“And proceeding in this manner,” observed Cortado, “your worships think that your lives are good and holy?”

“Certainly! for what is there bad in them?” replied the other lad!  “Is it not worse to be a heretic or a renegade? or to kill your father or mother?”

“Without doubt,” admitted Cortado; “but now, since our fate has decided that we are to enter this brotherhood, will your worship be pleased to step out a little, for I am dying to behold this Senor Monipodio, of whose virtues you relate such fine things.”

“That wish shall soon be gratified,” replied the stranger, “nay even from this place we can perceive his house:  but your worships must remain at the door until I have gone in to see if he be disengaged, since these are the hours at which he gives audience.”

“So be it,” replied Rincon; and the thief preceding them for a short distance, they saw him enter a house which, so far from being handsome, had a very mean and wretched appearance.  The two friends remained at the door to await their guide, who soon reappeared, and called to them to come in.  He then bade them remain for the present in a little paved court, or patio,[20] so clean and carefully rubbed that the red bricks shone as if covered with the finest vermilion.  On one side of the court was a three-legged stool, before which stood a large pitcher with the lip broken off, and on the top of the pitcher was placed a small jug equally dilapidated.  On the other side lay a rush mat, and in the middle was a fragment of crockery which did service as the recipient of some sweet basil.

[20] The Patio, familiar to all who have visited Seville, as forming the centre of the houses, and which serves in summer as the general sitting-room, so to speak, of the family.

The two boys examined these moveables attentively while awaiting the descent of the Senor Monipodio, but finding that he delayed his appearance, Rincon ventured to put his head into one of two small rooms which opened on the court.  There he saw two fencing foils, and two bucklers of cork hung upon four nails; there was also a great chest, but without a lid or anything to cover it, with three rush mats extended on the floor.  On the wall in face of him was pasted a figure of Our Lady—­one of the coarsest of prints—­and beneath it was a small basket of straw, with a little vessel of white earthenware sunk into the wall.  The basket Rincon took to be a poor box, for receiving alms, and the little basin he supposed to be a receptacle for holy water, as in truth they were.

While the friends thus waited, there came into the court two young men of some twenty years each; they were clothed as students, and were followed soon afterwards by two of the basket boys or porters, and a blind man.  Neither spoke a word to the other, but all began to walk up and down in the court.  No long time elapsed before there also came in two old men clothed in black serge, and with spectacles on their