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“Are you come all on one business?” he asked, his gaze passing from one to another, and resting at length on the Carmelite.

“When the forest takes fire, all beasts are cousins,” said Felipe sententiously. Without another question the friar turned and led the way, down a flight of stairs which plunged (for all I could tell) into the bowels of earth. His lamp flickered on bare walls upon which the spiders scurried. I counted twenty steps, and still all below us was dark as a pit; ten more, and I was pulled up with that peculiar and highly disagreeable jar which everyone remembers who has put forward a foot expecting a step, and found himself suddenly on the level. The passage ran straight ahead into darkness: but the friar pushed open a low door in the left-hand wall, and, stepping aside, ushered us into a room, or paved cell, lit by a small lamp depending by a chain from the vaulted roof.

Shelves lined the cell from floor to roof; chests, benches, and work-tables occupied two-thirds of the floor-space: and all were crowded with books, bottles, retorts, phials, and the apparatus of a laboratory. “Crowded,” however, is not the word; for at a second glance I recognised the beautiful order that reigned. The deal work-benches had been scoured white as paper; every glass, every metal pan and basin sparkled and shone in the double light of the lamp and of a faint beam of day conducted down from the upper world by a kind of funnel and through a grated window facing the door.

In this queer double light Brother Bartolome faced us, after extinguishing the small lamp in his hand.

“You say the pirates have left?”

Felipe nodded. “At daybreak. We in this room are all who remain in Panama.”

“The citizens will be returning, doubtless, in a day or two. I have no food for you, if that is what you seek. I finished my last crust yesterday.”

“That is a pity. But we must forage. Meanwhile, reverend father, a touch of your cordial–“

Brother Bartolome reached down a bottle from a shelf. It was heavily sealed and decorated with a large green label bearing a scarlet cross. Bottles similarly sealed and labelled lined this shelf and a dozen others. He broke the seal, drew the cork, and fetched three glasses, each of which he held carefully up to the lamplight. Satisfied of their cleanliness, he held the first out to the Carmelite. She shook her head.

“It is against the vow.”

He grunted and poured out a glassful apiece for Felipe and me. The first sip brought tears into my eyes: and then suddenly I was filled with sunshine–golden sunshine–and could feel it running from limb to limb through every vein in my small body.

Felipe chuckled. “See the lad looking down at his stomach! Button your jacket, Juanito; the noonday’s shining through! Another sip, to the reverend father’s health! His brothers run away–the Abbot himself runs: but Brother Bartolome stays. For he labours for the good of man, and that gives a clear conscience. Behold how just, after all, are the dispositions of Heaven: how blind are the wicked! For three weeks those bloody-minded dogs have been grinning and running about the city: and here under their feet, as in a mine, have lain the two most precious jewels of all–a clear conscience and a liquor which, upon my faith, holy father, cannot be believed in under a second glass.”

Brother Bartolome was refilling the glass, when the Carmelite touched his arm.

“You have been here–all the while?”

“Has it been so long? I have been at work, you see.”

“For the good of man,” interrupted Felipe. “Time slips away when one works for the good of man.”

“And all the while you were distilling this?”

“This–and other things.”

“Other things to drink?”

“My daughter, had they caught me, they might have tortured me. I might have held my tongue: but, again, I might not. Under torture one never knows what will happen. But the secret of the liquor had to die with me–that is in the vow. So to be on the safe side I made–other things.”