The agent of the Sugar Trust had been too careful to say more. But it was clear that he regarded this event as a move in the game played by the great exporting Trusts. From the moment of our arrival in Madrid I was no longer able to keep a close watch on Kehler, though by a sort of tacit agreement we stayed at the same hotel. I found out that he was paying visits to the Provincials of the Jesuit and Franciscan Orders, and had been admitted as a visitor to one or two convents, and for a time I was tempted to relax my suspicions, and to think that the Bavarian was engaged in some Catholic espionage. These doubts were suddenly dissipated by my meeting him one day in the courtyard of the hotel attired in the habit of a priest--the dress of which he had been deprived on account of his youthful misconduct. I could not doubt that this dress was a mere disguise, and that it had been assumed for a political purpose. I went up to him and whispered-- ‘Do we still recognise each other, or do you prefer that we meet as strangers?’ ‘As fellow-travellers simply, I should prefer,’ he responded. The next day he had disappeared from the hotel. I set the agencies at my command to work, and learned without much difficulty that passages had been reserved for the false priest and a Sister of Mercy travelling under his protection, on board a Spanish steamer sailing from Cadiz to Havana. Needless to add, I was on board the same steamer when she quitted her moorings and breasted the waves of the open sea. During the voyage I had many opportunities of watching Kehler and his companion, who were constantly together, holding long private conversations in retired corners of the vessel. The nun, who was presented to me as Sister Marie-Joseph, was a pale, delicate-looking girl of about twenty, with that abstracted look in her eyes which betokens a mind wavering between earnestness and hallucination. Dimly, and through clouds of uncertainty, I began to perceive that Kehler had ransacked the convents of Madrid for a suitable instrument, and that he was hard at work hypnotising the unfortunate girl’s mind, so as to prepare it for any suggestion he might have to make. Before we reached Cuba I contrived to speak to the Sister apart. I found her reserved and distrustful of a heretic, as she had evidently been told to consider me. On my satisfying her that I had been brought up a Catholic, she became slightly more communicative, and revealed a disposition singularly sincere and devoted, but almost morbid in its detestation of Protestantism. She betrayed a feeling of horror at the idea of American domination in the Catholic island of Cuba, and it was in vain that I represented to her the generous tolerance accorded to our religion in the United States.