By this time the priest had turned the corner; and when the child came flying to that street, lo! he was far ahead. But she kept running breathlessly and at last, where the dark bulk of the castle of San Felipe overhung them, she plucked the gray robe from behind. Her bare feet had drawn no noise from the stones, and the priest started violently, choking back what sounded like the beginning of a cry.
He wheeled sharply about with a stern “What is this?”—but his voice was pinched.
“My brother—very sick—padre! Please, your grace, come!” she panted.
“To the devils with your brother!” he growled, flinging her off. “Váyate!” and he was gone before the dumbfounded child could speak again. She stood a moment looking stupidly after him, and then, sobbing, limped wearily homeward.
II.
The house, like most of Callao in those ill days, was little better than a wreck after twenty-one months of the rebel cannonading. The dark stairway teetered and groaned dismally as she scrambled up, and overhead the Southern Cross blinked hazily at her through a tattered frame—the insurgent shells had left little of the flimsy roofs of the city where it never rains. Long, ragged strips of bamboo lathing dangled here and there, and at her childish tread dribbles of the gravel covering came pattering about her like uncanny footfalls. She was trembling all over when she pushed open a broken door and entered the room, the rude Moorish balcony of which overhung the street. There was a hole in the roof here, too, and the doors of the balcony had been splintered by a cannon ball. A twisted rag flared smokily in an iron plate of grease on a broken chair, and where the vagrant shadows began to stand their ground against its feeble rays, some one was bending over a tattered mattress upon the floor.
“No hay cuidado,” said a strange voice as she stopped short, in alarm. “The sargento bade me bring a cup of caldo for thy brother, seeing thee so much a woman. For now that there is nothing to eat, he said, perhaps that would be the best medicine.”
“God pay you!” cried the child nervously. “And my brother?”
“He drank the broth as one greedy, and in a moment fell asleep. How many days makes it that he is sick?”
“Two, señor. Since four days there was nothing to eat but two crusts of bread, and those he made me eat.”