Chapter 15…

Chapter 15

Juan's startling announcement linked Josè again with a fading past. Standing with his arm about Carmen, while the child looked up wonderingly at her grimly silent protector, the priest seemed to have fallen with dizzy precipitation from some spiritual height into a familiar material world of men and events. Into his chastened mentality there now rushed a rabble rout of suggestions, throwing into wild confusion the orderly forces of mind which he was striving to marshal to meet the situation. He recalled, for the first time in his new environment, the significant conversation of Don Jorge and the priest Diego, in Banco. He saw again the dark clouds that were lowering above the unhappy country when he left Cartagena. Had they at last broken? And would carnal lust and rapine again drench fair Colombia with the blood of her misguided sons? Were the disturbance only a local uprising, headed by a coterie of selfish politicians, it would produce but a passing ripple. Colombia had witnessed many such, and had, by a judicious redistribution of public offices, generally met the crises with little difficulty. On the other hand, if the disorder drew its stimulus from the deep-seated, swelling sentiment of protest against the continued affiliation of Church and State, then what might not ensue before reason would again lay her restraining hand upon the rent nation! For--strange anomaly--no strife is so venomous, no wars so bloody, no issues so steeped in deadliest hatred, as those which break forth in the name of the humble Christ.

A buzzing concourse was gathering in the plaza before the church. Leaving Carmen in charge of Doña Maria, Josè mingled with the excited people. Juan had brought no definite information, other than that already imparted to Josè, but his elastic Latin imagination had supplied all lacking essentials, and now, with much gesticulation and rolling of eyes, with frequent alternations of shrill chatter and dignified pomp of phrase, he was portraying in a mélange of picturesque and poetic Spanish the supposed happenings along the great river.

Josè forced the lad gently aside and addressed the thoroughly excited people himself, assuring them that no reliable news was as yet at hand, and bidding them assemble in the church after the evening meal, where he would advise with them regarding their future course. He then sought the Alcalde, and drew him into his store, first closing the door against the excited multitude.

"Bien, Señor Padre, what are you going to do?" The Alcalde was atremble with insuppressible excitement.

"Don Mario, we must protect Simití," replied the priest, with a show of calm which he did not possess.

"Caramba, but not a man will stay! They will run to the hills! The guerrillas will come, and Simití will be burned to the ground!"

"Will you stay--with me?"

"Na, and be hacked by the machetes of the guerrillas, or lassoed by government soldiers and dragged off to the war?" The official mopped the damp from his purple brow.

"Caramba!" he went on. "But the Antioquanians will come down the Simití trail from Remedios and butcher every one they meet! They hate us Simitanians, since we whipped them in the revolution of seventy-six! And--Diablo! if we stay here and beat them back, then the federal troops will come with their ropes and chains and force us away to fight on their side! Nombre de Dios! I am for the mountains--pronto!"

Josè's own fear mounted by leaps. And yet, in the welter of conflicting thought two objects stood out above the rest--Carmen and Rosendo. The latter was on the trail, somewhere. Would he fall afoul of the bandits who find in these revolutions their opportunities for plunder and bloodshed? As for Carmen--the priest's apprehensions were piling mountain-high. He had quickly forgotten his recent theories regarding the nature of God and man. He had been swept by the force of ill tidings clean off the lofty spiritual plane up to which he had struggled during the past weeks. Again he was befouled in the mire of material fears and corroding speculations as to the probable manifestations of evil, real and immanent. Don Mario was right. He must take the child and fly at once. He would go to Doña Maria immediately and bid her prepare for the journey.

"You had best go to Don Nicolás," replied Doña Maria, when the priest had voiced his fears to her. "He lives in Boque, and has a hacienda somewhere up that river. He will send you there in his canoe."

"And Boque is--?"

"Three hours from Simití, across the shales. You must start with the dawn, or the heat will overtake you before you arrive."

"Then make yourself ready, Doña Maria," said Josè in relief, "and we will set out in the morning."

"Padre, I will stay here," the woman quietly replied.

"Stay here!" ejaculated the priest. "Impossible! But why?"

"There will be many women too old to leave the town, Padre. I will stay to help them if trouble comes. And I would not go without Rosendo."

Shame fell upon the priest like a blanket. He, the Cura, was deserting his charge! And this quiet, dignified woman had shown herself stronger than the man of God! He turned to the door. Carmen was just entering. He took the child by the hand and led her to his own cottage.

"Carmen," he said, as she stood expectantly before him, "we--there is trouble in the country--that is, men are fighting and killing down on the river--and they may come here. We must--I mean, I think it best for us to go away from Simití for a while." The priest's eyes fell before the perplexed gaze of the girl.

"Go away?" she repeated slowly. "But, Padre--why?"

"The soldiers might come--wicked men might come and harm you, chiquita!"

The child seemed not to comprehend. "Is it that you think they will, Padre?" she at length spoke.

"I fear so, little one," he made reply.

"But--why should they?"

"Because they want to steal and kill," he returned sadly.

"They can't, Padre--they can't!" the girl said quickly. "You told me that people see only their thoughts, you know. They only think they want to steal--and they don't think right--"

"But," he interrupted bitterly, "that doesn't keep them from coming here just the same and--and--" He checked his words, as a faint memory of his recent talks with the girl glowed momentarily in his seething brain.

"But we can keep them from coming here, Padre--can't we?"

"How, child?"

"By thinking right ourselves, Padre--you said so, days ago--don't you remember?" The girl came to the frightened man and put her little arm about his neck. It was an action that had become habitual with her. "Padre dear, you read me something from your Bible just yesterday. It was about God, and He said, 'I am that which was, and is, and is to come.' Don't you remember? But, Padre dear, if He is that which is to come, how can anything bad come?"

O, ye of little faith! Could ye not watch one hour with me--the Christ-principle? Must ye ever flee when the ghost of evil stalks before you with his gross assumptions?

Yes, Josè remembered. But he had said those things to her and evolved those beautiful theories in a time of peace. Now his feeble faith was flying in panic before the demon of unbelief, which had been aroused by sudden fear.

The villagers were gathering before his door like frightened sheep. They sought counsel, protection, from him, the unfaithful shepherd. Could he not, for their sakes, tear himself loose from bondage to his own deeply rooted beliefs, and launch out into his true orbit about God? Was life, happiness, all, at the disposal of physical sense? Did he not love these people? And could not his love for them cast out his fear? If the test had come, would he meet it, calmly, even alone with his God, if need be?--or would he basely flee? He was not alone. Carmen stood by him. She had no part in his cowardice. But Carmen--she was only a child, immature, inexperienced in the ways of the world! True. Yet the great God himself had caused His prophets to see that "a little child shall lead them." And surely Carmen was now leading in fearlessness and calm trust, in the face of impending evil.

Josè rose from his chair and threw back his shoulders. He stepped quickly to the door. "My children," he said gently, holding out his arms over them. "Be not afraid. I shall not leave Simití, but remain here to help and protect all who will stay with me. If the guerrillas or soldiers come we will meet them here, where we shall be protecting our loved ones and our homes. Come to the church to-night, and there we will discuss plans. Go now, and remember that your Cura has said that there shall no harm befall you."

Did he believe his own words? He wondered.

The people dispersed; Carmen was called by Doña Maria; and Josè dropped down upon his bed to strive again to clear his mind of the foul brood which had swept so suddenly into it, and to prepare for the evening meeting.

Late that night, as he crossed the road from the church to his little home, his pulse beat rapidly under the stimulus of real joy. He had conquered his own and the fears of the Alcalde, and that official had at length promised to stay and support him. The people's fears of impressment into military service had been calmly met and assuaged, though Josè had yielded to their wish to form a company of militia; and had even agreed to drill them, as he had seen the troops of Europe drilled and prepared for conflict. There were neither guns nor ammunition in the town, but they could drill with their machetes--for, he repeated to himself, this was but a concession, an expedient, to keep the men occupied and their minds stimulated by his own show of courage and preparedness. It was decided to send Lázaro Ortiz at once into the Guamocó district, to find and warn Rosendo; while Juan was to go to Bodega Central for whatever news he might gather, and to return with immediate warning, should danger threaten their town. Similar instruction was to be sent to Escolastico, at Badillo. Within a few days a runner should be despatched over the Guamocó trail, to spread the information as judiciously as possible that the people of Simití were armed and on the alert to meet any incursion from guerrilla bands. The ripple of excitement quickly died away. The priest would now strive mightily to keep his own thought clear and his courage alive, to sustain his people in whatever experience might befall them.

Quiet reigned in the little village the next morning, and its people went about their familiar duties with but a passing thought of the events of the preceding day. The Alcalde called at the parish house early for further instructions in regard to the proposed company of militia. The priest decided to drill his men twice a day, at the rising and setting of the sun. Carmen's lessons were then resumed, and soon Josè was again laboring conscientiously to imbibe the spirit of calm trust which dwelt in this young girl.

The Master's keynote before every threatening evil was, "Be not afraid." Carmen's life-motif was, "God is everywhere." Josè strove to see that the Christ-principle was eternal, and as available to mankind now as when the great Exemplar propounded it to the dull ears of his followers. But men must learn how to use it. When they have done this, Christianity will be as scientific and demonstrable to mankind as is now the science of mathematics. A rule, though understood, is utterly ineffective if not applied. Yet, how to apply the Christ-principle? is the question convulsing a world to-day.

God, the infinite creative mind, is that principle. Jesus showed clearly--so clearly that the wonder is men could have missed the mark so completely--that the great principle becomes available only when men empty their minds of pride, selfishness, ignorance, and human will, and put in their place love, humility and truth. This step taken, there will flow into the human consciousness the qualities of God himself, giving powers that mortals believe utterly impossible to them. But hatred must go; self-love, too; carnal ambition must go; and fear--the cornerstone of every towering structure of mortal misery--must be utterly cast out by an understanding of the allness of the Mind that framed the spiritual universe.

Josè, looking at Carmen as she sat before him, tried to know that love was the salvation, the righteousness, right-thinking, by which alone the sons of men could be redeemed. The world would give such utterance the lie, he knew. To love an enemy is weakness! The sons of earth must be warriors, and valiantly fight! Alas! the tired old world has fought for ages untold, and gained--nothing. Did Jesus fight? Not as the world. He had a better way. He loved his enemies with a love that understood the allness of God, and the consequent nothingness of the human concept. Knowing the concept of man as mortal to be an illusion, Jesus then knew that he had no enemies.

The work-day closed, and Carmen was about to leave. A shadow fell across the open doorway. Josè looked up. A man, dressed in clerical garb, stood looking in, his eyes fixed upon Carmen. Josè's heart stopped, and he sat as one stunned. The man was Padre Diego Polo.

"Ah, brother in Christ!" the newcomer cried, advancing with outstretched hands. "Well met, indeed! I ached to think I might not find you here! But--Caramba! can this be my little Carmen, from whom I tore myself in tears four years ago and more? Diablo! but she has grown to be a charming señorita already." He bent over and kissed the child loudly upon each cheek.

Josè with difficulty restrained himself from pouncing upon the man as he watched him pass his fat hands over the girl's bare arms and feast his lecherous eyes upon her round figure and plump limbs. The child shrank under the withering touch. Freeing herself, she ran from the room, followed by a taunting laugh from Diego.

"Caramba!" he exclaimed, sinking into the chair vacated by the girl. "But I had the devil's own trouble getting here! And I find everything quiet as a funeral in this sink of a town, just as if hell were not spewing fire down on the river! Dios! But give me a bit of rum, amigo. My spirits droop like the torn wing of a heron."

Josè slowly found his voice. "I have no rum. I regret exceedingly, friend. But doubtless the Alcalde can supply you. Have you seen him?"

"Hombre! With what do you quench your thirst?" ejaculated the disappointed priest. "Lake water?" Then he added with a fatuous grin:

"No, I have not yet honored the Alcalde with a call. Anxious care drove me straight from the boat to you; for with you, a brother priest, I knew I would find hospitality and protection."

Josè sat speechless. After a few moments, during which he fanned himself vigorously with his black felt hat, Diego continued volubly:

"You are consumed to know what brings me here, eh? Bien, I will anticipate your questions. The country is on fire around Banco. And--you know they do not love priests down that way--well, I saw that it had come around to my move. I therefore got out--quickly. H'm!

"But," he continued, "luckily I had screwed plenty of Masses out of the Banco sheep this past year, and my treasure box was comfortably full. Bueno, I hired a canoe and a couple of strapping peones, who brought me by night, and by damnably slow degrees, up the river to Bodega Central. As luck would have it, I chanced to be there the day Juan arrived from Simití. So I straightway caused inquiry to be made of him respecting the present whereabouts of our esteemed friend, Don Rosendo. Learning that my worthy brother was prospecting for La Libertad, it occurred to me that this decaying town might afford me the asylum I needed until I could make the necessary preparations to get up into the mountains. Caramba! but I shall not stay where a stray bullet or a badly directed machete may terminate my noble life-aspirations!"

Josè groaned inwardly. "But, how dared you come to Simití?" he exclaimed. "You were once forced to leave this town--!"

"Assuredly, amigo," Diego replied with great coolness. "And I would not risk my tender skin again had I not believed that you were here to shield me. My only safety lies in making the mountains. Their most accessible point is by way of Simití. From here I can go to the San Lucas country; eventually get back to the Guamocó trail; and ultimately land in Remedios, or some other town farther south, where the anticlerical sentiment is not so cursedly strong. I have money and two negro boys. The boat I shall have to leave here in your care. Bien, learning that Rosendo, my principal annoyance and obstruction, was absent, and that you, my friend, were here, I decided to brave the wrath of the simple denizens of this hole, and spend a day or two as guest of yourself and my good friend, the Alcalde, before journeying farther. Thus you have it all, in parvo. But, Dios y diablo! that trip up the river has nearly done for me! We traveled by night and hid in the brush by day, where millions of gnats and mosquitoes literally devoured me! Caramba! and you so inhospitable as to have no rum!"

The garrulous priest paused for breath. Then he resumed:

"A voluptuous little wench, that Carmen! Keeping her for yourself, eh? But you will have to give her up. Belongs to the Church, you know. But don't let our worthy Don Wenceslas hear of her good looks, for he'd pop her into a convent presto! And later he--Bien, you had better get rid of her before she makes you trouble. I'll take her off your hands myself, even though I shall be traveling for the next few months. But, say," changing the subject abruptly, "Don Wenceslas sprung his trap too soon, eh?"

"I don't follow you," said Josè, consuming with indignation over the priest's coarse talk.

"Diablo! he pulls a revolution before it is ripe. Is anything more absurd! It begins as he intended, anticlerical; and so it will run for a while. But after that--Bien, you will see it reverse itself and turn solely political, with the present Government on top at the last, and the end a matter of less than six weeks."

