They had carried the stricken man back to the corner of the Calle San
Gregorio and the Plazuela San Bruno, and from the movements of the
bearers Sarrion had received the conviction that they had entered the
house immediately beyond the angle of the high building opposite to the
Episcopal Palace.

Sarrion followed his memory step by step. He determined to go into the
house--a huge building--divided into many small apartments. The door had
never particularly attracted his attention. Like many of the doorways of
these great houses, it was wide and high, giving access to a dark
stairway of stone. The doors stood open night and day. For this stairway
was a common one, as its dirtiness would testify.

There was some one coming down the stairs now. Sarrion, remembering that
his face was well known, and that he had no particular business in any of
the apartments into which the house was divided, paused for a moment, and
waited on the threshold. He looked up the dark stairs, and slowly
distinguished the form and face of the newcomer. It was his old friend
Evasio Mon--smart, well-brushed, smiling a good-morning to all the world
this sunny day.

They had not met for many years. Their friendship had been one of those
begun by parents, and carried on in after years by the children more from
habit than from any particular tie of sympathy. For we all find at length
that the nursery carpet is not the world. Their ways had parted soon
after the nursery, and, though they had met frequently, they had never
trodden the same path again. For Evasio Mon had been educated as a
priest.

"I have often wondered why I have never clashed--with Evasio Mon,"