Sometimes the "musickers" would come, and, crowding around the little organ, practice the chants for some _fiesta_ day. The principal "musicker" was a grotesque old fellow, with enormous feet, and glasses rimmed with tortoise-shell. He looked so wise when he was poring over the manuscript in the dim candle-light that he reminded one of an intelligent gorilla. One of his assistants, meanwhile, would be making artificial flowers, which were to decorate the battered floats to be used in the festival procession on the morrow, carried aloft upon the shoulders of the men, sparkling with lighted tapers, while the bells up in the tower would jangle furiously. Or there would be a conference with his secretary in regard to the town records, which that functionary kept in the big book. One night the padre was called out to attend one who, as was explained to me, was bitten by a "fool" dog. On entering the poorly-lighted shack, we found, surrounded by a gaping crowd, the victim foaming at the mouth. He had indeed been bitten by a "fool" dog, and he died a few hours afterwards, as we could do but little to relieve his suffering. We spent the remainder of the evening looking over the long mass for Easter Sunday. And the padre said naïvely, "Will it not be necessary that I take one beer when I have reached this place, and then I can continue with the mass?" He looked back fondly to the days when he had sung his part in the antiphony in the magnificent cathedral at Manila. The town was always at the friar's service. And no wonder! Had he not sent all the way to Manila for a Christmas box of goodies for the schoolboys,--figs, and raisins, and preserves? I caught him gloating over them one evening--when he gave his famous supper of roast kid and frosted cake for his American guests from the army post--and he had offered us a taste of these almost forgotten luxuries. How he anticipated the delight he had in store for all the boys! Then in the time of cholera, when the disease invaded even the convent, although a young man, Padre Pedro never left his post.