"Do you think so?" asked Josè, eagerly grasping at a new hope.

"I know it!" ejaculated Diego. "Hombre! But I have been too close to matters religious and political in this country all my life not to know that Don Wenceslas has this time committed the blunder of being a bit too eager. Had he waited a few months longer, and then pulled the string--Dios y diablo! there would have been such a fracas as to turn the Cordilleras bottom up! Now all that is set back for years--Quien sabe?"

"But," queried the puzzled Josè, "how could Wenceslas, a priest, profit by an anticlerical war?"

"Caramba, amigo! But the good Wenceslas is priest only in name! He is a politician, bred to the game. He lays his plans with the anticlericals, knowing full well that Church and State can not be separated in this land of mutton-headed peones. Bueno, the clever man precipitates a revolution that can have but one result, the closer union of Rome and the Colombian Government. And for this he receives the direction of the See of Cartagena and the disposition of the rich revenues from the mines and fincas of his diocese. Do you get me?"

"And, amigo, how long will this disturbance continue?" said Josè, speaking earnestly.

"I have told you, a few weeks at the most," replied Diego with a show of petulance. "But, just the same, as agent of your friend Wenceslas, I have been a mite too active along the river, especially in the town of Banco, to find safety anywhere within the pale of civilization until this little fracas blows over. This one being an abortion, the next revolution can come only after several years of most painstaking preparation. But, mark me, amigo, that one will not miscarry, nor will it be less than a scourge of the Lord!"

Despite the sordidness of the man, Josè was profoundly grateful to him for this information. And there could be no doubt of its authenticity, coming as it did from a tool of Wenceslas himself. Josè became cheerful, even animated.

"Good, then! Now when do you expect to set out for San Lucas?" he asked. "Rosendo may return any day."

"Diablo! Then I must be off at once!"

"To-morrow?" suggested Josè eagerly.

"Caramba, hermano! Why so desirous of my departure? To be sure, to-morrow, if possible. But I must have a chat with our good friend, the Alcalde. So do me the inexpressible favor to accompany me to his door, and there leave me. My peones are down at the boat, and I would rather not face the people of Simití alone."

"Gladly," assented Josè.

The man rose to depart. At that moment Doña Maria appeared at the door bearing a tray with Josè's supper. She stopped short as she recognized Diego.

"Ah, Señora Doña Maria!" exclaimed Diego, bowing low. "I kiss your hand."

The woman looked inquiringly from Diego to Josè. Without a word she set the tray on the table and quickly departed.

"H'm, amigo, I think it well to visit the Alcalde at once," murmured Diego. "I regret that I bring the amiable señora no greeting from her charming daughter. Ay de mí!" he sighed, picking up his hat. "The conventions of this world are so narrow!"

Don Mario exclaimed loudly when he beheld the familiar figure of Padre Diego. Recovering from his astonishment he broke into a loud guffaw and clapped the grinning priest heartily upon the back.

"Caramba, man! But I admire you at last! I can forgive all your wickedness at sight of such nerve! Ramona!" calling to his daughter in the patio. "That last garrafón and some glasses! But enter, enter, señores! Why stand you there? My poor hovel is yours!" stepping aside and ceremoniously waving them in.

"Our friend finds that his supper awaits him," said Diego, laying a hand patronizingly upon Josè's arm. "But I will eat with you, my good Don Mario, and occupy a petate on your floor to-night. Conque, until later, Don Josè," waving a polite dismissal to the latter. "If not to-night, then in the morning temprano."

The audacity of the man nettled Josè. He would have liked to be present during the interview between the Alcalde and this cunning religio-political agent, for he knew that the weak-kneed Don Mario would be putty in his oily hands. However, Diego had shown him that he was not wanted. And there was nothing to do but nurse his temper and await events.

But, whatever deplorable results the visit of Diego might entail, he had at least brought present comfort to Josè in his report of the militant uprising now in progress, and the latter would sleep this night without the torment of dread apprehension.

The next morning Diego entered the parish house just as master and pupil were beginning their day's work.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "our parochial school is quite discriminating! No? One pupil! Bien, are there not enough children in the town to warrant a larger school, and with a Sister in charge? I will report the matter to the good Bishop."

Josè's wrath leaped into flame. "There is a school here, as you know, amigo, with a competent master," he replied with what calmness he could muster.

It was perhaps a hasty and unfortunate remark, for Josè knew he had been jealously selfish with Carmen.

"Caramba, yes!" retorted Diego. "A private school, to which the stubborn beasts that live in this sink will not send their brats! There must be a parochial school in Simití, supported by the people! Oh, don't worry; there is gold enough here, buried in patios and under these innocent-looking mud walls, to support the Pope for a decade--and that," he chuckled, "is no small sum!"

His eyes roved over Carmen and he began a mental appraisement of the girl. "Caramba!" muttering half to himself, after he had feasted his sight upon her for some moments, "but she is large for her age--and, Dios y diablo! a ravishing beauty!"

He stood for a while wrapped in thought. Then an idea seemed to filter through his cunning brain. His coarse, unmoral face brightened, and his thick lips parted in an evil smile.

"Come here, little one," he said patronizingly, extending his arms to the child. "Come, give your good Padre his morning kiss."

The girl shrank back in her chair and looked appealingly at Josè.

"No? Then I must come and steal it; and when you confess to good Padre Josè you may tell him it was all my fault."

He started toward her. A look of horror came into the child's face and she sprang from her seat. Josè swiftly rose. He seized Diego by the shoulder and whirled him quickly about. His face was menacing and his frame trembled.

"One moment, friend!" The voice was low, tense, and deliberate. "If you lay a hand on that child I will strike you dead at my feet!"

Diego recoiled. Cielo! was this the timid sheep that had stopped for a moment in Banco on its way to the slaughter? But there was no mistaking the spirit manifested now in that voice and attitude.

"Why, amigo!" he exclaimed, a foolish grin splitting his ugly features. "Your little joke startled me!"

Josè motioned Carmen to leave.

"Be seated, Don Diego. It would be well to understand each other more thoroughly."

Had Josè gone too far? He wondered. Heaven knew, he could not afford to make enemies, especially at this juncture! But he had not misread the thought coursing through the foul mind of Diego. And yet, violence now might ruin both the child and himself. He must be wiser.

"I--I was perhaps a little hasty, amigo," he began in gentler tones. "But, as you see, I have been quite wrought up of late--the news of the revolution, and--in these past months there have been many things to cause me worry. I--"

"Say no more, good friend," interrupted the oily Diego, his beady eyes twinkling. "But you will not wonder it struck me odd that a father should not be permitted to embrace his own daughter."

Dead silence, heavy and stifling, fell upon Josè. Slowly his throat filled, and his ears began to throb. Diego sat before him, smiling and twirling his fat thumbs. He looked like the images of Chinese gods Josè had seen in foreign lands.

Then the tortured man forced a laugh. Of course, the strain of yesterday had been too much for him! His overwrought mind had read into words and events meanings which they had not been meant to convey.

"True, amigo," he managed to say, striving to steady his voice. "But we spiritual Fathers should not forget--"

Diego laughed egregiously. "Caramba, man! Let us get to the meat in the nut. Why do you think I am in Simití, braving the wrath of Rosendo and others? Why have I left my comfortable quarters in Banco, to undertake a journey, long and hazardous, to this godless hole?"

He paused, apparently enjoying the suffering he saw depicted upon Josè's countenance.

"I will tell you," he resumed. "But you will keep my confidence, no? We are brother priests, and must hold together. You protect me in this, and I return the favor in a like indiscretion. Bien, I explain: I am here partly because of the revolution, as I told you yesterday, and partly, as I did not tell you, to see my little girl, my daughter, Carmen--

"Caramba, man!" he cried, bounding to his feet, as he saw Josè slowly rise before him. "Listen! It is God's truth! Sit down! Sit down!"

Josè dropped back into his chair like a withered leaf in the lull of a winter's wind.

"Dios y diablo, but it rends me to make this confession, amigo! And yet, I look to you for support! The girl, Carmen--I am her father!"

Diego paced dramatically up and down before the scarce hearing Josè and unfolded his story in a quick, jerky voice, with many a gesture and much rolling of his bright eyes.

"Her mother was a Spanish woman of high degree. We met in Bogotá. My vows prevented me from marrying her, else I should have done so. Caramba, but I loved her! Bien, I was called to Cartagena. She feared, in her delicate state, that I was deserting her. She tried to follow me, and at Badillo was put off the boat. There, poor child, she passed away in grief, leaving her babe. May she rest forever on the bosom of the blessed Virgin!" Diego bowed reverently and crossed himself.

"Then I lost all trace of her. My diligent inquiries revealed nothing. Two years later I was assigned to the parish of Simití. Here I saw the little locket which I had given her, and knew that Carmen was my child. Ah, Dios! what a revelation to a breaking heart! But I could not openly acknowledge her, for I was already in disgrace, as you know. And, once down, it is easy to sink still further. I confess, I was indiscreet here. I was forced to fly. Rosendo's daughter followed me, despite my protests. I was assigned to Banco. Bien, time passed, and you came. I had hoped you would take the little Carmen under your protection. God, how I grieved for the child! At last I determined, come what might, to see her. The revolution drove me to the mountains; and love for my girl brought me by way of Simití. And now, amigo, you have my confession--and you will not be hard on me? Caramba, I need a friend!" He sat down, and mopped his wet brow. His talk had shaken him visibly.

Again oppressive silence. Josè was staring with unseeing eyes out through the open doorway. A stream of sunlight poured over the dusty threshold, and myriad motes danced in the golden flood.

"Bien, amigo," Diego resumed, with more confidence. "I had not thought to reveal this, my secret, to you--nor to any one, for that matter--but just to get a peep at my little daughter, and assure my anxious heart of her welfare. But since coming here and seeing how mature she is my plans have taken more definite shape. I shall leave at daybreak to-morrow, if Don Mario can have my supplies ready on this short notice, and--will take Carmen with me."

Josè struggled wearily to his feet. The color had left his face, and ages seemed to bestride his bent shoulders. His voice quavered as he slowly spoke.

"Leave me now, Don Diego. It were better that we should not meet again until you depart."

"But, amigo--ah, I feel for you, believe me! You are attached to the child--who would not be? Caramba, what is this world but a cemetery of bleaching hopes! But--how can I ask it? Amigo, send the child to me at the house of the Alcalde. I would hold her in my arms and feel a father's joy. And bid the good Doña Maria make her ready for to-morrow's journey."

Josè turned to the man. An ominous calm now possessed him. "You said--the San Lucas district?"

"Quien sabe? good friend," Diego made hasty reply. "My plans seem quite altered since coming here. Bien, we must see. But I will leave you now. And you will send Carmen to me at once? And bid her bring her mother's locket. Conque, hasta luego, amigo."

He went to the door, and seeing his two negro peones loitering near, walked confidently and briskly to the house of Don Mario.

Josè, bewildered and benumbed, staggered into his sleeping room and sank upon the bed.

* * * * *

"Padre--Padre dear."

Carmen stood beside the stricken priest, and her little hand crept into his.

"I watched until I saw him go, and then I came in. He has bad thoughts, hasn't he? But--Padre dear, what is it? Did he make you think bad thoughts, too? He can't, you know, if you don't want to."

She bent over him and laid her cheek against his. Josè stared unseeing up at the thatch roof.

"Padre dear, everything has a rule, a principle, you told me. Don't you remember? But his thoughts haven't any principle, have they? Any more than the mistakes I make in algebra. Aren't we glad we know that!"

The child kissed the suffering man and wound her arms about his neck.

"Padre dear, he couldn't say anything that could make you unhappy--he just couldn't! God is everywhere, and you are His child--and I am, too--and--and there just isn't anything here but God, and we are in Him. Why, Padre, we are in Him, just like the little fish in the lake! Isn't it nice to know that--to really know it?"

Aye, if he had really known it he would not now be stretched upon a bed of torment. Yet, Carmen knew it. And his suffering was for her. Was he not really yielding to the mesmerism of human events? Why, oh, why could he not remain superior to them? Why continually rise and fall, tossed through his brief years like a dry weed in the blast?

It was because he would know evil, and yield to its mesmerism. His enemies were not without, but within. How could he hope to be free until he had passed from self-consciousness to the sole consciousness of infinite good?

"Padre dear, his bad thoughts have only the minus sign, haven't they?"

Yes, and Josè's now carried the same symbol of nothingness. Carmen was linked to the omnipresent mind that is God; and no power, be it Diego or his superior, Wenceslas, could effect a separation.

But if Carmen was Diego's child, she must go with him. Josè could no longer endure this torturing thought. He rose from the bed and sought Doña Maria.

"Señora," he pleaded, "tell me again what you know of Carmen's parents."

The good woman was surprised at the question, but could add nothing to what Rosendo had already told him. He asked to see again the locket. Alas! study it as he might, the portrait of the man was wholly indistinguishable. The sweet, sad face of the young mother looked out from its frame like a suffering. Magdalen. In it he thought he saw a resemblance to Carmen. As for Diego, the child certainly did not resemble him in the least. But years of dissipation and evil doubtless had wrought their changes in his features.

He looked around for Carmen. She had disappeared. He rose and searched through the house for her. Doña Maria, busy in the kitchen, had not seen her leave. His search futile, he returned with heavy heart to his own house and sat down to think. Mechanically he opened his Bible.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. Not "if," but "when." The sharp experiences of human existence are not to be avoided. But in their very midst the Christ-principle is available to the faithful searcher and worker.

Doña Maria came with the midday meal. Carmen had not returned. Josè, alarmed beyond measure, prepared to set out in search of her. But at that moment one of Diego's peones appeared at the door with his master's request that the child be sent at once to him. At least, then, she was not in his hands; and Josè breathed more freely. It seemed to him that, should he see her in Diego's arms, he must certainly strangle him. He shuddered at the thought. Only a few minutes before he had threatened to kill him!

He left his food untasted. Unspeakably wearied with his incessant mental battle, he threw himself again upon his bed, and at length sank into a deep sleep.

The shadows were gathering when he awoke with a start. He heard a call from the street. Leaping from the bed, he hastened to the door, just as Rosendo, swaying beneath his pack, and accompanied by Lázaro Ortiz, rounded the corner and made toward him.

"Hola, amigo Cura!" Rosendo shouted, his face radiant. "Come and bid me welcome, and receive good news!"

At the same moment Carmen came flying toward them from the direction of the shales. Josè instantly divined the motive which had sent her out there. He turned his face to hide the tears which sprang to his eyes.

