escue came by drinking the blood
of his own body, and yet died in raging madness almost at the moment
that he was saved.

For myself, I had nothing to add to these horrors; yet such was my frame
of mind that I found a certain bitter gladness in listening to the
telling of them, and in tracing between them and our own case the
ghastly parallel. In our talk, which wont on in English, Fray Antonio
took no part; but he could follow well enough the meaning of it in our
tones. On his face was an expression of tender melancholy that seemed to
me to tell of sorrow for us rather than of dread of what might be in
store for himself; and that this truly was his mood was shown when the
others paused, sated and appalled by the horrors which they had conjured
up, and he spoke at last.

It was not a sermon that Fray Antonio gave us; but out of the abundant
store of faith by which he himself was sustained he strove to comfort us
with thoughts of better things than life can give. And with the promise
of hope that he held out to us with the solemn authority that was vested
in him by reason of the service to which he was vowed, he mingled a
certain yearning for us, very moving, that came of the love and the
tender gentleness that were in his own heart. And yet, though he knew
that, excepting Pablo, we all were heretics according to his own creed,
there was no word of doctrine in all of his discourse. Rather was what
he said a simple setting forth of that primitive Christianity which has
its beginning and its ending in a simple faith in an all-pervading,
all-protecting love. And of this love, as it seemed to me, he himself
was the human embodiment. Looking in his gentle face, which yet had such
high courage, such noble resolution in it, I felt that in him the spirit
of the saints and martyrs of long past ages lived again.

With our souls soothed and strengthened by what Fray Antonio had spoken
to us, we lay down at last to sleep; yet was it impossible for us to
drive out from our hearts that natural sadness which men must feel who
know that they have failed in a strong effort to accomplish a project
very dear to them, and who know also that they are standing upon the
very threshold of a most tormenting death.

XIII.

UP THE CHAC-MOOL STAIR.

We awoke the next morning at the very moment that the sun rose above the
mountain peaks to the eastward; and our waking was due in part to the
sunshine striking upon our faces, but more t