Page:Death Comes for the Archbishop.pdf/156

 from the windows across the court, where the fugitive took refuge behind a washing hung out to dry. He bent his tall, full figure and disappeared between a pair of wet sheets.

“That was my student, Trinidad,” said Martinez, “a nephew of my old friend Father Lucero, at Arroyo Hondo. He’s a monk, but we want him to take orders. We sent him to the Seminary in Durango, but he was either too homesick or too stupid to learn anything, so I’m teaching him here. We shall make a priest of him one day.”

Father Latour was told to consider the house his own, but he had no wish to. The disorder was almost more than his fastidious taste could bear. The Padre’s study table was sprinkled with snuff, and piled so high with books that they almost hid the crucifix hanging behind it. Books were heaped on chairs and tables all over the house,—and the books and the floors were deep in the dust of spring sandstorms. Father Martinez’s boots and hats lay about in corners, his coats and cassocks were hung on pegs and draped over pieces of furniture. Yet the place seemed overrun by serving-women, young and old,—and by large yellow cats with full soft fur, of a special breed, apparently. They slept in the windowsills, lay on the well-curb in the patio; the boldest came, directly, to the supper-table, where their master fed them carelessly from his plate.