"Thank God!" he murmured in a choking voice. Then he hastened to his faithful ally and clasped him in his arms.

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Chapter 16

Struggling vainly with his agitation, while the good tidings which he could no longer hold fairly bubbled from his lips, Rosendo dragged the priest into the parish house and made fast the doors. Swinging his chair to the floor, he hastily unstrapped his kit and extracted a canvas bag, which he handed to Josè.

"Padre," he exclaimed in a loud whisper, "we have found it!"

"Found what?" the bewildered Josè managed to ask.

"Gold, Padre--gold! Look, the bag is full! Hombre! not less than forty pesos oro--and more up there--quien sabe how much! Caramba!"

Rosendo fell into a chair, panting with excitement. Josè sat down with quickening pulse and waited for the full story. It was not long coming.

"Padre--I knew we would find it--but not this way! Hombre! It was back of Popales. I had been washing the sands there for two days after my return. There was a town at that place, years ago. The stone foundations of the houses can still be seen. The Tiguí was rich at that point then; but it is washed out now. Bien, one morning I started out at daybreak to prospect Popales creek, the little stream cutting back into the hills behind the old settlement. There was a heavy mist over the whole valley, and I could not see ten feet before my face. Bien, I had gone up-stream a long distance, perhaps several miles, without finding more than a few colors, when suddenly the mist began to clear, and there before me, only a few feet away, stood a young deer, just as dumfounded as I was."

He paused a moment for breath, laughing meanwhile at the memory of his surprise. Then he resumed.

"Bueno, fresh venison looked good to me, Padre, living on salt bagre and beans. But I had no weapon, save my machete. So I let drive with that, and with all my strength. The big knife struck the deer on a leg. The animal turned and started swiftly up the mountain side, with myself in pursuit. Caramba, that was a climb! But with his belly chasing him, a hungry man will climb anything! Through palms and ferns and high weeds, falling over rocks and tripping on ground vines we went, clear to the top of the hill. Then the animal turned and plunged down a glen. On the descent it traveled faster, and in a few minutes had passed clean from my sight. Caramba, I was angry!"

He stopped to laugh again at the incident.

"The glen," he continued, "ran down for perhaps a hundred yards, and then widened into a clearing. I have been in the Popales country many times, Padre, but I had never been to the top of this mountain, nor had I ever seen this glen, which seemed to be an ancient trail. So I went on down toward the clearing. As I approached it I crossed what apparently was the bed of an ancient stream, dry now, but with many pools of water from the recent rains, which are very heavy in that region. Bien, I turned and followed this dry bed for a long distance, and at last came out into the open. I found myself in a circular space, surrounded by high hills, with no opening but the stream bed along which I had come. At the far end of the basin-shaped clearing the creek bed stopped abruptly; and I then knew that the water had formerly come over the cliff above in a high waterfall, but had flowed in a direction opposite to that of Popales creek, this mountain being the divide.

"Bueno; now for my discovery! I several times filled my batea with gravel from the dry bed and washed it in one of the pools. I got only a few scattered colors. But as I dug along the margin of the bed I noticed what seemed to be pieces of adobe bricks. I went on up one side of the bowl-shaped glen, and found many such pieces, and in some places stones that had served as foundations for houses at one time. So I knew that there had been a town there, long, long ago. But it must have been an Indian village, for had it been known to the Spaniards I surely would have learned of it from my parents. The ground higher up was strewn with the broken bricks. I picked up many of the pieces and examined them. Almost every one showed a color or two of gold; but not enough to pay washing the clay from which they had been made. But--and here is the end of my story--I have said that this open space was shaped like a bowl, with all sides dipping sharply to the center. It occurred to me that in the years--who knows how many?--that have passed since this town was abandoned, the heavy rains that had dissolved the mud bricks also must have washed the mud and the gold it carried down into the center of this basin, where, with great quantities of water sweeping over it every rainy season, the clay and sand would gradually wash out, leaving the gold concentrated in the center."

The old man stopped to light the thick cigar which he had rolled during his recital.

"Caramba! Padre, it was a lucky thought! I located the center of the big bowl as nearly as possible, and began to dig. I washed some of the dirt taken a foot or two below the surface. Hombre! it left a string of gold clear around the batea! I became so excited I could scarcely dig. Every batea, as I got deeper and deeper, yielded more and more gold! I hurried back to the Tiguí for my supplies; and then camped up there and washed the sand and clay for two weeks, until I had to come back to Simití for food. Forty pesos oro in fifteen days! Caramba! And there is more. And all concentrated from the mud bricks of that old, forgotten town in the mountains, miles back of Popales! May the Virgin bless that deer and mend its hurt leg!"

One hundred and sixty francs in shining gold flakes! And who knew how much more to be had for the digging!

"Ah, Padre," mused Rosendo, "it is wonderful how things turn out--that is, when, as the little Carmen says, you think right! I thought I'd find it--I knew it was right! And here it is! Caramba!"

At the mention of Carmen's name Josè again became troubled. Rosendo as yet did not know of Diego's presence in Simití. Should he tell him? It might lead to murder. Rosendo would learn of it soon enough; and Josè dared not cast a blight upon the happiness of this rare moment. He would wait.

As they sat reunited at the supper table in Rosendo's house, a constant stream of townspeople passed and repassed the door, some stopping to greet the returned prospector, others lingering to witness Rosendo's conduct when he should learn of Diego's presence in the town, although no one would tell him of it. The atmosphere was tense with suppressed excitement, and Josè trembled with dread. Doña Maria moved quietly about, giving no hint of the secret she carried. Carmen laughed and chatted, but did not again mention the man from whose presence she had fled to the shales that morning. Who could doubt that in the midst of the prevalent mental confusion she had gone out there "to think"? And having performed that duty, she had, as usual, left her problem with her immanent God.

"I will go up and settle with Don Mario this very night," Rosendo abruptly announced, as they rose from the table.

"Not yet, friend!" cried Josè quickly. "Lázaro has told you of the revolution; and we have many plans to consider, now that we have found gold. Come with me to the shales. We will not be interrupted there. We can slip out through the rear door, and so avoid these curious people. I have much to discuss with you."

Rosendo chuckled. "My honest debts first, buen Cura," he said sturdily. And throwing back his shoulders he strutted about the room with the air of a plutocrat. With his bare feet, his soiled, flapping attire, and his swelling sense of self-importance he cut a comical figure.

"But, Rosendo--" Josè was at his wits' end. Then a happy thought struck him. "Why, man! I want to make you captain of the militia we are forming, and I must talk with you alone first!"

The childish egotism of the old man was instantly touched.

"Capitán! el capitán!" he cried in glee. He slapped his chest and strode proudly around the room. "Caramba! Capitán Don Rosendo Ariza, S! Ha! Shall I carry a sword and wear gold braid?--But these fellows are mighty curious," he muttered, looking out through the door at the loitering townsfolk. "The shales, then, Padre! Close the front door, Carmencita."

Josè scarcely breathed until, skirting the shore of the lake and making a detour of the town, he and Rosendo at length reached the shale beds unnoticed.

"Rosendo, the gold deposit that you have discovered--is it safe? Could others find it?" queried Josè at length.

"Never, Padre! No trail leads to it. And no one would think of looking there for gold. I discovered it by the merest chance, and I left no trace of my presence. Besides, there are no gold hunters in that country, and very few people in the entire district of Guamocó."

"And how long will it take you to wash out the deposit, do you think?"

"Quien sabe? Padre. A year--two years--perhaps longer."

"But you cannot return to Guamocó until the revolution is over."

"Bien, Padre, I will remain in Simití a week or two. We may then know what to expect of the revolution."

"You are not afraid?"

"Of what? Caramba, no!"

Josè sighed. No one seemed to fear but himself.

"Rosendo, about the gold for Cartagena: how can we send it, even when peace is restored?"

"Juan might go down each month," Rosendo suggested.

"Impossible! The expense would be greater than the amount shipped. And it would not be safe. Besides, our work must be done with the utmost secrecy. No one but ourselves must know of your discovery. And no one else in Simití must know where we are sending the gold. Rosendo, it is a great problem."

"Caramba, yes!"

The men lapsed into profound meditation. Then:

"Rosendo, the little Carmen makes great progress."

"Por supuesto! I knew she would. She has a mind!"

"Have you no idea, Rosendo, who her parents might have been?"

"None whatever, Padre."

"Has it ever occurred to you, Rosendo, that, because of her deeply religious nature, possibly her father was a priest?"

"Caramba, no!" ejaculated Rosendo, turning upon Josè. "What puts that into your head, amigo?"

"As I have said, Rosendo," Josè answered, "her religious instinct."

"Bien, Señor Padre, you forget that priests are not religious."

"But some are, Rosendo," persisted Josè in a tone of protest.

"Perhaps. But those who are do not have children," was Rosendo's simple manner of settling the argument.

Its force appealed to Josè, and he felt a shade of relief. But, if Diego were not the father of Carmen, what motive had he for wishing to take her with him, other than to train her eventually to become his concubine? The thought maddened him. He almost decided to tell Rosendo.

"But, Padre, we came out here to talk about the militia of which I am to be captain. Bien, we must begin work to-morrow. Hombre, but the señora's eyes will stand out when she sees me marching at the head of the company!" He laughed like a pleased child.

"And now that we have gold, Padre, I must send to Cartagena for a gun. What would one cost?"

"You probably could not obtain one, Rosendo. The Government is so afraid of revolutions that it prohibits the importation of arms. But even if you could, it would cost not less than fifty pesos oro."

"Fifty pesos! Caramba!" exclaimed the artless fellow. "Then I get no gun! But now let us name those who will form the company."

By dwelling on the pleasing theme, Josè managed to keep Rosendo engaged until fatigue at length drove the old man to seek his bed. The town was wrapped in darkness as they passed through its quiet streets, and the ancient Spanish lantern, hanging crazily from its moldering sconce on the corner of Don Felipe's house, threw the only light into the black mantle that lay upon the main thoroughfare.

* * * * *

At sunrise, Josè was awakened by Rosendo noisily entering his house. A glance at the old man showed that he was laboring under strong emotion.

"What sort of friendship is this," he demanded curtly, "that you keep me from learning of Diego's presence in Simití? It was a trick you served me--and friends do not so to one another!" He stood looking darkly at the priest.

"Have you seen him, then? Good heavens, Rosendo! what have you done to him?" cried Josè, hastily leaving his bed.

"There, comfort yourself, Padre," replied Rosendo, a sneer curling his lips. "Your friend is safe--for the present. He and his negro rascals fled before sunrise."

"And which direction did they take?"

"Why do you ask? Would you go to them? Bueno, then across the lake, toward the Juncal. Don Mario stocked their boat last night, while you kept me out on the shales. Buen arreglo, no?"

"Yes, Rosendo," replied Josè gladly, "an excellent arrangement to keep you from dipping your hands in his foul blood. Why, man! is your vision so short? Have you no thought of Carmen and her future?"

"But--Dios! he has spread the report that he is her father! Caramba! For that I would tear him apart! He robbed me of one child; and now--Caramba! Why did you let him go?--why did you, Padre?"

Rosendo paced the floor like a caged lion, while great tears rolled down his black cheeks.

"But, Rosendo, if you had killed him--what then? Imprisonment for you, suffering for us all, and the complete wreck of our hopes. Is it worth it?"

"Na, Padre, but I would have escaped to Guamocó, to the gold I have discovered. There no one would have found me. And you would have kept me supplied; and I would have given you the gold I washed to care for her--"

The man sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands. "Caramba!" he moaned. "But he will return when I am gone--and the Church is back of him, and they will come and steal her away--"

How childish, and yet how great he was in his wonderful love, thought Josè. He pitied him from the bottom of his heart; he loved him immeasurably; yet he knew the old man's judgment was unsound in this case.

"Come, Rosendo," he said gently, laying a hand upon the bent head. "This is a time when expediency bids us suffer an evil to remain for a little while, that a much greater good may follow."

He hesitated. Then--"You do not think Diego is her father?"

"A thousand devils, no!" shouted Rosendo, springing up. "He the father of that angel-child? Cielo! His brats would be serpents! But I am losing time--" He turned to the door.

"Rosendo!" cried the priest in fresh alarm. "Where are you going? What are you--"

"I am going after Diego! Juan and Lázaro go with me! Before sundown that devil's carcass will be buzzard meat!"

Josè threw himself in front of Rosendo.

"Rosendo, think of Carmen! Would you kill her, too? If you kill Diego nothing can save her from Wenceslas! Rosendo, for God's sake, listen!"

But the old man, with his huge strength, tossed the frail priest lightly aside and rushed into the street. Blind with rage, he did not see Carmen standing a short distance from the door. The child had been sent to summon him to breakfast. Unable to check his momentum, the big man crashed full into her and bore her to the ground beneath him. As she fell her head struck the sharp edge of an ancient paving stone, and she lay quite still, while the warm blood slowly trickled through her long curls.

Uttering a frightened cry, Josè rushed to the dazed Rosendo and got him to his feet. Then he picked up the child, and, his heart numb with fear, bore her into the house.

Clasping Carmen fiercely in his arms, Josè tried to aid Doña Maria in staunching the freely flowing blood. Rosendo, crazed with grief, bent over them, giving vent to moans which, despite his own fears, wrung the priest's heart with pity for the suffering old man. At length the child opened her eyes.

"Praise God!" cried Rosendo, kneeling and showering kisses upon her hands. "Loado sea el buen Dios! Caramba! Caramba!"

"Padre Rosendo," the girl murmured, smiling down at him, "your thoughts were driving you, just like Benjamín drives his oxen. And they were bad, or you wouldn't have knocked me over."

"Bad!" Rosendo went to the doorway and squatted down upon the dirt floor in the sunlight. "Bad!" he repeated. "Caramba, but they were murder-thoughts!"

"And they tried to make you murder me, didn't they, padre dear?" She laughed. "But it didn't really happen, anyway," she added.

Rosendo buried his head in his hands and groaned aloud. Carmen slipped down from Josè's lap and went unsteadily to the old man.

"They were not yours, those thoughts, padre dear," putting her arms around his neck. "But they were whipping you hard, just as if you belonged to them. And see, it just shows that bad thoughts can't do anything. Look, I'm all right!" She stood off and smiled at him.

Rosendo reached out and clasped her in his long arms. "Chiquita," he cried, "if you were not, your old padre Rosendo would throw himself into the lake!"

"More bad thoughts, padre dear!" She laughed and held up a warning finger. "But I was to tell you the desayuno was ready; and see, we have forgotten all about it!" Her merry laugh rang through the room like a silver bell.

After breakfast Josè took Rosendo, still shaking, into the parish house. "I think," he said gravely, "that we have learned another lesson, have we not, amigo?"

