Here, beside the stables, Felipe took a sudden turn to the right and struck down a lane which seemed to wind back towards the city between long lines of warehouses.  I believe that, had we gone forward another hundred yards, to the quay’s edge, we should have seen or heard enough to send us along that lane at the double.  As it was, we heard nothing, and saw only the blue bay, the islands shining green under the thin line of smoke blown on the land breeze—­no living creature between us and them but a few sea-birds.  After we had struck into the lane I turned for another look, and am sure that this was all.

Felipe led the way down the lane for a couple of gunshots; the Carmelite following like a ghost in her white robes, and I close at her heels.  He halted before a low door on the left; a door of the most ordinary appearance.  It opened by a common latch upon a cobbled passage running between two warehouses, and so narrow that the walls almost met high over our heads.  At the end of this passage—­which was perhaps forty feet long—­we came to a second door, with a grille, and, hanging beside it, an iron bell-handle, at which Felipe tugged.

The sound of the bell gave me a start, for it seemed to come from just beneath my feet.  Felipe grinned.

“Brother Bartolome works like a mole.  But good wine needs no bush, my Juanito, as you shall presently own.  He takes his own time, though,” Felipe grumbled, after a minute.  “It cannot be that—­”

He was about to tug again when somebody pushed back the little shutter behind the grille, and a pair of eyes (we could see nothing of the face) gazed out upon us.

“There is no longer need for caution, reverend father,” said Felipe, addressing the grille.  “The Lutheran dogs have left the city, and we have come to taste your cordial and consult with you on a matter of business.”

We heard a bolt slid, and the door opened upon a pale emaciated face and two eyes which clearly found the very moderate daylight too much for them.  Brother Bartolome blinked without ceasing, while he shielded with one hand the thin flame of an earthenware lamp.

“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.