same hour, and they felt their curiosity excited by
seeing a stranger breaking in on the monotony of their lives.

He drew back to the further end of the cloister, then some words from
the beggars made him retrace his steps.

"Ah! here comes old 'Vara de palo.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: Wooden staff.]

"Good-day, Senor Esteban!"

A small man dressed in black, and shaved like a cleric, came down the
steps.

"Esteban! Esteban!" cried Luna, placing himself between him and the
door of the Presentacion.

"Wooden Staff" looked at him with his clear eyes like amber, the quiet
eyes of a man used to spending long hours in the Cathedral, with never
a rebellious thought arising to disturb his immovable beatitude. He
stood doubting for some time, as though he could scarcely credit the
remote resemblance in this thin, pale face, to another that lived in
his memory, but at last, with a pained surprise, he became convinced
of its identity.

"Gabriel! my brother! is it really you?"

And the rigidly set face of the Cathedral servant, which seemed to
have acquired the immobility of its pillars and statues, relaxed with
an affectionate smile.

"When did you come? Where have you been? What is your life? Why have
you come?"

"Wooden Staff" expressed his surprise by incessant questions, never
giving his brother time to answer.

Gabriel at length explained, that he had arrived the previous night,
and that he had waited outside the church since early dawn in the
hopes of seeing his brother.

"I have now come from Madrid, but before that I was in many places:
in England, in France, in Belgium, who knows where besides. I have
wandered from one town to another, always struggling against hunger
and the cruelty of men. My footsteps have been dogged by poverty and
the police. When I rest a little, worn out by this Wandering Jew's
existence, Justice, inspired by fear, orders me to move on, and so
once again I begin my march. I am a man to be feared, Esteban, even as
you now see me, with my body ruined before old age, and the certainty
before me of a speedy death. Again, yesterday in Madrid, they told me
I should be sent once more to prison if I stayed there any longer, and
so in the evening I took the train. Where shall I go? The world is
wide; but for me and other rebels it is very small, and narrows till
it does not leave a hand's breadth of ground for our feet. In all the
world nothing was left me but you, and this peaceful silent corne