Rosendo's head sank upon his great chest.

"And, if we are wise, we will profit by it--will we not, compadre?" He waited a moment, then continued:

"I have been seeing in a dim way, amigo, that our thought is always the vital thing to be reckoned with, more than we have even suspected before. I believe there is a mental law, though I cannot formulate it, that in some way the thoughts we hold use us, and become externalized in actions. You were wild with fear for Carmen, and your thoughts of Diego were murderous. Bien, they almost drove you to murder, and they reacted upon the very one you most love. Can you not see it, amigo?"

Rosendo looked up. His face was drawn. "Padre--I am almost afraid to think of anything--now."

"Ah, amigo," said Josè with deep compassion, "I, too, have had a deep lesson in thinking these past two days. I had evolved many beautiful theories, and worked out wonderful plans during these weeks of peace. Then suddenly came the news of the revolution, and, presto! they all flew to pieces! But Carmen--nothing disturbs her. Is it because she is too young to fear? I think not, amigo, I think not. I think, rather, that it is because she is too wise."

"But--she is not of the earth, Padre." The old man shook his head dubiously.

"Rosendo, she is! She is human, just as we are. But in some way she has learned a great truth, and that is that wrong thinking brings all the discord and woe that afflict the human race. We know this is true, you and I. In a way we have known it all our lives. But why, why do we not practice it? Why do I yield so readily to fear; and you to revenge? I rather think if we loved our enemies we would have none, for our only enemies are the thoughts that become externalized in wrong thought-concepts. And even this externalization is only in our own consciousness. It is there, and only there, that we see evil."

"Quien sabe? Padre," replied Rosendo, slowly shaking his head. "We know so little--so little!"

"But, Rosendo, we know enough to try to be like Carmen--"

"Caramba, yes! And I try to be like her. But whenever danger threatens her, the very devils seize me, and I am no longer myself."

"Yes, yes; I know. But will not her God protect her? Can not we trust her to Him?" Josè spoke with the conviction of right, however inconsistent his past conduct might have been.

"True, Padre--and I must try to love Diego--I know--though I hate him as the devil hates the cross! Carmen would say that he was used by bad thoughts, wouldn't she?"

"Just so. She would not see the man, but the impersonal thought that seems to use him. And I believe she knows how to meet that kind of thought."

"I know it, Padre. Bien, I must try to love him. I will try. And--Padre, whenever he comes into my mind I will try to think of him as God's child--though I know he isn't!"

Josè laughed loudly at this. "Hombre!" he exclaimed. "You must not think of the human Diego as God's child! You must always think of the real child of God for which this human concept, Diego, stands in your consciousness. Do you understand me?"

"No, Padre. But perhaps I can learn. I will try. But Diego shall live. And--Bien, now let us talk about the company of militia. But here comes the Alcalde. Caramba! what does he want?"

With much oily ceremony and show of affection, Don Mario greeted the pair.

"I bring a message from Padre Diego," he announced pompously, after the exchange of courtesies. "Bien, it is quite unfortunate that our friend Rosendo feels so hard toward him, especially as Don Diego has so long entrusted Carmen to Rosendo's care. But--his letter, Señor Padre," placing a folded paper in Josè's hand.

Silently, but with swelling indignation, Josè read:

"Dear Brother in Christ: It is, as you must know, because of our good Rosendo's foolish anger that I relieve him of the embarrassment of my presence in Simití. Not that I fear bodily harm, but lest his thoughtlessness urge him to attempt injury upon me; in which case nothing but unhappiness could result, as my two negro servants would protect me with their own lives. I rather choose peace, and to that end quietly depart. But I leave behind my bleeding heart in the little Carmen; and I beg that you will at once hand her over to the excellent Don Mario, with whom I have made arrangements to have her sent to me in due season, whether in Banco or Remedios, I can not at present say. I am minded to make an excellent report of your parish to Don Wenceslas, and I am sure he will lend you support in your labors for the welfare of the good folk of Simití. Do not forget to include the little locket with Carmen's effects when you deliver her to Don Mario. I assure you of my warm affection for you, and for Rosendo, who mistakes in his zeal to persecute me, as he will some day learn; and I commend you both to the protecting care of our blessed Mother Mary.

"I kiss your hand, as your servant in Christ, "DIEGO GUILLERMO POLO."

Josè looked long and fixedly at the Alcalde. "Don Mario," he finally said, "do you believe Diego to be the father of Carmen?"

"Cierto, Padre, I know it!" replied the official with fervor. "He has the proofs!"

"And what are they, may I ask?"

"I do not know, Padre; only that he has them. Surely the child is his, and must be sent to him when he commands. Meantime, you see, he gives the order to deliver her to me. He has kindly arranged to relieve you and Rosendo of further care of the girl."

"Don Mario," said Josè with terrible earnestness, "I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and say that Diego has basely deceived you. But as for him--he lies."

"Hombre! But I can not help if you disbelieve him. Still, you must comply with his request; otherwise, the Bishop may compel you to do so."

Josè realized the terrible possibility of truth in this statement. For an instant all his old despair rushed upon him. Then he braced himself. Rosendo was holding his wrath in splendid check.

"Bien, Don Mario," resumed Josè, after a long meditation. "Let us ask our good Rosendo to leave us for a little moment that we may with greater freedom discuss the necessary arrangements. Bien, amigo!" holding up a hand to check Rosendo, who was rising menacingly before the Alcalde. "You will leave it to me." He threw Rosendo a significant look; and the latter, after a momentary hesitation, bowed and passed out of the room.

"A propósito, amigo," resumed Josè, turning to the Alcalde and assuming utter indifference with regard to Carmen. "As you will recall, I stood security for Rosendo's debts. The thirty pesos which he owes you will be ready this evening."

The Alcalde smiled genially and rubbed his fat palms together. "Muy bien," he murmured.

Josè reflected. Then:

"But, Don Mario, with regard to Carmen, justice must be done, is it not so?"

"Cierto, Padre; and Padre Diego has the proofs--"

"Certainly; I accept your word for your conviction in the matter. But you will agree that there is something to be said for Rosendo. He has fed, clothed, and sheltered the girl for some eight years. Let us see, at the rate you charge your peones, say, fifty pesos a day, that would amount to--"

He took paper and pencil from the table and made a few figures.

"--to just fourteen hundred and sixty pesos oro," he concluded. "This, then, is the amount now due Rosendo for the care of Diego's child. You say he has made arrangements with you to care for her until he can send for her. Bien, we will deliver her to you for Diego, but only upon payment of the sum which I have just mentioned. Otherwise, how will Rosendo be reimbursed for the expense of her long maintenance?"

"Ca--ram--ba! Fourteen hundred and sixty pesos oro! Why--it is a fortune!" ejaculated the outwitted Alcalde, his eyes bulging over his puffy cheeks.

"And," continued Josè calmly, "if we deliver the girl to you to-day, I will retain the thirty pesos oro which Rosendo owes you, and you will stand surety for the balance of the debt, fourteen hundred and thirty, in that case."

"Diablo! but I will do nothing of the kind!" exploded the Alcalde. "Caramba! let Diego come and look after his own brat!"

"Then we shall consider the interview at an end, no?"

"But my thirty pesos oro?"

"To-night. And as much more for additional supplies. We are still working together, are we not, Don Mario?" he added suggestively.

Josè in Simití with money discounted a million Diegos fleeing through the jungle. The Alcalde's heavy face melted in a foolish grin.

"Cierto, buen Padre! and--La Libertad?"

"I have strong hopes," replied Josè with bland assurance, while a significant look came into his face. Then he rose and bowed the Alcalde out. "And, Don Mario--"

He put a finger on his lips.

"--we remain very silent, no?"

"Cierto, Padre, cierto! I am the grave itself!"

As the bulky official waddled off to his little shop, Josè turned back into his house with a great sigh of relief. Another problem had been met--temporarily.

He summoned Carmen to the day's lessons.

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Chapter 17

Within the month Juan brought from Bodega Central the glad news of the revolution's utter collapse. The anticlerical element, scenting treachery in their own ranks, and realizing almost from the outset that the end was a matter of only a few weeks, offered to capitulate on terms which they felt would be less distressing to their pride than those which their victors might dictate after inflicting a crushing defeat. The conservatives did not take advantage of the fiasco, but offered conciliation in the way of reapportioning certain minor public offices, and a show of somewhat lessened clerical influence. Peace followed rapidly. The fires of Jacobinism and popery were again banked, while priest and politician, statesman and orator set up the board and rearranged the pawns for the next play.

Nothing further had been heard of Padre Diego during the month, excepting that he had arrived at the settlement of Juncal in a state of extreme agitation, and had hurriedly set out that same day along the trail to the San Lucas district. Rosendo, meanwhile, assured that Diego would not return in the immediate future, yielded to Josè's persuasion and departed at once for Guamocó on the news of the revolution's close. Simití had remained unmolested; and now, with the assurance of indefinite peace, the old town dropped quickly back into her wonted state of listless repose, and yielded to the drowsy, dreamy influences that hover always about this scene of mediaeval romance.

Josè had recovered his equipoise; and even when Juan, returning from his next trip down to the river, brought the priest another sharp letter from Wenceslas, written in the Bishop's name, he read it without a tremor. The letter complained of Josè's silence, and especially of his failure to assist the Catholic cause in this crisal hour by contributions of Peter's Pence. Nor had any report been received in Cartagena relative to the state of the parish of Simití, its resources and communicants; and not a peso had been offered to the support of their so dear citadel at a time when its enemies threatened its gates. Josè smiled happily as he penned his reply, for he knew that with Rosendo's next return their contributions to Cartagena would begin. That meant the quieting of Wenceslas, regardless of whatever report Diego might make. And it was evident from this letter that neither Diego nor the Alcalde had as yet communicated anything of a startling nature to Wenceslas regarding those things to which the priest had consecrated himself in Simití.

Josè's life was never before so full. And never so sweet. To his little flock he was now preaching the Word of God only as he could interpret it to meet their simple needs. Gradually, as he got closer to them, he sought to enlighten them and to draw them at least a little way out of the dense materialism of their present religious beliefs. He also strove to give them the best of his own worldly knowledge, and to this end was talking to them three nights a week in the church building, where the simple people hung upon his words like children enwrapped in fairy lore. He was holding regular Sunday services, and offering Masses during the week for those of his parishioners who requested them, and who would have been shocked, puzzled, and unhappy had he refused to do so, or attempted to prove their uselessness. He was likewise saying diurnal Masses for the little Maria, to whom, as she lay breathing her last in his arms in Cartagena, he had given the promise to offer them daily in her behalf for, a year.

Nor was this the extent of his loving sacrifice for the girl. He had already sent a small sum of money to Catalina by Captain Julio, who promised to arrange at Calamar for its transmission, and for the safe convoy of a similar small packet monthly to Cartagena and into the hands of the two women who were caring for the infant son of Wenceslas and the ill-fated Maria. He had promised her that night that he would care for her babe. And his life had long since shown what a promise meant to him. He knew he would be unable to learn of the child's progress directly from these women, for they were both illiterate. But Captain Julio brought an encouraging message from them, and assured Josè that he would always make inquiry for the babe on his trips down the river. Josè's long-distance dealings with the genial captain had been conducted through Juan, who had constituted himself the priest's faithful servant and the distant worshiper of the child Carmen.

"Padre Josè," Juan had said one day, striving vainly to hide his embarrassment, "the little Carmen grows very beautiful. She is like the Pascua-flower, that shines through the ferns in the caño. She is like the great blue butterfly, that floats on the sunbeams that sift through the forest trees."

"Yes, Juan, she is very beautiful."

"Padre, you love her much, is it not so?"

"Very much, indeed, Juan."

"And I, Padre, I, too, love her." He paused and dug the hard ground with his bare toes.

"Padre," he resumed, "the little Carmen will marry--some day, will she not?"

Josè started. The thought had never occurred to him! Carmen marry? After all, she was human, and-- But, no, he could not, he would not, think of it!

"Why, Juan--I--cannot say--"

"But, Padre, she will." Juan was growing bolder. "And--and, Padre, I--I should like it if she would marry me. Ah, Señor Padre, already I adore her!"

Josè could not be angry. The faithful lad was deeply sincere. And the girl would reach the marriageable age of that country in all too short a time.

"But, Juan," he remonstrated, "you are too young! And Carmen--why, she is but a child!"

"True, Padre. But I am seventeen--and I will wait for her. Only say now that she shall be mine when the time comes. Padre, say it now!"

Josè was deeply touched by the boy's earnest pleading. He put his arm affectionately about the strong young shoulders.

"Wait, Juan, and see what develops. She is very, very young. We must all wait. And, meanwhile, do you serve her, faithfully, as you see Rosendo and me doing."

The boy's face brightened with hope. "Padre," he exclaimed, "I am her slave!"

Josè went back to his work with Carmen with his thought full of mingled conjecture and resolve. He had thus far outlined nothing for the girl's future. Nor had he the faintest idea what the years might bring forth. But he knew that, in a way, he was aiding in the preparation of the child for something different from the dull, animal existence with which she was at present surrounded, and that her path in life must eventually lead far, far away from the shabby, crumbling town which now constituted her material world. His task he felt to be tremendous in the responsibility which it laid upon him. What had he ever known of the manner of rearing children! He had previously given the question of child-education but scant consideration, although he had always held certain radical ideas regarding it; and some of these he was putting to the test. But had his present work been forecast while he lay sunken in despair on the river steamer, he would have repudiated the prediction as a figment of the imagination. Yet the gleam which flashed through his paralyzed brain that memorable day in the old church, when Rosendo opened his full heart to him, had roused him suddenly from his long and despondent lethargy, and worked a quick and marvelous renovation in his wasted life. Following the lead of this unusual child, he was now, though with many vicissitudes, slowly passing out of his prison of egoism, and into the full, clear sunlight of a world which he knew to be far less material than spiritual.

With the awakening had come the almost frenzied desire to realize in Carmen what he had failed to develop within himself; a vague hope that she might fill the void which a lifetime of longing had expressed. A tremendous opportunity now presented. Already the foundation had been well laid--but not by earthly hands. His task was to build upon it; and, as he did so, to learn himself. He had never before realized more than faintly the awful power for good or evil which a parent wields over a child. He had no more than the slightest conception of the mighty problem of child-education. And now Carmen herself had shown him that real education must be reared upon a foundation wholly spiritual. Yet this, he knew, was just what the world's educators did not do. He could see now how in the world the religious instinct of the child is early quenched, smothered into complete or partial extinction beneath the false tutelage of parents and teachers, to whom years and adult stature are synonymous with wisdom, and who themselves have learned to see the universe only through the opaque lenses of matter and chance.

