Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/213

Rh they commit on their return to the prison court-yard.

The female offenders are kept entirely separate from the males; but, with little modification, the scenes observable on one side of the prison, form a tolerably faithful picture of those within the enclosures of the other.

In venturing down among the noisy groups in the court-yard, to make a few observations, the presence of an officer is a needful security against insult; while it will not disturb the occupations of the ragged and sinister-looking multitudes.

The first criminal who attracts our curiosity among the crowd, is one with a clerically shaven head, who bears some distant resemblance to a priest; and the idea presents itself that an individual of his exalted profession must be confined here by mistake. No such thing: the fellow is an impostor. He was formerly servant in the family of a "Padre" at Puebla, and becoming initiated into a few mysteries of the craft, had the audacity afterwards to establish himself among the credulous and superstitious inhabitants of a remote district, as a genuine holy priest. The fraud was for a time successful: the pretended father