood aside and motioned to me to enter the sacristy.

From the shadowy church I passed at a step into a small vaulted room
brilliant with the sunlight that poured into it through a broad window
that faced the south. Just where this flood of sunshine fell upon the
flagged floor, rising from a base of stone steps built up in a pyramidal
form, was a large cross of some dark wood, on which was the life-size
figure of the crucified Christ; and there, on the bare stone pavement
before this emblem of his faith, his face, on which the sunlight fell
full, turned upward towards the holy image, and his arms raised in
supplication, clad in his Franciscan habit, of which the hood had fallen
back, knelt Fray Antonio; and upon his pale, holy face, that the rich
sunlig