"If children were not falsely educated to know all manner of evil," he mused, "what spiritual powers might they not develop in adult life, powers that are as yet not even imagined! But their primitive religious instinct is regarded by the worldly-wise parent as but a part of the infant existence, which must soon give place to the more solid and real beliefs and opinions which the world in general regards as established and conventional, even though their end is death. And so they teach their children to make evil real, even while admonishing them to protect themselves against it and eventually so to rise as to overcome it, little realizing that the carnal belief of the reality of evil which a child is taught to accept permeates its pure thought like an insidious poison, and becomes externalized in the conventional routine existence of mind in matter, soul in body, a few brief years of mingled good and evil, and then darkness--the end here certain; the future life a vague, impossible conjecture."

Josè determined that Carmen's education should be spiritual, largely because he knew, constituted as she was, it could not well be otherwise. And he resolved that from his teachings she should glean nothing but happiness, naught but good. With his own past as a continual warning, he vowed first that never should the mental germ of fear be planted within this child's mind. He himself had cringed like a coward before it all his desolate life. And so his conduct had been consistently slavish, specious, and his thought stamped with the brand of the counterfeit. He knew not how much longer he must struggle with it. But he knew that, if he would progress, the warfare must go on, until at length he should put it under his feet. His mind still bore the almost ineradicable mold of the fear deeply graven into it by the ignorant opinions, the worldly, material, unspiritual beliefs of his dear but unwise parents. His life had been hedged with baleful shadows because of it; and over every bright picture there hung its black draping. As he looked back over the path along which he had come, he could see every untoward event, every unhappiness and bitter disappointment, as the externalization of fear in some form, the germ of which had been early planted in the fertile soil of his plastic brain. Without it he might have risen to towering heights. Under its domination he had sunk until the swirling stream of life had eddied him upon the desolate shores of Simití. In the hands of the less fearful he had been a puppet. In his own eyes he was a fear-shaped manikin, the shadow of God's real man. The fear germ had multiplied within him a billionfold, and in the abundant crop had yielded a mental depression and deep-seated melancholy that had utterly stifled his spirit and dried the marrow of his bones.

They were not pleasant, these thoughts. But now Josè could draw from them something salutary, something definite to shape and guide his work with Carmen. She, at least, should not grow up the slave of fearsome opinions and beliefs born of dense ignorance. Nor should the baseless figments of puerile religious systems find lodgment within her clear thought. The fear element, upon which so much of so-called Christian belief has been reared, and the damnable suggestions of hell and purgatory, of unpardonable sin and endless suffering, the stock-in-trade of poet, priest and prelate up to and overlapping our present brighter day, should remain forever a closed volume to this child, a book as wildly imaginative and as unacceptable as the fabled travels of Maundeville.

"I believe," he would murmur to himself, as he strolled alone in the dusk beside the limpid lake, "that if I could plant myself firmly on the Scriptural statement that God is love, that He is good; and if I could regard Him as infinite mind, while at the same time striving to recognize no reality, no intelligence or life in things material, I could eventually triumph over the whole false concept, and rise out of beliefs of sickness, discord, and death, into an unalterable consciousness of good only."

He had made a beginning when he strove to realize that man is not separated from God; that God is not a far-off abstraction; and that infinite mind is, as Carmen insisted, "everywhere."

"It is only the five physical senses that tell us evil is real," he reflected. "Indeed, without their testimony we would be utterly unconscious of evil! And I am convinced that their testimony is specious, and that we see, hear, and feel only in thought, or in belief. We think the sensations of seeing, hearing, and feeling come to us through the medium of these senses as outward, fleshly contrivances, which in some way communicate with the mind and bridge the gulf between the material and the mental. In reality, we do but see, hear and feel our own thoughts! The philosophers, many of them, said as much centuries ago. So did Jesus. But--the human mind has been mesmerized, simply mesmerized!"

These things he pondered day by day, and watched to see them wrought out in the life of Carmen. "Ah, yes," he would sometimes say, as spiritual ideas unfolded to him, "you evolve beautiful theories, my good Josè, and you say many brave things. But, when the day of judgment comes, as it did when Juan brought you the news of the revolution, then, alas! your theories fly to pieces, and you find yourself very human, very material, and your God hidden behind the distant clouds. When the test comes, you find you cannot prove your beliefs."

Yet the man did not often indulge in self-condemnation, for somehow he knew his ideas were right. When he realized the character and specious nature of evil, and realized, too, that "by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned," he knew that the stirring up of evil by good, and the shaking of the ancient foundations of carnal belief within his mentality, might mean fiery trials, still awaiting him. And yet, the crown was for him who should overcome. Overcome what? The false opinions of mankind, the ignorant beliefs in matter and evil. For what, after all, is responsible for all the evil in this world of ours? What but a false concept of God? "And if I keep my nose buried forever in matter, how can I hope to see God, who is Spirit? And how can I follow the Christ unless I think as he thought?" he said.

But it was in the classroom with Carmen that he always received his greatest stimulus.

"See, Padre dear," she said one day, "if I erase a wrong figure and then set down the right one instead, I get the right answer. And it is just like that when we think. If we always put good thoughts in the place of the bad ones, why, everything comes out right, doesn't it?"

Josè smiled at the apt comparison. "Of course, chiquita," he replied. "Only in your algebra you know which are the right figures to put down. But how do you know which thoughts are right?"

"I always know, Padre. I can't make even the least mistake about the thoughts. Why, it is easier to mistake with figures than it is with thoughts."

"How is that, little one?"

"Because, if you always think God first, you can never think wrong. Now can you? And if you think of other things first you are almost sure to think of the wrong thing, is it not so, Padre?"

The priest had to admit the force of her statement.

"And, you know, Padre dear," the girl went on, "when I understand the right rule in algebra, the answer just comes of itself. Well, it is so with everything when we understand that God is the right rule--you call Him principle, don't you?--well, when we know that He is the only rule for everything, then the answers to all our problems just come of themselves."

Aye, thought Josè, the healing works of the great Master were only the "signs following," the "answers" to the people's problems, the sure evidence that Jesus understood the Christ-principle.

"And when you say that God is the right rule for everything, just what do you mean, chiquita?"

"That He is everywhere," the girl replied.

"That He is infinite and omnipresent good, then?" the priest amplified.

"He is good--and everywhere," the child repeated firmly.

"And the necessary corollary of that is, that there is no evil," Josè added.

"I don't know what you mean by corollary, Padre dear. It's a big word, isn't it?"

"I mean--I think I know how you would put it, little one--if God is everywhere, then there is nothing bad. Is that right?"

"Yes, Padre. Don't you see?"

Assuredly he saw. He saw that a fact can have no real opposite; that any predicated opposite must be supposition. And evil is the supposition; whereas good is the fact. The latter is "plus," and the former "minus." No wonder the origin of evil has never been found, although humanity has struggled with the problem for untold ages! Jesus diagnosed evil as a lie. He gave it the minus sign, the sign of nothingness. The world has tried to make it positive, something. From the false sense of evil as a reality has come the equally false sense of man's estrangement from God, through some fictitious "fall"--a curse, truly, upon the human intellect, but not of God's infliction. For false belief always curses with a reign of discord, which endures until the belief becomes corrected by truth. From the beginning, the human race has vainly sought to postulate an equal and opposite to everything in the realm of both the spiritual and material. It has been hypnotized, obsessed, blinded, by this false zeal. The resultant belief in "dualism" has rendered hate the equal and opposite of Love, evil the equal and opposite of Good, and discord the eternal opponent of Harmony. To cope with evil as a reality is to render it immortal in our consciousness. To know its unreality is to master it.

"Throughout life," Josè mused, "every positive has its negative, every affirmation its denial. But the opposites never mingle. And, moreover, the positive always dispels the negative, thus proving the specious nature of the latter. Darkness flees before the light, and ignorance dissolves in the morning rays of knowledge. Both cannot be real. The positive alone bears the stamp of immortality. Carmen has but one fundamental rule: God is everywhere. This gives her a sense of immanent power, with which all things are possible."

Thus with study and meditation the days flowed past, with scarcely a ripple to break their quiet monotony. Rosendo came, and went again. He brought back at the end of his first month's labors on the newly discovered deposit some ninety pesos in gold. He had reached the bedrock, and the deposit was yielding its maximum; but the yield would continue for many months, he said. His exultation overleaped all bounds, and it was with difficulty that Josè could bring him to a consideration of the problems still confronting them.

"I think, Rosendo," said the priest, "that we will send, say, thirty pesos this month to Cartagena; the same next month; and then increase the amount slightly. This method is sure to have a beneficial effect upon the ecclesiastical authorities there."

"Fine!" ejaculated Rosendo. "And how will you send it, Padre?"

Josè pondered the situation. "We cannot send the gold direct to the Bishop, for that would excite suspicion. Masses, you know, are not paid for in gold dust and nuggets. And we have no money. Nor could we get the gold exchanged for bills here in Simití, even if we dared run the risk of our discovery becoming known."

For the Alcalde was already nosing about in an effort to ascertain the source of the gold with which Rosendo had just cancelled his debt and purchased further supplies. Josè now saw that, under existing conditions, it would be utterly impossible for Rosendo to obtain titles to mineral properties through Don Mario. He spent hours seeking a solution of the involved problem. Then, just before Rosendo departed again for the mountains, Josè called him into the parish house.

"Rosendo, I think I see a way. Bring me one of the paper boxes of candles which you have just purchased from Don Mario."

"Carumba! Padre," queried the surprised Rosendo, as he returned with the box, "and what is this for?"

"I merely want to get the name of the firm which sold the candles. The Empresa Alemania, Barranquilla. Good! Now listen. I have a method that is roundabout, but certainly promises much. I will write to the firm, appointing them my agents while I pose as Josè Rincón, miner. The agency established, I will send them our gold each month, asking them to return to me its equivalent in bills, deducting, of course, their commission. Then I will send these bills, or such part as we deem wise, to Wenceslas. Each month Juan, who will be sworn to secrecy, will convey the gold to Bodega Central in time to meet Captain Julio's boat. The captain will both deliver the gold to the Empresa Alemania, and bring back the bills in exchange. Then, from Simití, and in the regular manner, I will send the small packet of bills to Wenceslas as contributions from the parish. We thus throw Don Mario off the scent, and arouse no suspicion in any quarter. As I receive mail matter at various times, the Alcalde will not know but what I also receive consignments of money from my own sources. I think the plan will work out. Juan already belongs to us. What, then, is there to fear?"

And so, as it was arranged, it worked out. Juan reveled in the honor of such intimate relations with the priest and Rosendo, and especially in the thought that he was working in secret for the girl he adored. By the time Rosendo returned again from Guamocó, Josè had sent his first consignment of money to the Bishop, carefully directing it to Wenceslas, personally, and had received an acknowledgment in a letter which caused him deep thought.

"To further stimulate the piety of your communicants," it read, "and arouse them to more generous contributions to our glorious cause, you will inform them that, if their monetary contributions do not diminish in amount for the coming year, they will be made participants in the four solemn Novenas which will be offered by His Grace, the Bishop of Cartagena. Moreover, if their contributions increase, the names of the various contributors will be included in the one hundred Masses which are to be offered in December at the Shrine of Our Lady of Chiquinquía for their spiritual and temporal welfare. Contributors will also have a High Mass after death, offered by one of His Grace's assistants, as soon as the notification of death is received here. In addition to these, His Grace, always mindful of the former importance of the parish of Simití, and acknowledging as its special patron the ever blessed Virgin, has arranged to bestow the episcopal blessing upon an image of the Sacred Heart, which will be shipped to his faithful children in Simití when the amount of their contributions shall have met the expense thereof. Let us keep ever in mind the pious words of the Bl. Margaret Mary, who has conveyed to us the assurance which she received directly from Our Blessed Lord that He finds great joy in beholding His Sacred Heart visibly represented, that it may touch the hard hearts of mankind. Our blessed Saviour promised the gracious Margaret Mary that He would pour out abundantly of His rich treasure upon all who honor this image, and that it shall draw down from heaven every blessing upon those who adore and reverence it. Inform your parishioners that the recital of the offering, 'O, Sacred Heart of Jesus, may it be everywhere adored!' carries a hundred days' indulgence each time.

"You will bear in mind that the General Intention for this month is The Conversion of America. Though our Church is founded on the Rock, and is to last forever, so that the gates of hell shall never prevail against her, nevertheless she has been called upon to withstand many assaults from her enemies, the advocates of modernism, in the land of liberal thought to our north. These assaults, though painful to her, can never be fatal to her spiritual life, although they unfortunately are so to many of her dear children, who yield to the insidious persuasions of the heretics who do the work of Satan among the Lord's sheep. New and fantastic religions are springing up like noxious weeds in America of the north, and increasing infidelity is apparent on every hand. The Christ prayed that there might be one fold and one shepherd. It is for us this month to pray for the great day when they will be accomplished. But we must be united over the interests of the Sacred Heart. Therefore, liberal plenary indulgences will be granted to those of the faithful who contribute to this glorious cause, so dear to the heart of the blessed Saviour. We enclose leaflets indicating the three degrees, consisting of the Morning Offering, Our Father and ten Hail Marys daily, for the Pope and his interests, and the degree of reparation, by which a plenary indulgence may be gained.

"Stimulate your parishioners to compete joyfully for the statue of the Blessed Virgin, which we mentioned to you in our former communication. Teach them, especially, their entire dependence on Mary, on her prayers to God for their deliverance and welfare. Reveal to them her singularly powerful influence in the shaping of all great historical events of the world; how never has she refused our prayers to exert her mighty influence with her all-potent Son, when she has been appealed to in sincerity, for it rejoices the Sacred Heart of Jesus to yield to the requests of His Blessed Mother. Mary is omnipotent, for she can ask no favor of her Son that He will not grant. Competition for possession of this sacred image, which carries the potent blessing of His Holiness, should be regarded a privilege, and you will so impress it upon the minds of your parishioners.

"Finally, His Grace requests that you will immediately procure whatever information you may regarding the mineral resources of the district of Guamocó, and indicate upon a sketch the location of its various mines, old or new, as known to its inhabitants. Diligent and careful inquiry made by yourself among the people of the district will reveal many hidden facts regarding its resources, which should be made known to His Grace at the earliest possible moment, in view of the active preparations now in progress to forestall the precipitation of another political uprising with its consequent strain upon our Holy Church."

"Money! money! money!" cried Josè. "One would think the Christ had established his Church solely for gold!"

