“Stay,” said the Penitent.  “Your Excellency has not heard all the story, nor yet arrived near the moral. . . .  Between ourselves the reverend fathers were lenient with me because—­well, it may have been because I hold some influence among the beggars of Lisbon, who are numerous and not always meek, in spite of the promise that meekness shall inherit the earth.  I may confess, in short, that my presence in the procession was to some extent a farce, and the result of a compromise.  But, all the same, your Excellency does ill to disbelieve in miracles:  as I dare say your Excellency, casting an eye about Lisbon on this particular day of All the Saints, will not dispute?”

“Alas, sir!  I have seen too many horrors to-day to be in any mood to argue.”

“Then,” said the Penitent, skipping up, “you are in the precise mood to be convinced; as I have seen men, under extremity of torture, ready to believe anything.  Come!”

She hesitated.  “Where would you lead me?”

“To a miracle,” he answered, and, with a fine gesture, flinging his tattered cloak over his shoulder, he led the way.  He strode rapidly down a couple of streets.  Once or twice coming to a chasm across the roadway he paused, drew back, and cleared it with a leap.  But at these pitfalls he neither turned nor offered Ruth a hand.  She followed him panting, so agile was his pace.

The first street ran south, the second east.  He entered a third which turned north again as if to lead back into the Square.  After following it for twenty yards he halted and allowed her to catch up with him.

“You are a devoted wife,” said the Penitent admiringly.  “Would it alter your devotion at all to know that he was with another woman?”

“No,” answered Ruth.  “I knew it, in fact.”  She wondered that this beggar man could force her to speak so frankly.

“In an earthquake,” said he, “one gets down to naked truth, or near to it.  If he were unfaithful now—­would that alter your desire to find and save him?”

“Sir, why do you ask these things?”

“Did your Excellency not know that its beggars are the eyes of Lisbon?  But you have not answered me.”

“Nor will.  That I am here—­is it not enough?”

The Penitent peered at her in the dim light and nodded.  He led her forward a pace or two and pointed to something imbedded in a pile of stones, lime, rubble.  It was the wreck of a chaise.  Two males lay crushed under it, their heads and a couple of legs protruding.  A splintered door, wrenched from its hinges, lay face-uppermost crowning the heap.  It bore a coronet and the arms of Montalegre.

“Are they—­” she stammered, but caught at her voice and recovered it. “—­Are they here, under this?”

“No,” he said, and again led the way, crossing the street to a house of which the upper storey overhung the street, supported by a line of pillars.  Three or four of these pillars had fallen.  Of the rest, nine out of ten stood askew, barely holding up the house, through the floors of which stout beams had thrust themselves and stuck at all angles from the burst plaster.