while the chapel-master was writing and posting this letter, admet-el-abdoun was gathering together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings, consisting of three old hooded mantles, two cloaks of goat's wool, a mortar for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. he loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she might be, a woman uglier than an unexpected piece of bad news, and filthier than her husband's conscience, and issued forth from ceuta, telling the soldier on guard at the gate opening on the moorish country that they were going to fez for change of air, by the advice of a veterinary; and as from that day—now more than sixty years ago—to this no one in ceuta or its neighborhood has ever again seen manos-gordas, it is obvious that don bonifacio tudela y gonzalez had not the satisfaction of receiving from his hands the translation of the document, either on the following, or on any other day during the remainder of his existence; which, indeed, cannot have been very long, since, according to reliable information, it appears that his adored pepita took to herself, after his death, another husband, an asturian drum-major residing in marbella, whom she presented with four children, beautiful as the sun, and that she was again a widow at the time of the death of the king, at which epoch she gained, by competition in malaga, the title of gossip and the position of matron in the custom-house.

and now let us follow manos-gordas and learn what became of him and of the mysterious document.