He folded the letter and looked out through the rear door to where Carmen sat, teaching Cucumbra a new trick. He realized then that never before had he been so far from the Holy Catholic faith as at that moment. And Carmen--

"Good God!" he muttered, as his eyes rested upon the child. "If the Church should get possession of Carmen, what would it do with her? Would it not set its forces to work to teach her that evil is a reality--that it is as powerful as good--that God formed man and the universe out of dust--that Jesus came down from a starry heaven that he might die to appease the wrath of a man-like Father--that Mary pleads with the Lord and Jesus, and by her powerful logic induces them to spare mankind and grant their foolish desires--all the dribble and rubbish of outlandish theology that has accumulated around the nucleus of pure Christianity like a gathering snowball throughout the ages! To make the great States up north dominantly Catholic, Rome must--simply must--have the children to educate, that she may saturate their absorbent minds with these puerile, undemonstrable, pagan beliefs before the child has developed its own independent thought. How wise is she--God, how worldly wise and cunning! And I still her priest--"

Carmen came bounding in, followed pellmell by Cucumbra. Cantar-las-horas stalked dignifiedly after her, and stopped at the threshold, where he stood with cocked head and blinking eyes, wondering what move his animated young mistress would make next.

"Padre!" she exclaimed, "the sun is down, and it is time for our walk!"

She seized his hand and drew him out into the road. The play of her expression as she looked up and laughed into his face was like the dance of sunbeams on moving water. They turned down the narrow street which led to the lake. As was her wont, in every object about her, in every trifling event, the child discovered rich treasures of happiness. The pebbles which she tossed with her bare toes were mines of delight. The pigs, which turned up their snouts expectantly as she stooped to scratch their dusty backs--the matronly hens that followed clucking after her--the black babies that toddled out to greet the Cura--all yielded a wealth of delight and interest. She seemed to Josè to uncover joy by a means not unlike the divining rod, which points to hidden gold where to the eye there is naught but barren ground.

Near the margin of the lake they stopped at the door of a cottage, where they were awaited by the matron who displayed a finger wrapped in a bit of cloth. She greeted the priest courteously.

"Señor Padre," she said, "this morning I had the misfortune to cut my finger while peeling yuccas, and I am not sure whether a piece of the skin went into the pot or not. Bueno, the yuccas are all cooked; and now my man says he will not eat them, for this is Friday, and there may be meat with the yuccas. What shall I do? Was it wicked to cook the yuccas, not knowing if a bit of the skin from my finger had fallen into the pot?"

Josè stood dumfounded before such ignorant credulity. Then he shook his head and replied sadly, "No, señora, it was not wicked. Tell your man he may eat the yuccas."

The woman's face brightened, and she hastened into the house to apprise her spouse of the Cura's decision.

"God help us!" muttered Josè under his breath. "Two thousand years of Christianity, and still the world knows not what Jesus taught!"

"But you told me he had good thoughts, Padre dear," said the little voice at his side, as he walked slowly away with bended head. "And that is enough to know."

"Why do you say that, Carmen?" asked Josè, somewhat petulantly.

"Because, Padre, if he had good thoughts, he thought about God--didn't he? And if he thought about God, he always thought of something good. And if we always think about good--well, isn't that enough?"

Josè's eyes struggled with hers. She almost invariably framed her replies with an interrogation, and, whether he would or not, he must perforce give answers which he knew in his heart were right, and yet which the sight of his eyes all too frequently denied.

"Padre, you are not thinking about God now--are you?"

"I am, indeed, child!" he answered abruptly.

"Well--perhaps you are thinking about Him; but you are not thinking with Him--are you?--the way He thinks. You know, He sends us His thoughts, and we have to pick them out from all the others that aren't His, and then think them. If the señora and her man had been thinking God's thoughts, they wouldn't have been afraid to eat a piece of meat on Friday--would they?"

Cucumbra, forgetting his many months of instruction, suddenly yielded to the goad of animal instinct and started along the beach in mad pursuit of a squealing pig. Carmen dashed after him. As Josè watched her lithe, active little body bobbing over the shales behind the flying animals, she seemed to him like an animated sunbeam sporting among the shadows.

"Why should life," he murmured aloud, "beginning in radiance, proceed in ever deepening gloom, and end at last in black night? Why, but for the false education in evil which is inflicted upon us! The joys, the unbounded bliss of childhood, do indeed gush from its innocence--its innocence of the blighting belief in mixed good and evil--innocence of the false beliefs, the undemonstrable opinions, the mad worldly ambitions, the carnal lust, bloated pride, and black ignorance of men! It all comes from not knowing God, to know whom is life eternal! The struggle and mad strife of man--what does it all amount to, when 'in the end he shall be a fool'? Do we in this latest of the centuries, with all our boasted progress in knowledge, really know so much, after all? Alas! we know nothing--nothing!"

"Come, Padre," cried Carmen, returning to him, "we are going to just try now to have all the nice thoughts we can. Let's just look all around us and see if we can't think good thoughts about everything. And, do you know, Padre dear, I've tried it, and when I look at things and something tries to make me see if there could possibly be anything bad about them--why, I find there can't! Try it, and see for yourself."

Josè knew it. He knew that the minds of men are so profaned by constantly looking at evil that their thoughts are tinged with it. He was striving to look up. But in doing so he was combating a habit grown mighty by years of indulgence.

"When you always think good about a thing," the girl went on, "you never can tell what it will do. But good always comes from it. I know. I do it all the time. If things look bad, I just say, 'Why look, here's something trying to tell me that two and two are seven!' And then it goes away."

"Your purity and goodness resist evil involuntarily, little one," said Josè, more to himself than to the child.

"Why, Padre, what big words!"

"No, little one, it is just the meaning of the words that is big," he replied.

The girl was silent for some moments. Then:

"Padre dear, I never thought of it before--but it is true: we don't see the meaning of words with the same eyes that we see trees and stones and people, do we?"

Josè studied the question. "I don't quite understand what you mean, chiquita," he was finally forced to answer.

"Well," she resumed, "the meaning of a word isn't something that we can pick up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there."

"No, Carmen, the meaning is spiritual--mental; it is not physically tangible. It is not seen with the fleshly eyes."

"The meaning of a word is the inside of it, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is the inside, the soul, of the word."

"And we don't see the word, either, do we?" She shook her brown curls in vigorous negation.

"No, little one, we see only written or printed symbols; or hear only sounds that convey to us the words. But the words themselves are mental. We do not see them."

"No, we think them." She meditated a while. "But, Padre dear," she continued, "the inside, or soul, of everything is mental. We never see it. We have to think it."

"Yes, you are right. The things we think we see are only symbols. They stand for the real things."

"Padre, they don't stand for anything!" she replied abruptly.

Josè looked down at her in surprise. He waited.

"Padre, the real things are the things we don't see. And the things we think we see are not real at all!"

Josè had ere this learned not to deny her rugged statements, but to study them for their inner meaning, which the child often found too deep for her limited vocabulary to express.

"The things we think we see," he said, though he was addressing his own thought, "are called the physical. The things we do not see or cognize with the physical senses are called mental, or spiritual. Well?" he queried, looking down again into the serious little face.

"Padre, the very greatest things are those that we don't see at all!"

"True, chiquita. Love, life, joy, knowledge, wisdom, health, harmony--all these are spiritual ideas. The physical sometimes manifests them--and sometimes does not. And in the end, called death, it ceases altogether to manifest them."

"But--these things--the very greatest things there are--are the souls of everything--is it not so, Padre dear?"

"It must be, chiquita."

"And all these things came from God, and He is everywhere, and so He is the soul of everything, no?"

He made the same affirmative reply.

"Padre--don't you see it?--we are not seeing things all around us! We don't see real things that we call trees and stones and people! We see only what we think we see. We see things that are not there at all! We see--"

"Yes, we see only our thoughts. And we think we see them as objects all about us, as trees, and houses, and people. But in the final analysis we see only thoughts," he finished.

"But these thoughts do not come from God," she insisted.

"No," he replied slowly, "because they often manifest discord and error. I think I grasp what is struggling in your mind chiquita. God is--"

"Everywhere," she interrupted.

"He is everywhere, and therefore He is the soul--the inside--the heart and core--of everything. He is mind, and His thoughts are real, and are the only real thoughts there are. He is truth. The opposite of truth is a lie. But, in reality, truth cannot have an opposite. Therefore, a lie is a supposition. And so the thought that we seem to see externalized all about us, and that we call physical objects, is supposition only. And, a supposition being unreal, the whole physical universe, including material man, is unreal--is a supposition, a supposition of mixed good and evil, for it manifests both. It is the lie about God. And, since a lie has no real existence, this human concept of a universe and mankind composed of matter is utterly unreal, an image of thought, an illusion, existing in false thought only--a belief--a supposition pure and simple!"

As he talked he grew more and more animated. He seemed to forget the presence of the child, and appeared to be addressing only his own insistent questionings.

They walked along together in silence for some moments. Then the girl again took up the conversation.

"Padre," she said, "you know, you taught me to prove my problems in arithmetic and algebra. Well, I have proved something about thinking, too. If I think a thing, and just keep thinking it, pretty soon I see it--in some way--outside of me."

A light seemed to flash through Josè's mental chambers, and he recalled the words of the explorer in Cartagena. Yes, that was exactly what he had said--"every thought that comes into the mind tends to become externalized, either upon the body as a physical condition, or in the environment, or as an event, good or bad." It was a law, dimly perceived, but nevertheless sufficiently understood in its workings to indicate a tremendous field as yet all but unknown. The explorer had called it the law of the externalization of thought. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," said the Master, twenty centuries before. Did he recognize the law?

Josè's thought swept over his past. Had his own wrong thinking, or the wrong thought of others, been the cause of his unhappiness and acute mental suffering? But why personalize it? What difference whether it be called his, or the Archbishop's, or whose? Let it suffice that it was false thought, undirected by the Christ-principle, God, that had been externalized in the wreckage which he now called his past life.

He again stood face to face with the most momentous question ever propounded by a waiting world: the question of causation. And he knew now that causation was wholly spiritual.

"Padre dear, you said just now that God was mind. But, if that is true, there is only one mind, for God is everywhere."

"It must be so, chiquita," dreamily responded the priest.

"Then He is your mind and my mind, is it not so?"

"Yes--"

"Then, if He is my mind, there just isn't anything good that I can't do."

Twilight does not linger in the tropics, and already the shadows that stole down through the valley had wrapped the man and child in their mystic folds. Hand in hand they turned homeward.

"Padre, if God is my mind, He will do my thinking for me. And all I have to do is to keep the door open and let His thoughts come in."

Her sweet voice lingered on the still night air. There was a pensive gladness in the man's heart as he tightly held her little hand and led her to Rosendo's door.

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Chapter 18

The next morning Josè read to Rosendo portions of the communication from Wenceslas.

"Chiquinquía," commented the latter. "I remember that Padre Diego collected much money from our people for Masses to be said at that shrine."

"But where is it, Rosendo?" asked Josè.

"You do not know the story?" queried Rosendo in surprise. "Why, there is not a shrine in the whole of Colombia that works so many cures as this one. Your grandfather, Don Ignacio, knew the place. And it was from him that my--that is, I learned the legend when I was only a boy. It is said that a poor, sick young girl in the little Indian village of Chiquinquía, north of Bogotá, stood praying in her shabby little cottage before an old, torn picture of the blessed Virgin." He stopped and crossed himself devoutly. Then he resumed:

"Bueno, while the girl prayed, the picture suddenly rose up in the air; the torn places all closed; the faded colors came again as fresh as ever; and the girl was cured of her affliction. The people of the village immediately built a shrine, over which they hung the picture; and ever since then the most wonderful miracles have been performed by it there."

Josè laughed. "You don't believe that, do you, Rosendo?" he asked in banter.

"Hombre, yes!" exclaimed the latter a bit testily. "I know it! Did not Don Felipe go there when the doctor in Mompox told him the little white spot on his hand was leprosy? And he came back cured."

Leprosy! Josè started as if he had received a blow. He looked furtively at the scar on his own hand, the hand which the leper in Maganguey had lacerated that dreadful night, and which often burned and ached as if seared by a hot iron. He had never dared to voice the carking fear that tightened about his heart at times. But often in the depths of night, when dread anticipation sat like a spectre upon his bed, he had risen and gone out into the darkness to wrestle with his black thoughts. Leprosy! All the gladness and joy left his heart, and a pall of darkness settled over his thought. He turned back into his cottage and tried to find forgetfulness in the simple duties that lay at hand.

"Why is it," he asked himself, as he sat wearily down at his little table, "that I always think of evil first; while Carmen's first thought is invariably of God?"

He looked at the ugly scar on his hand. What thought was externalized in the loathsome experience which produced that? he wondered. Was it the summation of all the fear, the weakness, the wrong belief, that had filled his previous years? And now why was he finding it so difficult to practice what Carmen lived, even though he knew it was truth?

"Alas!" he murmured aloud, "it was the seminary that did it. For there my thought was educated away from the simple teachings of Jesus. To Carmen there is no mystery in godliness. Though she knows utterly nothing about Jesus, yet she hourly uses the Christ-principle. It is the children who grasp the simple truths of God; while the lack of spirituality which results from increasing years shrinks maturer minds until they no longer afford entrance to it. For godliness is broad; and the mind that receives it must be opened wide."

As he sat with his bowed head clasped in his hands, a sweet, airy voice greeted him.

"Why, Padre dear--ah, I caught you that time!--you were thinking that two and two are seven, weren't you?" She shook a rebuking finger at him.

Framed in the doorway like an old masterpiece, the sunlight bronzing her heavy brown curls, the olive-tinted skin of her bare arms and legs flushing with health, and her cheap calico gown held tightly about her, showing the contour of her full and shapely figure, the girl appeared to Josè like a vision from the realm of enchantment. And he knew that she did dwell in the land of spiritual enchantment, where happiness is not at the mercy of physical sense.

"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

"The Lord our God is a right-thinking God, and right-thinking is what He desires in His people."

Josè thought of this as he looked at Carmen. This barefoot girl, who walked humbly, trustingly, with her God, had she not supplied him with a working formula for his every problem, even to the casting out of the corroding fear planted in his heart by that awful experience in Maganguey? Though he had suffered much, yet much had been done for him. The brusque logic of the explorer had swept his mind clear of its last vestige of theological superstition, and prepared it for the truth which, under the benign stimulus of this clear-minded child, would remake his life, if he could now yield himself utterly to it. He must--he would--ceaselessly strive, even though he fell daily, to make his life a pattern of hers, wherein there was no knowledge of evil!

The girl came to the priest and leaned fondly against him. Then a little sigh escaped her lips, as she looked down into his face with pitying affection.

"Padre dear," she said, in a tone that echoed a strain of sadness, "I--I don't believe--you love God very much."

