First I took the sisters to the cathedral. Both were grateful and knelt at the altar for a full half hour while we waited. Then after visiting several stores to make some small purchases, we went to a circus showing there that week. I bought ten tickets for my party. Everything they saw in the town was marvelous and strange to them. When we entered the circus tent the sisters were perplexed and thought it must be a new sort of church. But words would fail to express their amazement when they saw the clown and bespangled horseman enter the ring and the performance begin. They were in a new and hitherto undreamed-of world, and gazed in childlike wonderment on the scene, and, like children, only saw the glitter of the spangles and thought both men and women performers were angels of beauty. Even after the thing was over the magic and witchery of it all rested on them. Their hearts were deeply stirred and their thoughts were with the performers. To please them we sat until the audience had dispersed, and, when going out, one of them, speaking of the performers, told my wife they must be "very near to God." Then we went to the hotel. I dispersed my cortege and ordered a room for ourselves and one for the sisters, and we all took a nap until evening. Then we had some negro singing and dancing for our amusement in the courtyard of the hotel, and at 9 o'clock we went out for a moonlight walk under the tropical sky. About 10 we found we had had enough of it and were glad to betake ourselves to bed. We all breakfasted together in the courtyard the next morning and soon after went aboard. At noon up came the anchor and we were off for Havana, our next stopping place, twenty-four hours' sail away. The steamer after one day's detention to take in cargo would continue her voyage to Vera Cruz. It was my intention to go on to that port, and from there across the country to the capital, the City of Mexico. There was no cable to Mexico in 1873, and things there were in rather a primitive condition. Of course, I never anticipated pursuit beyond New York, and took it for granted that my friends at Police Headquarters would squelch it there. But once in Mexico there would have been no danger for me. To be in Mexico was like being in the centre of darkest Africa. There was no extradition treaty, no railroads and no telegraph; above all, I had plenty of cash. I intended to buy an estate near the capital, and settle down for two or three years, and by a liberal expenditure of money secure the friendship of the government officials and the chief people of the country. Official and social morals being not of the best, if my history transpired I would probably become the lion of society, as they would all esteem it a creditable thing to any man to secure a few millions from the English, whose enormous wealth is the plunder of India and all the world for centuries.