Esteban came back and rejoined his brother.

"You must say what you would like for breakfast. It would soon be
ready; ask, man, ask for what you want, for though I am poor I shall
take little credit to myself unless I can make you pick up a little
and lose that look of a resuscitated corpse."

Gabriel smiled sadly.

"It is useless your troubling; my stomach is quite gone; a little milk
is enough for it, and I am thankful if it retains it."

Esteban ordered the old woman to go into the town in search of the
milk, and he had hardly seated himself by his brother's side when the
door giving into the cloister opened, and the head of a young man
appeared.

"Good-day, uncle!" he exclaimed.

His face was unhealthy and currish, the eyes were malicious, and above
his ears were combed two large tufts of glossy hair.

"Come in, vagabond, come in," said the "Wooden Staff."

And he added, turning to his brother:

"Do you know who this is? No? It is the son of our poor brother, whom
God has taken to his glory. He lives in the upper dwellings of the
cloister with his mother, who washes the linen of the choir, and of