The man was startled, and resentment began to well in his heart. "What a thing to say, Carmen!" he answered reprovingly.

The girl looked up at him with great, wondering eyes. "But, Padre," she protested, "were you not thinking of things that are not true when I came in?"

"No--I was--I was thinking of the future--of--well, chiquita, I was thinking of something that might happen some day, that is all." He stumbled through it with difficulty, for he knew he must not lie to the child. Would she ever trust him again if he did?

"And, Padre, were you afraid?"

"Afraid? Yes, chiquita, I was." He hung his head.

Carmen looked at him reproachfully. "Then, Padre, I was right--for, if you loved God, you would trust Him--and then you couldn't be afraid of anything--could you? People who love Him are not afraid."

He turned his head away. "Ah, child," he murmured, "you will find that out in the world people don't love God in this day and generation. At least they don't love Him that way."

"They don't love Him enough to trust him?" she asked wistfully.

"No." He shook his head sadly. "Nobody trusts Him, not even the preachers themselves. When things happen, they rush for a doctor, or some other human being to help them out of their difficulty. They don't turn to Him any more. They seldom speak His name."

"Have--they--forgotten Him?" she asked slowly, her voice sinking to a whisper.

"Absolutely!" He again buried his head in his hands.

The child stood in silence for some moments. Then:

"What made them forget Him, Padre?"

"I guess, chiquita, they turned from Him because He didn't answer their prayers. I used to pray to Him, too. I prayed hours at a time. But nothing seemed to come of it. And so I stopped." He spoke bitterly.

"You prayed! You mean--"

"I asked Him for things--to help me out of trouble--I asked Him to give me--"

"Why, Padre! Why--that's the very reason!"

He looked up at her blankly. "What is the very reason? What are you trying to tell me, child?"

"Why, He is everywhere, and He is right here all the time. And so there couldn't be any real trouble for Him to help you out of; and He couldn't give you anything, for He has already done that, long ago. We are in Him, don't you know? Just like the little fishes in the lake. And so when you asked Him for things it showed that you didn't believe He had already given them to you. And--you know what you said last night about thinking, and that when we think things, we see them? Well, He has given you everything; but you thought He hadn't, and so you saw it that way--isn't it so?"

She paused for breath. She had talked rapidly and with animation. But before he could reply she resumed:

"Padre dear, you know you told me that Jesus was the best man that ever lived, and that it was because he never had a bad thought--isn't that so?"

"Yes," he murmured.

"Well, did he pray--did he ask God for things?"

"Of course he did, child!" the priest exclaimed. "He always asked Him for things. Why, he was always praying--the New Testament is full of it!"

Acting on a sudden impulse, he rose and went into the sleeping room to get his Bible. The child's face took on an expression of disappointment as she heard his words. Her brow knotted, and a troubled look came into her brown eyes.

Josè returned with his Bible and seated himself again at the table. Opening the book, his eyes fell upon a verse of Mark's Gospel. He stopped to read it; and then read it again. Suddenly he looked up at the waiting girl.

"What is it, Padre? What does it say?"

He hesitated. He read the verse again; then he scanned the child closely, as if he would read a mystery hidden within her bodily presence. Abruptly he turned to the book and read aloud:

"'Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'"

The girl drew a long breath, almost a sigh, as if a weight had been removed from her mind. "Did Jesus say that?" she asked in glad, eager tones.

"Yes--at least it is so reported here," he answered absently.

"Well--he knew, didn't he?"

"Knew what, child?"

"Why, Padre, he told the people to know--just know--that they already had everything--that God had given them everything good--and that if they would know it, they would see it."

Externalization of thought? Yes; or rather, the externalization of truth. Josè fell into abstraction, his eyes glued to the page. There it stood--the words almost shouted it at him! And there it had stood for nearly two thousand years, while priest and prelate, scribe and commentator had gone over it again and again through the ages, without even guessing its true meaning--without even the remotest idea of the infinite riches it held for mankind!

He turned reflectively to Matthew; and then to John. He remembered the passages well--in the past he had spent hours of mortal agony poring over them and wondering bitterly why God had failed to keep the promises they contain.

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

All things--when ye ask believing! But that Greek word surely held vastly more than the translators have drawn from it. Nay, not believing only, but understanding the allness of God as good, and the consequent nothingness of evil, all that seems to oppose Him! How could the translators have so completely missed the mark! And Carmen--had never seen a Bible until he came into her life; yet she knew, knew instinctively, that a good God who was "everywhere" could not possibly withhold anything good from His children. It was the simplest kind of logic.

But, thought Josè again, if the promises are kept, why have we fallen so woefully short of their realization? Then he read again, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." The promise carries a condition--abiding in his words--obeying his commands--keeping the very first Commandment, which is that "Ye shall have no other gods before me"--no gods of evil, sickness, chance, or death. The promises are fulfilled only on the condition of righteousness--right-thinking about God and His infinite, spiritual manifestation.

He turned to Carmen. "Chiquita," he said tenderly, "you never ask God to give you things, do you?"

"Why, no, Padre; why should I? He gives me everything I need, doesn't He?"

"Yes--when you go out to the shales, you--"

"I don't ask Him for things, Padre dear. I just tell Him I know He is everywhere."

"I see--yes, you told me that long ago--I understand, chiquita." His spirit bowed in humble reverence before such divine faith. This untutored, unlearned girl, isolated upon these burning shales, far, far from the haunts of men of pride and power and worldly lore--this barefoot child whose coffers held of material riches scarce more than the little calico dress upon her back--this lowly being knew that which all the fabled wealth of Ind could never buy! Her prayers were not the selfish pleadings that spring from narrow souls, the souls that "ask amiss"--not the frenzied yearnings wrung from suffering, ignorant hearts--nor were they the inflated instructions addressed to the Almighty by a smug, complacent clergy, the self-constituted press-bureau of infinite Wisdom. Her prayers, which so often drifted like sweetest incense about those steaming shales, were not petitions, but affirmations. They did not limit God. She did not plead with Him. She simply knew that He had already met her needs. And that righteousness--right-thinking--became externalized in her consciousness in the good she sought. Jesus did the same thing, over and over again; but the poor, stupid minds of the people were so full of wrong beliefs about his infinite Father that they could not understand, no, not even when he called Lazarus from the tomb.

"Ask in my name," urged the patient Jesus. But the poor fishermen thought he meant his human name to be a talisman, a sort of "Open Sesame," when he was striving all the time, by precept and deed, to show them that they must ask in his character, must be like him, to whom, though of himself he could do nothing, yet all things were possible.

Josè's heart began to echo the Master's words: "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." He put his arm about Carmen and drew her to him.

"Little one," he murmured, "how much has happened in these past few weeks!"

Carmen looked up at him with an enigmatical glance and laughed. "Well, Padre dear, I don't think anything ever really happens, do you?"

"Why not?" he asked.

"Mistakes happen, as in solving my algebra problems. But good things never happen, any more than the answers to my problems happen. You know, there are rules for getting the answers; but there are no rules for making mistakes--are there? But when anything comes out according to the rule, it doesn't happen. And the mistakes, which have no rules, are not real--the answers are real, but the mistakes are not--and so nothing ever really happens. Don't you see, Padre dear?"

"Surely, I see," he acquiesced. Then, while he held the girl close to him, he reflected: Good is never fortuitous. It results from the application of the Principle of all things. The answer to a mathematical problem is a form of good, and it results from the application of the principle of mathematics. Mistakes, and the various things which "happen" when we solve mathematical problems, do not have rules, or principles. They result from ignorance of them, or their misapplication. And so in life; for chance, fate, luck, accident and the merely casual, come, not from the application of principles, but from not applying them, or from ignorance of their use. The human mind or consciousness, which is a mental activity, an activity of thought, is concerned with mixed thoughts of good and evil. But it operates without any principle whatsoever. For, if God is infinite good, then the beliefs of evil which the human mind holds must be false beliefs, illusions, suppositions. A supposition has no principle, no rule. And so, it is only the unreal that happens. And even that sort of "happening" can be prevented by knowing and using the principle of all good, God. A knowledge of evil is not knowledge at all. Evil has no rules. Has an accident a principle? He laughed aloud at the idea.

"What is it, Padre?" asked Carmen.

"Nothing, child--and everything! But we are neglecting our work," he hastily added, as he roused himself. "What are the lessons for to-day? Come! come! We have much to do!" And arranging his papers, and bidding Carmen draw up to the table, he began the morning session of his very select little school.

* * * * *

More than six months had elapsed since Josè first set foot upon the hot shales of Simití. In that time his mentality had been turned over like a fallow field beneath the plowshare. After peace had been established in the country he had often thought to consecrate himself to the task of collecting the fragmentary ideas which had been evolved in his mind during these past weeks of strange and almost weird experience, and trying to formulate them into definite statements of truth. Then he would enter upon the task of establishing them by actual demonstration, regardless of the years that might be required to do so. He realized now that the explorer had done a great work in clearing his mind of many of its darker shadows. But it was to Carmen's purer, more spiritual influence that he knew his debt was heaviest.

Let it not seem strange that mature manhood and extensive travel had never before brought to this man's mind the truths, many of which have been current almost since the curtain first arose on the melodrama of mundane existence. Well nigh impassable limitations had been set to them by his own natal characteristics; by his acutely morbid sense of filial love which bound him, at whatever cost, to observe the bigoted, selfish wishes of his parents; and by the strictness with which his mind had been hedged about both in the seminary and in the ecclesiastical office where he subsequently labored. The first rays of mental freedom did not dawn upon his darkened thought until he was sent as an outcast to the New World. Then, when his greater latitude in Cartagena, and his still more expanded sense of freedom in Simití, had lowered the bars, there had rushed into his mentality such a flood of ideas that he was all but swept away in the swirling current.

It is not strange that he rose and fell, to-day strong in the conviction of the immanence of infinite good, to-morrow sunken in mortal despair of ever demonstrating the truth of the ideas which were swelling his shrunken mind. His line of progress in truth was an undulating curve, slowly advancing toward the distant goal to which Carmen seemed to move in a straight, undeviating line. What though Emerson had said that Mind was "the only reality of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors"? Josè was unaware of the sage's mighty deduction. What though Plato had said that we move as shadows in a world of ideas? Even if Josè had known of it, it had meant nothing to him. What though the Transcendentalists called the universe "a metaphore of the human mind"? Josè's thought was too firmly clutched by his self-centered, material beliefs to grasp it. Doubt of the reality of things material succumbed to the evidence of the physical senses and the ridicule of his seminary preceptors. True, he believed with Paul, that the "things that are seen are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." But this pregnant utterance conveyed nothing more to him than a belief of a material heaven to follow his exit from a world of matter. It had never occurred to him that the world of matter might be the product of those same delusive physical senses, through which he believed he gained his knowledge of it. It is true that while in the seminary, and before, he had insisted upon a more spiritual interpretation of the mission of Jesus--had insisted that Christian priests should obey the Master's injunction, and heal the sick as well as preach the gospel. But with the advent of the troubles which filled the intervening years, these things had gradually faded; and the mounting sun that dawned upon him six months before, as he lay on the damp floor of his little cell in the ecclesiastical dormitory in Cartagena, awaiting the Bishop's summons, illumined only a shell, in which agnosticism sat enthroned upon a stool of black despair.

Then Carmen entered his life. And her beautiful love, which enfolded him like a garment, and her sublime faith, which moved before him like the Bethlehem star to where the Christ-principle lay, were, little by little, dissolving the mist and revealing the majesty of the great God.

In assuming to teach the child, Josè early found that the outer world meant nothing to her until he had purged it of its carnal elements. Often in days past, when he had launched out upon the dramatic recital of some important historical event, wherein crime and bloodshed had shaped the incident, the girl would start hastily from her chair and put her little hand over his mouth.

"Don't, Padre dear! It is not true!" she would exclaim. "God didn't do it, and it isn't so!"

And thereby he learned to differentiate more closely between those historical events which sprang from good motives, and those which manifested only human passion, selfish ambition, and the primitive question, "Who shall be greatest?" Moreover, he had found it best in his frequent talks to the people in the church during the week to omit all reference to the evil methods of mankind in their dealings one with another, and to pass over in silence the criminal aims and low motives, and their externalization, which have marked the unfolding of the human mind, and which the world preserves in its annals as historical fact. The child seemed to divine the great truth that history is but the record of human conduct, conduct manifesting the mortal mind of man, a mind utterly opposed to the mind that is God, and therefore unreal, supposititious, and bearing the "minus" sign. Carmen would have none of it that did not reflect good. She refused utterly to turn her mental gaze toward recorded evil.

"Padre," she once protested, "when I want to see the sun rise, I don't look toward the west. And if you want to see the good come up, why do you look at these stories of bad men and their bad thoughts?"

Josè admitted that they were records of the mortal mind--and the mind that is mortal is no mind.

"I am learning," he frequently said to himself, after Carmen had left at the close of their day's work. "But my real education did not commence until I began to see, even though faintly, that the Creator is mind and infinite good, and that there is nothing real to the belief in evil; that the five physical senses give us no testimony of any nature whatsoever; and that real man never could, never did, fall."

Thus the days glided swiftly past, and Josè completed his first year amid the drowsy influences of this little town, slumbering peacefully in its sequestered nook at the feet of the green Cordilleras. No further event ruffled its archaic civilization; and only with rare frequency did fugitive bits of news steal in from the outer world, which, to the untraveled thought of this primitive folk, remained always a realm vague and mysterious. Quietly the people followed the routine of their colorless existence. Each morn broke softly over the limpid lake; each evening left the blush of its roseate sunset on the glassy waters; each night wound its velvety arms gently about the nodding town, while the stars beamed like jewels through the clear, soft atmosphere above, or the yellow moonbeams stole noiselessly down the old, sunken trail to dream on the lake's invisible waves.

Each month, with unvarying regularity, Rosendo came and went. At times Josè thought he detected traces of weariness, insidious and persistently lurking, in the old man's demeanor. At times his limbs trembled, and his step seemed heavy. Once Josè had found him, seated back of his cottage, rubbing the knotted muscles of his legs, and groaning aloud. But when he became aware of Josè presence, the groans ceased, and the old man sprang to his feet with a look of such grim determination written across his face that the priest smothered his apprehensions and forbore to speak. Rosendo was immolating himself upon his love for the child. Josè knew it; but he would not, if he could, prevent the sacrifice.

