In time, all were disposed of: one of each couple down in the sewer, pitching out its sweet contents; the other pressing them back upon the pavement to prevent their oozing in again. Either way the work was now nasty enough; but for those below, it was a task too repulsive to set even the lowest pariah at. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. THE PROCESSION. Disagreeable as was their job, some of the _forzados_ made light of it, bandying jests with the street passengers, who did not find it safe to go too near them. A scoopful of the inky liquid could be flung so as to spoil the polish on boots, or sent its splashes over apparel still higher. Even the vigilance of the sentries could not prevent this, or rather they cared not to exercise it. The victims of such practical jokes were usually either of the class _felado_, or the yet more humble aboriginals, accustomed to be put upon by the soldiers themselves, who rather relished the fun. But only the more abandoned of the gaol-birds behaved in this way, many of them seeming to feel the degradation more than aught else. For among them, as we know, were men who should not have been there. Some may have seen friends passing by, who gave them looks of sympathy or pity, and possibly more than one knew himself under eyes whose expression told of a feeling stronger than either of these--love itself. Indeed this last, or something akin to it, seemed the rule rather than the exception. In Mexico, he must be a deeply disgraced criminal whose sweetheart would be ashamed of him; and every now and then, a brown-skinned "muchacha" might be seen crossing to where the scavengers were at work, and, with a muttered word or two, passing something into a hand eagerly outstretched to receive it. The sentries permitted this, after examining the commodity so tendered, and seeing it a safe thing to be entrusted to the receiver. These gifts of friendship, or _gages d'amour_, were usually eatables from the nearest cook-shop; their donors well knowing that the fare of the Acordada was neither plentiful nor sumptuous. But beyond these interested ones, few of the pedestrians stopped or even looked at the chain-gang. To most, if not all, it was an ordinary spectacle, and attracted no more attention than would a crossing-sweeper on a London street. Not as much as the latter, as he is often an Oriental. On that particular day, however, the party of scavengers presented a novelty, in having the two Tejanos in it; with a yet greater one in the odd juxtaposition of Cris Rock and his diminutive "mate." In Mexico, a man over six feet in height is a rarity, and as Cris exceeded this by six inches, a rarer sight still was he. The colossus coupled to the dwarf, as Gulliver to Lilliputian--a crooked Lilliputian at that--no wonder that a knot of curious gazers collected around them, many as they approached the grotesque spectacle uttering ejaculations of surprise.