Nearly opposite, and where should have been the faithless Ignacio, a grave and decorous figure was seated.  His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws.  The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous.  Yet Father Jose was not astonished.  His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him a certain advantage over the practical and material minded.  He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his visitant, and was prepared.  With equal coolness and courtesy he met the cavalier’s obeisance.

“I ask your pardon, Sir Priest,” said the stranger, “for disturbing your meditations.  Pleasant they must have been, and right fanciful, I imagine, when occasioned by so fair a prospect.”

“Worldly, perhaps, Sir Devil,—­for such I take you to be,” said the Holy Father, as the stranger bowed his black plumes to the ground; “worldly, perhaps; for it hath pleased Heaven to retain even in our regenerated state much that pertaineth to the flesh, yet still, I trust, not without some speculation for the welfare of the Holy Church.  In dwelling upon yon fair expanse, mine eyes have been graciously opened with prophetic inspiration, and the promise of the heathen as an inheritance hath marvellously recurred to me.  For there can be none lack such diligence in the True Faith, but may see that even the conversion of these pitiful salvages hath a meaning.  As the blessed St. Ignatius discreetly observes,” continued Father Jose, clearing his throat and slightly elevating his voice, “’the heathen is given to the warriors of Christ, even as the pearls of rare discovery which gladden the hearts of shipmen.’  Nay, I might say—­”

But here the stranger, who had been wrinkling his brows and twisting his mustaches with well-bred patience, took advantage of an oratorical pause:—­

“It grieves me, Sir Priest, to interrupt the current of your eloquence as discourteously as I have already broken your meditations; but the day already waneth to night.  I have a matter of serious import to make with you, could I entreat your cautious consideration a few moments.”

Father Jose hesitated.  The temptation was great, and the prospect of acquiring some knowledge of the Great Enemy’s plans not the least trifling object.  And if the truth must be told, there was a certain decorum about the stranger that interested the Padre.  Though well aware of the Protean shapes the Arch-Fiend could assume, and though free from the weaknesses of the flesh, Father Jose was not above the temptations of the spirit.  Had the Devil appeared, as in the case of the pious St. Anthony, in the likeness of a comely damsel, the good Father, with his certain experience of the deceitful sex, would have whisked her away in the saying of a paternoster.  But there was, added to the security of age, a grave sadness about the stranger,—­a thoughtful consciousness as of being at a great moral disadvantage,—­which at once decided him on a magnanimous course of conduct.