"Buenas noches, Señor!" said Padre Consolacion, sweeping off his large shovel hat; then he stopped as he recognized the same youth whom he had seen earlier in the week. "Padre mio," cried Juanita from the top, "come along; I want to speak to you." "Buenas noches, Padre!" said Jack; and the priest, after a moment’s hesitation, went up slowly. Hard by the Casa Alvarez a narrow tortuous lane of mean houses, dirty in appearance and evil in repute, ran almost due east from the ramparts. It was not a district in which, before the siege, any person worth robbing would choose to be abroad after nightfall. But when, towards dusk on this fifth of February, a well-dressed man passed rapidly down the street and disappeared into one of the least reputable of the houses, the few denizens who observed him did so without a thought of their knives, almost without a sense of curiosity. To such a height of abnegation had the public danger brought the professional lawbreakers of Saragossa. It was a house of three stories, and the stranger, threading his way gingerly through the gloomy entrance and up the narrow stairway, gathered from the evidence of all his senses that every story was fully occupied. In hardly another street in this part of Saragossa could a house have been found where its whole population was not herded in cellars below-ground. But here the lane was so narrow, and so closely surrounded by buildings, that the inhabitants were in no danger from the French bombardment, and lived in a security which few of their fellow-citizens enjoyed. As the visitor passed room after room on his upward way, the sounds of coarse laughter, the oaths of men, the shrill expostulation of women, and the querulous cry of children came to him through closed or half-closed doors, and he drew his cloak around him with an instinctive movement of disgust. Treading almost noiselessly he reached the attic floor, where the doors of three rooms opened on to a narrow landing. Although evidently a stranger to the house he showed little hesitation. With infinite caution he tiptoed across the landing to the farthermost door, and put his eye to a crack in the panel, through which a narrow beam of light fell on the dirt-encrusted wall behind him. The room into which he looked was in keeping with the rest of the house. The fitful light of a tallow candle showed a man bending over a crazy table, two truckle-beds ranged at right angles to each other in the far corner, and a few articles of clothing hanging from hooks on the wall. The man was intently studying a blue paper spread out on the table, spelling out the words with difficulty, and repeating them under his breath with a growl of impatience that accentuated the unpleasing effect of a countenance by nature unprepossessing.