There was a scamper of bare feet as the whole force of dirty house-boys, sacristans, and cooks rushed in to kneel and kiss the padre's hand and to receive his blessing. When he had finished the thick chocolate, one of the boys brought in a glass of water, fresh and sparkling from a near-by mountain stream. Then Padre Pedro lighted his cigarette, and read in private for a little while before the morning mass began. Along the narrow pathway (for there were no streets) a string of women in black veils was slowly coming to the church. Stopping before the door, they bowed and made the sign of the cross. Then they went in and knelt down on the hard tiles. The padre's full voice, rising and falling with the chant, flooded the gloomy interior, where pencils of sunlight slanted through the apertures of the unfinished wall, and fell upon the drowsy wilderness outside. Returning from the mass, the padre refreshed himself with a small glass of gin-and-water, as his custom was; nor could the appeal of any one persuade him to take more than a single glass or to take that at an earlier or later hour. The ancient _maestra_ had arrived--a wrinkled old body in a black dress and black carpet-slippers--and she knelt down to touch the padre's outstretched hand with her thin, withered lips. The little children, who were waiting for their classes to be called, all followed her example, and before long, the monotonous drone of the recitations left no doubt that school had actually begun. Benches had filled up, and the dusky feet were swinging under them as the small backs bent over knotty problems on the slates. The padre, passing among the pupils, made the necessary erasures and corrections, and occasionally gave unasked to some recalcitrant a smart snap on the head. The morning session ended by the pupils lining up in a half circle around the battered figure of a saint--the altar decorated with red paper flowers, or colored grasses in a number of empty beer-bottles--and, while the padre played the wheezy harmonium, singing their repertoire of sacred songs. Then, as the children departed with the "_Buenos dias, señor_," visitors, who had been waiting on the stairway with their presents of eggs, chickens, and bananas, were received. "Thees man," the padre explained to me, as a grotesque old fellow humbled himself before us, "leeves in one house near from ze shore. He has presented me with some goud rope to tie my horses with (_buen piece, hombre_), and he says that there are no more fishes in ze sea." "See, they have brought so many breads and fruits! They know well that eet ees my fast-day, and that my custom ees to eat no meat. I can eat fish or cheecken, but not fish _and_ cheecken; eet ees difficult here to find enough food to sustain ze life on days of fast."