José lay down obediently. But the command to sleep was more easily given than obeyed. Never in his life had he been more thoroughly awake. His mind was full of new, bewildering, fearful thoughts. What was this _Auto-da-fé_—this sacrifice, which seemed a horrible execution? Did Christians then offer human sacrifices? Where and how had the patre known the Melchior—and, still more, the Don Alfonso—of his tale? Was he, perchance, the faithful friend of the unhappy young nobleman? Or—at last there flashed unbidden on his mind another thought, so frightful that he drove it away with all the force of his will, loathing himself for having allowed it even to enter his imagination. XIII. The Doctors. “But where is the iron-bound prisoner, where? For the red eye of battle is shut in despair. Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn, Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?” CAMPBELL. “Patre,” said José, as soon as the sun had risen, “will it please you now to permit me to run to the nearest dwellings and seek for food?” Fray Fernando did not refuse the desired permission; and José, delighted to obtain it, first made his patient as comfortable as he could, then started on his errand. In a few hours he returned, accompanied by a party of five or six Indians, whom, with much apparent satisfaction and some ceremony, he ushered into Fray Fernando’s presence, saying, “Here, patre, are the doctors.” The men were comfortably clothed, after the native fashion, in tunics, short trousers, and mantles, with bright-coloured turbans, or caps, on their heads. But they looked worn and haggard, as men who followed a toilsome calling. Each had a kind of wallet strapped on his shoulders by a cord of maguey. The foremost of the group unbound his, and laid it at the feet of Fray Fernando, in token of his respect and desire to serve him. But Fray Fernando naturally hesitated to receive medical advice from those whom he accounted mere barbarians; and expressed as much to José. The latter assured him, however, that the doctors were very wise—very skilful. “They spend many months together in the forests,” he said, “collecting herbs and plants of great healing virtue. Then they travel through the whole country, giving them in exchange for food or clothing, and making the sick men well. This knowledge has been handed down to them from the grandfathers of their grandfathers.”[29] Upon this, Fray Fernando, thinking it probable they would not poison him, and perhaps also thinking it little matter if they did, consented to allow one of them to examine him; which he did by feeling his pulse, not at the wrist, but at the top of the nostrils, and under the eyelids.