“Let him eat his sin with his bread,” exclaimed Rincon at that moment; “I should be sorry to become bail for the profit he will obtain from it.  There will be a day of judgment at the last, when all things will have to pass, as they say, through the holes of the colander, and it will then be known who was the scoundrel that has had the audacity to plunder and make off with the whole third of the revenue of a chapelry!  But tell me, Mr. Sacristan, on your life, what is the amount of the whole yearly income?”

“Income to the devil, and you with it,[16]” replied the Sacristan, with more rage than was becoming; “am I in a humour to talk to you about income?  Tell me, brother, if you know anything of the purse; if not, God be with you—­I must go and have it cried.”

[16] (This footnote is missing from the printed edition.)

“That does not seem to me so bad a remedy,” remarked Cortado; “but I warn your worship not to forget the precise description of the purse, nor the exact sum that it contains; for if you commit the error of a single mite, the money will never be suffered to appear again while the world is a world, and that you may take for a prophecy.”

“I am not afraid of committing any mistake in describing the purse,” returned the Sacristan, “for I remember it better than I do the ringing of my bells, and I shall not commit the error of an atom.”  Saying this, he drew a laced handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the perspiration which rained down his face as from an alembic; but no sooner had Cortado set eyes on the handkerchief, than he marked it for his own.

When the Sacristan had got to a certain distance, therefore, Cortado followed, and having overtaken him as he was mounting the steps of a church, he took him apart, and poured forth so interminable a string of rigmarole, all about the theft of the purse, and the prospect of recovering it, that the poor Sacristan could do nothing but listen with open mouth, unable to make head or tail of what he said, although he made him repeat it two or three times.

Cortado meanwhile continued to look fixedly into the eyes of the Sacristan, whose own were rivetted on the face of the boy, and seemed to hang, as it were, on his words.  This gave Cortado an opportunity to finish his job, and having cleverly whipped the handkerchief out of the pocket, he took leave of the Sacristan, appointing to meet him in the evening at the same place, for he suspected that a certain lad of his own height and the same occupation, who was a bit of a thief, had stolen the purse, and he should be able to ascertain the fact in a few days, more or less.

Somewhat consoled by this promise, the Sacristan took his leave of Cortado, who then returned to the place where Rincon had privily witnessed all that had passed.  But a little behind him stood another basket-boy, who had also seen the whole transaction; and at the moment when Cortado passed the handkerchief to Rincon, the stranger accosted the pair.