The door opened and Father Benicio stood to one side to allow the file to enter. The porters got under way patiently. The priest spoke to Strawbridge, in the tones one uses to a man who has suffered some great calamity. He told him his room was ready and that he hoped the drummer would feel that the bishopric was his own home.
The priest led the way through a short passage, to an interior doorway. This gave on a large, hot room screened off from a patio. Through an open door on the left, Strawbridge saw a large, somberly furnished room with an altar occupying one end and on the side walls old-fashioned paintings of men in ecclesiastical garb. He followed the priest past this door and along a very narrow passage flanked on both sides by small monastic cubicles. Into one of these the father ushered the drummer. Its interior was finished in roughly dressed stone covered with plaster. An iron bed, an unpainted table, bowl, pitcher, and an extra calabash of water for bathing furnished the cubicle. Over the bed hung a little bronze crucifix with a half-burned candle in a sconce under it. One narrow window, set high and deeply recessed in the stone wall, and with the flat iron bars of a prison across it, furnished light and air.
As the porters set down the bags, they crossed themselves, and they reverently bowed and kissed the father's hand as they passed out. When they were gone the American stood in the middle of the floor, looking grayly at his new quarters. He smiled faintly at the priest.
"This is a funny place for me to come to, Father Benicio."
"I hope you may find peace here, my son."
"Why, ... ye-e-s ..." assented Strawbridge, vaguely. The words lingered in his thoughts a moment. "Find peace...." The phrase really held no signification for him. Weary from his exertions, the sick man sat down on the side of the bed. When he touched the mattress he was surprised to find it stuffed with straw.
"That," explained his host, gravely, "is to remind us of One who was born in a manger, my son." He glanced toward the crucifix and bowed his head.
The drummer looked at the little bronze carving and the half-burned candle below it. The world of thought and emotion which the image symbolized was utterly foreign to him. Now this supporting symbol of the straw in his bed aroused in him a faint curiosity. He put a question to the priest, with the simplicity of his kind:
"You talking about this bringing me peace.... How can it bring anybody peace? What's the idea?"
Father Benicio answered him just as simply and fundamentally: