ting opportunity for consulting the evangelist. I stepped up to the old man, and tapped him gently on the shoulder.
"Can you tell me," said I, "where the licentiate Don Tadeo Cristobal lives?"
"Don Tadeo Cristobal, do you say? He was here a minute ago."
"Was Don Tadeo here?"
"Did you not see how obligingly he caused a message to be delivered to the bandit Pepito Rechifla, that one of the prettiest Chinas in Mexico dictated to me?"
"What! was that man in the sombrero and red cloak Don Tadeo the licentiate?"
"It was."
"And where shall I find him now?"
"I do not know; for, to say the truth, he has no settled abode, but lives a little every where. If, however, you wish to consult him on urgent business, go this very evening, between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, to the Callejon del Arco (blind alley of the arcade); you are sure to find him in the last house on the right as you pass the square."
I thanked the scribe, and, after giving him a few reals for his trouble, directed my steps to the Callejon del Arco. Although it was scarcely seven o'clock in the evening, I went to try to find out, before nightfall, the house which I intended to visit two hours afterward. Experience had taught me that such precautions were not useless in Mexico; besides, the Callejon del Arco had long been notorious as one of the most dangerous places in the Mexican capital.
The appearance of the alley justified but too well the reputation which it had acquired. The dense mass of houses, of which the Merchants' Arcades form a
