"But come, my son," said Padre Felipe, laying his large soft hand, parentally, on Arthur's shoulder. "Come, come with me to my rooms. Thanks to the Blessed Virgin I have still shelter and a roof to offer you. Ah!" he added, stroking Arthur's riding-coat, and examining critically as if he had been a large child, "what have we--what is this, eh? You are wet with this heretic fog--eh? Your hands are cold, and your cheeks hot. You have fatigue! Possibly--most possibly, hunger! No! No! It is so. Come with me, come!" and drawing Arthur's passive arm through his own, he opened the vestry door, and led him across the little garden, choked with débris and plaster of the fallen tower, to a small adobe building that had been the Mission schoolroom. It was now hastily fitted up as Padre Felipe's own private apartment and meditative cell. A bright fire burned in the low, oven-like hearth. Around the walls hung various texts illustrating the achievement of youthful penmanship with profound religious instruction. At the extremity of the room there was a small organ. Midway and opposite the hearth was a deep embrasured window--the window at which two weeks before, Mr. Jack Hamlin had beheld the Donna Dolores. "She spent much of her time here, dear child, in the instruction of the young," said Father Felipe, taking a huge pinch of snuff, and applying a large red bandana handkerchief to his eyes and nose. "It is her best monument! Thanks to her largess--and she was ever free-handed, Don Arturo, to the Church--the foundation of the Convent of our Lady of Sorrows, her own patron saint, thou seest here. Thou knowest, possibly--most possibly as her legal adviser--that long ago, by her will, the whole of the Salvatierra Estate is a benefaction to the Holy Church, eh?" "No, I don't!" said Arthur, suddenly, awakening with a glow of Protestant and heretical objection that was new to him, and eyeing Padre Felipe with the first glance of suspicion he had ever cast upon that venerable ecclesiastic. "No, sir, I never heard any intimation or suggestion of the kind from the late Donna Dolores. On the contrary, I was engaged"---- "Pardon--pardon me, my son," interrupted Father Felipe, taking another large pinch of snuff. "It is not now, scarce twenty-four hours since the dear child was translated--not in her masses and while her virgin strewments are not yet faded--that we will talk of this" (he blew his nose violently). "No! All in good time--thou shalt see! But I have something here," he continued, turning over some letters and papers in his desk. "Something for you--possibly, most possibly, more urgent. It is a telegraphic despatch for you, to my care."