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126 wide enough to allow the wiggling through of a very lean serpent), "and I went in and they shut the door again and put the bed up against it."

"Well, well; and Maestro Ledesma, he was inside?"

"Oh, yes, Señor Pablo, he was inside. He was writing this letter. And I think Señor Ledesma is very sick, Señor Pablo, because when he was writing he was all the time saying, 'Madre de Dios' and 'Jesus-Maria-Joseph!' and making noises like this."

And Isidro convulsed himself in an effort that resulted in a vague imitation of the wail of a carabao calf.

"And he gave you the letter when he had finished?"

"Yes, Señor Pablo, that is the letter," said Isidro, pointing to the note on the table which had been the Maestro's before-breakfast thunderbolt. "He said, 'run and give this letter to Maestro Pablo'; and so I went, but I did not go out by the door."

"You didn't?"

"No, Señor Pablo. Maestro Ledesma, he said I must not go out by the door. So they tied a rope around me, and I went out by the window, in back, and I ran here, and I did not stop to play cibay on the way, Señor Pablo."

But Isidro's virtue was destined to go unrewarded. The Maestro was deep in a re-reading of the disastrous missive: