The spiritual and temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good friends.

With Dr.
Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs.
Gould, and lived in the hospital building, they were on not so intimate terms.

But no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long bitter glance, was mysterious and uncanny.

The other two authorities worked in harmony.

Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled, with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his ears.