the peon who is said to have reached and fired the building under cover
of the huge slab of stone on his back. When I had waited a while in the
anteroom, the _jefe politico_, the supreme commander of the city
appointed by the governor of the State, appeared, the entire roomful of
officials and visitors dropping their cigarettes and rising to greet him
with bared heads. He gave me permission to enter, and the
_presidente_, a podgy second jailor, took me in charge as the iron
door opened to let me in. The walls once red with the blood of Spaniards
slaughtered by the forces of the priest of Dolores had lost that tint in
the century since passed, and were smeared with nothing more startling
than a certain lack of cleanliness. The immense, three-story, stone
building of colonial days enclosed a vast patio in which prisoners
seemed to enjoy complete freedom, lying about the yard in the brilliant
sunshine, playing cards, or washing themselves and their scanty clothing
in the huge stone fountain in the center. The so-called cells in which
they were shut up in groups during the night were large chambers that
once housed the colonial government. By day many of them work at weaving
hats, baskets, brushes, and the like, to sell for their own benefit,
thus being able to order food from outside and avoid the mess brought in
barrels at two and seven of each afternoon for those dependent on
government rations. Now and then a wife or feminine friend of one of
the prisoners appeared at the grating with a basket of food. Several of
the inmates were called one by one to the crack of an iron door in the
wall to hear the sentence the judge had chosen to impose upon them in
the quiet of his own home; for public jury trial is not customary in
Spanish America.

In the fine gallery around the patio, in the second-story, we were
joined by an American from Colorado, charged with killing a Mexican, but
who seemed little worried with his present condition or doubtful of his