They had carried the stricken man back to the corner of the Calle San Gregorio and the Plazuela San Bruno, and from the movements of the bearers Sarrion had received the conviction that they had entered the house immediately beyond the angle of the high building opposite to the Episcopal Palace.

Sarrion followed his memory step by step.  He determined to go into the house—­a huge building—­divided into many small apartments.  The door had never particularly attracted his attention.  Like many of the doorways of these great houses, it was wide and high, giving access to a dark stairway of stone.  The doors stood open night and day.  For this stairway was a common one, as its dirtiness would testify.

There was some one coming down the stairs now.  Sarrion, remembering that his face was well known, and that he had no particular business in any of the apartments into which the house was divided, paused for a moment, and waited on the threshold.  He looked up the dark stairs, and slowly distinguished the form and face of the newcomer.  It was his old friend Evasio Mon—­smart, well-brushed, smiling a good-morning to all the world this sunny day.

They had not met for many years.  Their friendship had been one of those begun by parents, and carried on in after years by the children more from habit than from any particular tie of sympathy.  For we all find at length that the nursery carpet is not the world.  Their ways had parted soon after the nursery, and, though they had met frequently, they had never trodden the same path again.  For Evasio Mon had been educated as a priest.

“I have often wondered why I have never clashed—­with Evasio Mon,” Sarrion once said to his son in the reflective quiet of their life at Torre Garda.

“It takes two to clash,” replied Marcos at length in his contemplative way, having given the matter his consideration.  And perhaps that was the only explanation of it.

Sarrion looked up now and met the smile with a grave bow.  They took off their hats to each other with rather more ceremony than when they had last met.  A long, slow friendship is the best; a long, slow enmity the deadliest.

“One does not expect to see you in Saragossa,” said Mon gently.  A man bears his school mark all through life.  This layman had learnt something in the seminary which he had never forgotten.

“No,” replied the other.  “What is this house?  I was just going into it.”

Mon turned and looked up at the building with a little wave of the hand, indicating lightly the stones and mortar.

“It is just a house, my friend, as you see—­a house, like another.”

“And who lives in it?”

“Poor people, and foolish people.  As in any other.  People one must pity and cannot help despising.”

He laughed, and as he spoke he led the way, as it were, unconsciously away from this house which was like another.

“Because they are poor?” inquired Sarrion, who did not move a step in response to Evasio Mon’s lead.