The paw kept swinging about like a pendulum for a
few seconds, and was then suddenly thrust into the Padre's open mouth as
he lay back asleep, and again giving him another smart crack, vanished
as before.
"Hobble, gobble," gurgled the Priest, nearly choked.
"Ave Maria purissima, que bocado--what a mouthful!--What can that be?"
This was more than I knew, I must confess, and altogether I was
consumedly puzzled, but, from a disinclination to alarm the women, I
held my tongue. Padre Carera this time moved away to the other side
from beneath the hole, but still within two feet of it--in fact, he
could not get in this direction farther for the altar--piece--and being
still half asleep, he lay back once more against the wall to finish his
nap, taking the precaution, however, to clap on his long shovel hat,
shaped like a small canoe, crosswise, with the peaks standing out from
each side of his head, in place of wearing it fore and aft, as usual.
Well, thought I, a strange party certainly; but drowsiness was fast
settling down on me also, when the same black paw was again thrust
through the hole, and I distinctly heard a nuzzling, whining, short
bark. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, but before I was quite awake, the
head and neck of a large Newfoundland dog was shoved into the chapel
through the round aperture, and making a long stretch, with the black
paws thrust down and resting on the wall, supporting the creature, the
animal suddenly snatched the Padre's hat off his head, and giving it an
angry worry--as much as to say, "Confound it--I had hoped to have had
the head in it"--it dropped it on the floor, and with a loud yell,
Sneezer, my own old dear Sneezer, leaped into the midst of us,
floundering amongst the sleeping women, and kicking the firebrands
about, making them hiss again with the water he shook from his shaggy
coat, and frightening all hands like the very devil.
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