The "batas" of the school were flocking and pushing and jolting at the door of the basement which served as stable for the municipal caribao. Elbowing his way to the spot, the Maestro found Isidro at the entrance, gravely taking up an admission of five shells from those who would enter. Business seemed to be brisk; Isidro had already a big bandana handkerchief bulging with the receipts which were now overflowing into a great tao hat, obligingly loaned him by one of his admirers, as one by one, those lucky enough to have the price filed in, feverish curiosity upon their faces. The Maestro thought that it might be well to go in also, which he did without paying admission. The disappointed gate-keeper followed him. The Maestro found himself before a little pink-and-blue tissue-paper box, frilled with paper rosettes. "What have you in there?" asked the Maestro. "My brother," answered Isidro sweetly. He cast his eyes to the ground and watched his big toe drawing vague figures in the earth, then appealing to the First Assistant who was present by this time, he added in the tone of virtue which _will_ be modest: "Maestro Pablo does not like it when I do not come to school on account of a funeral, so I brought him (pointing to the little box) with me." "Well, I'll be----" was the only comment the Maestro found adequate at the moment. "It is my little pickaninny-brother," went on Isidro, becoming alive to the fact that he was a center of interest, "and he died last night of the great sickness." "The great what?" ejaculated the Maestro who had caught a few words. "The great sickness," explained the Assistant. "That is the name by which these ignorant people call the cholera." For the next two hours the Maestro was very busy. Firstly he gathered the "batas" who had been rich enough to attend Isidro's little show and locked them up--with the impresario himself--in the little town-jail close by. Then, after a vivid exhortation upon the beauties of boiling water and reporting disease, he dismissed the school for an indefinite period. After which, impressing the two town prisoners, now temporarily out of home, he shouldered Isidro's pretty box, tramped to the cemetery and directed the digging of a grave six feet deep. When the earth had been scraped back upon the lonely little object, he returned to town and transferred the awe-stricken playgoers to his own house, where a strenuous performance took place.