There were three men coming from behind now, running after him on sandaled feet, and before he could do so much as raise his arm the moon broke out from behind a cloud and showed a gleam of steel.  Don Francisco de Mogente was down on the ground in an instant, and the three men fell upon him like dogs on a rat.  One knife went right through him, and grated with a harsh squeak on the cobble-stones beneath.

A moment later the traveler was lying there alone, half in the shadow, his dusty feet showing whitely in the moonlight.  The three shadows had vanished as softly as they came.

Almost instantly from, strangely enough, the direction in which they had gone the burly form of a preaching friar came out into the light.  He was walking hurriedly, and would seem to be returning from some mission of mercy, or some pious bedside to one of the many houses of religion located within a stone’s throw of the Cathedral of the Seo in one of the narrow streets of this quarter of the city.  The holy man almost fell over the prostrate form of Don Francisco de Mogente.

“Ah! ah!” he exclaimed in an even and quiet voice.  “A calamity.”

“No,” answered the wounded man with a cynicism which even the near sight of death seemed powerless to effect.  “A crime.”

“You are badly hurt, my son.”

“Yes; you had better not try to lift me, though you are a strong man.”

“I will go for help,” said the monk.

“Lay help,” suggested the wounded man curtly.  But the friar was already out of earshot.

In an astonishingly short space of time the friar returned, accompanied by two men, who had the air of indoor servants and the quiet movements of street-bred, roof-ridden humanity.

Mindful of his cloth, the friar stood aside, unostentatiously and firmly refusing to take the lead even in a mission of mercy.  He stood with humbly-folded hands and a meek face while the two men lifted Don Francisco de Mogente on to a long narrow blanket, the cloak of Navarre and Aragon, which one of them had brought with him.

They bore him slowly away, and the friar lingered behind.  The moon shone down brightly into the narrow street and showed a great patch of blood amid the cobblestones.  In Saragossa, as in many Spanish cities, certain old men are employed by the municipal authorities to sweep the dust of the streets into little heaps.  These heaps remain at the side of the streets until the dogs and the children and the four winds disperse the dust again.  It is a survival of the middle ages, interesting enough in its bearing upon the evolution of the modern municipal authority and the transmission of intellectual gifts.

The friar looked round him, and had not far to look.  There was a dust heap close by.  He plunged his large brown hands into it, and with a few quick movements covered all traces of the calamity of which he had so nearly been a witness.

Then, with a quick, meek look either way, he followed the two men, who had just disappeared round a corner.  The street, which, by the way, is called the Calle San Gregorio, was, of course, deserted; the tall houses on either side were closely shuttered.  Many of the balconies bore a branch of palm across the iron railings, the outward sign of priesthood.  For the cathedral clergy live here.  And, doubtless, the holy men within had been asleep many hours.