"You think so?" said Crispin, surprised. "But I've never had a cuarto except the one they gave me at Easter. Mama won't believe I stole; she won't believe it!"
Crispin began to cry, and said through his sobs:
"Then go alone, I won't go. Tell mama I'm sick."
"Crispin, don't cry," said his brother. "If mama seems to believe what they say, you'll tell her that the sacristan lies, that the curate believes him, that they say we are thieves because our father----"
A head came out of the shadows in the little stairway, and as if it had been Medusa's, it froze the words on the children's lips.
The head was long and lean, with a shock of black hair. Blue glasses concealed one sightless eye. It was the chief sacristan who had thus stolen upon the children.
"You, Basilio, are fined two réales for not ringing regularly. And you, Crispin, stay to-night till you find what you've stolen."
"We have permission," began Basilio; "our mother expects us at nine."
"You won't go at nine o'clock either; you shall stay till ten."
"But, señor, after nine one can't pass through the streets----"
"Are you trying to dictate to me?" demanded the sacristan, and he seized Crispin's arm.
"Señor, we have not seen our mother for a week," entreated Basilio, taking hold of his brother as if to protect him.
With a stroke on the cheek the sacristan made him let go, and dragged off Crispin, who commenced to cry, let himself fall, tried to cling to the floor, and besought Basilio to keep him. But the sacristan, dragging the child, disappeared in the shadows.
Basilio stood mute. He heard his little brother's body strike against the stairs; he heard a cry, blows, heart-rending words, growing fainter and fainter, lost at last in the distance.
"When shall I be strong enough?" he murmured, and dashed down the stairs.
He reached the choir and listened. He could still hear his little brother's voice; then over the cry, "Mama!--Brother!" a door shut. Trembling, damp with sweat, holding his mouth with his hand to stifle a cry, he stood a moment looking about in the dim church. The doors were closed, the windows barred. He went back to the tower, did not stop at the second stage, where the bells were rung, but climbed to the third, loosed the ropes that held the tongues of the bells, then went down again, pale, his eyes gleaming, but without tears.