much cry out, he beat cow very hard, he say you pay money for milpa; but when Padre's cow eat milpa, Indian he say, dis Padre's cow, he lead him out very quiet. Oh it one very good ting to be parish priest!" And then he roared with laughter at his own worldly wisdom.
I asked the Padre about his past career, and learnt that he had left Holland as a young man to take a position as teacher in a college—I think in San Salvador. Soon after his arrival a revolution broke out, and during the anarchy which followed there was no money forthcoming to pay teachers, the college ceased to exist, and he found himself penniless and destitute. Then someone suggested his taking orders, which was done without loss of time and apparently without much difficulty; since then he had found it "One very good ting to be parish priest." He owned that he had not written home for years; and I fear my efforts to persuade him to write and regain touch with his friends were of no avail, for when I asked after him two years later, it was only to learn that he was dead and that the Consul who had his affairs in hand could find no trace of his family in Europe.
The Convento was a thick-walled, large-roomed building, in rather a tumble-down condition, and contained little in the way of furniture. Two or three women servants lived in an outbuilding at the back, and cooked the Padre's food for him, brought in the water, and occasionally swept out the big room, which was all the service he needed. Having heard something of the ways of native padres, I ventured to ask one of my men if my host had any "companera" attached to him: he said, "No, not one"; and added, with delightful simplicity, "And, you see, that is so strange, as a padre often has three or four"!
Cornelio and the Padre, as the only "gente de razon" in the place, generally spent their evenings together. I asked the Padre if they had any books to read, and he said that he had none, but added, with some pride, that Cornelio possessed a 'History of the World,' in two volumes, and that they had often read that. My offer to see if I could spare him any books did not seem to arouse much interest; apparently he had never read a novel, and hardly seemed to know what it meant. However, I looked through my boxes and found a copy of 'El Niño de la bola' and 'Pepita Jimenes,' and these I handed to him; he thanked me listlessly and put them aside. That evening I said good night to my host early, as I had some writing to do, and later on spent an hour or two shooting stars with a sextant and working out our position. It was past one o'clock when I was ready to turn in, and to my surprise I saw a light under the Padre's door and heard the sound of a voice. I called out, and hearing no reply, pushed at the big wooden door, which swung open. The feeble rays of light from one small
