At the close of this minute statement the priest expressed his readiness to comply with the brigadier's instructions by travelling to Madrid, receiving the young Juanita from the hands of the Sacre Coeur nuns and continuing with her the journey to Finistère, immediately upon hearing from M. Armand Carron that he was prepared to receive his lovely ward. M. Armand Carron answered by return of post that his house and arms were open to welcome his relative's orphan child. Where there came after some time another letter from Don Francisco Muñoz explaining that the brigadier, although the most methodical and careful of men, had left some trifling debts at Ceuta and there were the doctors' and undertakers' bills to be settled: also the travelling expenses for himself and the young lady which he, the priest, was not able to defray. Besides all this the papers, deeds, books and other portable property left by the brigadier, some of it very valuable, but also bulky--among which were the certificates of the state securities deposited in the French and Dutch banks--which at the express desire of the deceased would have at once to be conveyed to Finistère. He, the priest, would have to be responsible for all this, so that, what with the boarding money and fees due to the nuns, and the clothes, linen and other necessaries the young lady might require to fit herself for appearance in the world, an expense would have to be incurred of which it was difficult to calculate the exact amount. The conclusion was that he could not undertake the journey unless M. Armand Carron supplied him with a round sum of money, say four thousand francs, which he could forward in French bank notes and in a registered letter addressed not to him but to a Doña Dolores Mazaredo, a pious woman, whom her reduced fortunes had compelled to take service as a washerwoman of the Ceuta state prison. The reason alleged by the priest for receiving the money in this roundabout way was that as the brigadier had died in debt to the state and the government might suspect that property belonging to the deceased had come into his, the priest's charge and be subject to the law of embargo on the brigadier's effects, it was desirable that every precaution should be taken to disarm suspicion and prevent injury. The fraud was entirely successful and in due course the letter from Finistère enclosing bank notes for four thousand francs was delivered to the washerwoman and from her passed into the hands of the sharpers whose deep laid plan and transcendent inventive powers were thus crowned with full success. M. Armand Carron heard no more of his orphaned relative.