Each month their contributions were sent to Cartagena; and as regularly came a message from Wenceslas, admonishing them to greater efforts. With the money that was sent to the Bishop went also a smaller packet to the two women who were caring for the unfortunate Maria's little babe. The sources of Josè's remittances to Cartagena were never questioned by Wenceslas. But Simití slowly awakened to the mysterious monthly trips of Rosendo; and Don Mario's suspicion became conviction. He bribed men to follow Rosendo secretly. They came back, footsore and angry. Rosendo had thrown them completely off the scent. Then Don Mario outfitted and sent his paid emissary after the old man. He wasted two full months in vain search along the Guamocó trail. But the fever came upon him, and he refused to continue the hunt. The Alcalde counted the cost, then loudly cursed himself and Rosendo for the many good pesos so ruthlessly squandered. Then he began to ply Josè and Rosendo with skillfully framed questions. He worried the citizens of the village with his suggestions. Finally he bethought himself to apprise the Bishop of his suspicions. But second consideration disclosed that plan as likely to yield him nothing but loss. He knew Rosendo was getting gold from some source. But, too, he was driving a good trade with the old man on supplies. He settled back upon his fat haunches at last, determined to keep his own counsel and let well-enough alone for the present, while he awaited events.

Rosendo's vivid interest in Carmen's progress was almost pathetic. When in Simití he hung over the child in rapt absorption as she worked out her problems, or recited her lessons to Josè. Often he shook his head in witness of his utter lack of comprehension. But Carmen understood, and that sufficed. His admiration for the priest's learning was deep and reverential. He was a silent worshiper, this great-hearted man, at the shrine of intellect; but, alas! he himself knew only the rudiments, which he had acquired by years of patient, struggling effort, through long days and nights filled with toil. His particular passion was his Castilian mother-tongue; and the precision with which he at times used it, his careful selection of words, and his wide vocabulary, occasioned Josè no little astonishment. One day, after returning from the hills, he approached Josè as the latter was hearing Carmen's lessons, and, with considerable embarrassment, offered him a bit of paper on which were written in his ample hand several verses. Josè read them, and then looked up wonderingly at the old man.

"Why, Rosendo, these are beautiful! Where did you get them?"

"I--they are mine, Padre," replied Rosendo, his face glowing with pleasure.

"Yours! Do you mean that you wrote them?" Josè queried in astonishment.

"Yes, Padre. Nights, up in Guamocó, when I had finished my work, and when I was so lonely, I would sometimes light my candle and try to write out the thoughts that came to me."

Josè could not keep back the tears. He turned his head, that Rosendo might not see them. Of the three little poems, two were indited to the Virgin Mary, and one to Carmen. He lingered over one of the verses of the latter, for it awoke responsive echoes in his own soul:

"Without you, the world--a desert of sadness; But with you, sweet child--a vale of delight; You laugh, like the sunbeam--my gloom becomes gladness; You sing--from my heart flee the shadows of night."

"I--I have written a good deal of poetry during my life, Padre. I will show you some of it, if you wish," Rosendo advanced, encouraged by Josè's approbation.

"Decidedly, I would!" returned Josè with animation. "And to think, without instruction, without training! What a lesson!"

"Yes, Padre, when I think of the blessed Virgin or the little Carmen, my thoughts seem to come in poetry." He stooped over the girl and kissed her. The child reached up and clasped her arms about his black neck.

"Padre Rosendo," she said sweetly, "you are a poem, a big one, a beautiful one."

"Aye," seconded Josè, and there was a hitch in his voice, "you are an epic--and the world is the poorer that it cannot read you!"

But, though showing such laudable curiosity regarding the elements which entered into their simple life in Simití, Rosendo seldom spoke of matters pertaining to religion. Yet Josè knew that the old faith held him, and that he would never, on this plane of existence, break away from it. He clung to his escapulario; he prostrated himself before the statue of the Virgin; he invoked the aid of Virgin and Saints when in distress; and, unlike most of the male inhabitants of the town, he scrupulously prayed his rosary every night, whether at home, or on the lonely margins of the Tiguí. He had once said to Josè that he was glad Padre Diego had baptised the little Carmen--he felt safer to have it so. And yet he would not have her brought up in the Holy Catholic faith. Let her choose or formulate her own religious beliefs, they should not be influenced by him or others.

"You can never make me believe, Padre," he would sometimes say to the priest, "that the little Carmen was not left by the angels on the river bank."

"But, Rosendo, how foolish!" remonstrated Josè. "You have Escolastico's account, and the boat captain's."

"Well, and what then? Even the blessed Saviour was born of a woman; and yet he came from heaven. The angels brought him, guarded him as he lay in the manger, protected him all his life, and then took him back to heaven again. And I tell you, Padre, the angels brought Carmen, and they are always with her!"

Josè ceased to dispute the old man's contentions. For, had he been pressed, he would have been forced to admit that there was in the child's pure presence a haunting spell of mystery--perhaps the mystery of godliness--but yet an undefinable something that always made him approach her with a feeling akin to awe.

And in the calm, untroubled seclusion of Simití, in its mediaeval atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a nature that communed incessantly with her God, and that read His name in every trivial incident, in every stone and flower, in the sunbeams, the stars, and the whispering breeze. In that ancient town, crumbling into the final stages of decrepitude, she dwelt in heaven. To her, the rude adobe huts were marble castles; the shabby rawhide chairs and hard wooden beds were softest down; the coarse food was richer than a king's spiced viands; and over it all she cast a mantle of love that was rich enough, great enough, to transform with the grace of fresh and heavenly beauty the ruins and squalor of her earthly environment.

"Can a child like Carmen live a sinless life, and still be human?" Josè often mused, as he watched her flitting through the sunlit hours. "It is recorded that Jesus did. Ah, yes; but he was born of a virgin, spotless herself. And Carmen? Is she any less a child of God?" Josè often wondered, wondered deeply, as he gazed at her absorbed in her tasks. And yet--how was she born? Might he not, in the absence of definite knowledge, accept Rosendo's belief--accept it because of its beautiful, haunting mystery--that she, too, was miraculously born of a virgin, and "left by the angels on the river bank"? For, as far as he might judge, her life was sinless. It was true, she did at rare intervals display little outbursts of childish temper; she sometimes forgot and spoke sharply to her few playmates, and even to Doña Maria; and he had seen her cry for sheer vexation. And yet, these were but tiny shadows that were cast at rarest intervals, melting quickly when they came into the glorious sunlight of her radiant nature.

But the mystery shrouding the child's parentage, however he might regard it, often roused within his mind thoughts dark and apprehensive. Only one communication had come from Padre Diego, and that some four months after his precipitous flight. He had gained the Guamocó trail, it said, and finally arrived at Remedios. He purposed returning to Banco ultimately; and, until then, must leave the little Carmen in the care of those in whom he had immovable confidence, and to whom he would some day try, however feebly, to repay in an appropriate manner his infinite debt of gratitude.

"Caramba!" muttered Rosendo, on reading the note. "Does the villain think we are fools?"

But none the less could the old man quiet the fear that haunted him, nor still the apprehension that some day Diego would make capital of his claim. What that claim might accomplish if laid before Wenceslas, he shuddered to think. And so he kept the girl at his side when in Simití, and bound Josè and the faithful Juan to redoubled vigilance when he was again obliged to return to the mountains.

Time passed. The care-free children of this tropic realm drowsed through the long, hot days and gossiped and danced in the soft airs of night. Rosendo held his unremitting, lonely vigil of toil in the ghastly solitudes of Guamocó. Josè, exiled and outcast, clung desperately to the child's hand, and strove to rise into the spiritual consciousness in which she dwelt. And thus the year fell softly into the yawning arms of the past and became a memory.

Then one day Simití awoke from its lethargy in terror, with the spectre of pestilence stalking through her narrow streets.

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Chapter 19

Feliz Gomez, who had been sent to Bodega Central for merchandise which Don Mario was awaiting from the coast, had collapsed as he stepped from his boat on his return to Simití. When he regained consciousness he called wildly for the priest.

"Padre!" he cried, when Josè arrived, "it is la plaga! Ah, Santísima Virgen--I am dying!--dying!" He writhed in agony on the ground.

The priest bent over him, his heart throbbing with apprehension.

"Padre--" The lad strove to raise his head. "The innkeeper at Bodega Central--he told me I might sleep in an empty house back of the inn. Dios mío! There was an old cot there--I slept on it two nights--Caramba! Padre, they told me then--Ah, Bendita Virgen! Don't let me die, Padre! Carísima Virgen, don't let me die! Ah, Dios--!"

His body twisted in convulsions. Josè lifted him and dragged him to the nearby shed where the lad had been living alone. A terror-stricken concourse gathered quickly about the doorway and peered in wide-eyed horror through the narrow window.

"Feliz, what did they tell you?" cried Josè, laying the sufferer upon the bed and chafing his cold hands. The boy rallied.

"They told me--a Turk, bound for Zaragoza on the Nechí river--had taken the wrong boat--in Maganguey. He had been sick--terribly sick there. Ah, Dios! It is coming again, Padre--the pain! Caramba! Dios mío! Save me, Padre, save me!"

"Jacinta! Rosa! I must have help!" cried Josè, turning to the stunned people. "Bring cloths--hot water--and send for Don Mario. Doña Lucia, prepare an olla of your herb tea at once!"

"Padre"--the boy had become quieter--"when the Turk learned that he was on the wrong boat--he asked to be put off at the next town--which was Bodega Central. The innkeeper put him in the empty house--and he--Dios! he died--on that bed where I slept!"

"Well?" said Josè.

"Padre, he died--the day before I arrived there--and--ah_, Santísima Virgen_! they said--he died--of--of--la cólera!"

"Cholera!" cried the priest, starting up. At the mention of the disease a loud murmur arose from the people, and they fell back from the shed.

"Padre!--ah, Dios, how I suffer! Give me the sacrament--I cannot live--! Padre--let me confess--now. Ah, Padre, shall I go--to heaven? Tell me--!"

Josè's blood froze. He stood with eyes riveted in horror upon the tormented lad.

"Padre"--the boy's voice grew weaker--"I fell sick that day--I started for Simití--I died a thousand times in the caño--ah, caramba! But, Padre--promise to get me out of purgatory--I have no money for Masses. Caramba! I cannot stand it! Oh, Dios! Padre--quick--I have not been very wicked--but I stole--Dios, how I suffer!--I stole two pesos from the innkeeper at Bodega Central--he thought he lost them--but I took them out of the drawer--Padre, pay him for me--then I will not go to hell! Dios!"

Rosendo at that moment entered the house.

"Don't come in here!" cried Josè, turning upon him in wild apprehension. "Keep away, for God's sake, keep away!"

In sullen silence Rosendo disregarded the priest's frenzied appeal. His eyes widened when he saw the boy torn with convulsions, but he did not flinch. Only when he saw Carmen approaching, attracted by the great crowd, he hastily bade one of the women turn her back home.

Hour after hour the poor sufferer tossed and writhed. Again and again he lapsed into unconsciousness, from which he would emerge to piteously beg the priest to save him. "Ah! Dios, Padre!" he pleaded, extending his trembling arms to Josè, "can you do nothing? Can you not help me? Santísima Virgen, how I suffer!"

Then, when the evening shadows were gathering, the final convulsions seized him and wrenched his poor soul loose. Josè and Rosendo were alone with him when the end came. The people had early fled from the stricken lad, and were gathering in little groups before their homes and on the corners, discussing in low, strained tones the advent of the scourge. Those who had been close to the sick boy were now cold with fear. Women wept, and children clung whimpering to their skirts. The men talked excitedly in hoarse whispers, or lapsed into a state of terrified dullness.

Josè went from the death-bed to the Alcalde. Don Mario saw him coming, and fled into the house, securing the door after him. "Go away, Padre!" he shouted through the shutters. "For the love of the Virgin do not come here! Caramba!"

"But, Don Mario, the lad is dead!" cried Josè in desperation. "And what shall we do? We must face the situation. Come, you are the Alcalde. Let us talk about--"

"Caramba! Do what you want to! I shall get out! Nombre de Dios! If I live through the night I shall go to the mountains to-morrow!"

"But we must have a coffin to bury the lad! You must let us have one!"

"No! You cannot enter here, Padre!" shrilled Don Mario, jumping up and down in his excitement. "Bury him in a blanket--anything--but keep away from my house!"

Josè turned sadly away and passed through the deserted streets back to the lonely shed. Rosendo met him at the door. "Bien, Padre," he said quietly, "we are exiled."

"Have you been home yet?" asked Josè.

"Hombre, no! I cannot go home now. I might carry the disease to the señora and the little Carmen. I must stay here. And," he added, "you too, Padre."

Josè's heart turned to lead. "But, the boy?" he exclaimed, pointing toward the bed.

"When it is dark, Padre," replied Rosendo, "we will take him out through the back door and bury him beyond the shales. Hombre! I must see now if I can find a shovel."

Josè sank down upon the threshold, a prey to corroding despair, while Rosendo went out in search of the implement. The streets were dead, and few lights shone from the latticed windows. The pall of fear had settled thick upon the stricken town. Those who were standing before their houses as Rosendo approached hastily turned in and closed their doors. Josè, in the presence of death in a terrible form, sat mute. In an hour Rosendo returned.

"No shovel, Padre," he announced. "But I crept up back of my house and got this bar which I had left standing there when I came back from the mountains. I can scrape up the loose earth with my hands. Come now."

Josè wearily rose. He was but a tool in the hands of a man to whom physical danger was but a matter of temperament. He absently helped Rosendo wrap the black, distorted corpse in the frayed blanket; and then together they passed out into the night with their grewsome burden.

"Why not to the cemetery, Rosendo?" asked Josè, as the old man took an opposite course.

"Hombre, no!" cried Rosendo. "The cemetery is on shale, and I could not dig through it in time. We must get the body under ground at once. Caramba! If we put it in one of the bóvedas in the cemetery the buzzards will eat it and scatter the plague all over the town. The bóvedas are broken, and have no longer any doors, you remember."

So beyond the shales they went, stumbling through the darkness, their minds freighted with a burden of apprehension more terrible than the thing they bore in their arms. The shales crossed, Rosendo left the trail, cutting a way through the bush with his machete a distance of several hundred feet. Then, by the weird yellow light of a single candle, he opened the moist earth and laid the hideous, twisted thing within. Josè watched the procedure in dull apathy.

"And now, Padre," said Rosendo, at length breaking the awful silence, "where will you sleep to-night? I cannot let you go back to your house. It is too near the señora and Carmen. No man in town will let you stay in his house, since you have handled the plague. Will you sleep in the shed where the lad died? Or out on the shales with me? I called to the señora when I went after the bar, and she will lay two blankets out in the plaza for us. And in the morning she will put food where we can get it. What say you?"

Josè stood dazed. His mind had congealed with the horror of the situation. Rosendo took him by the arm. "Come, Padre," he said gently. "The hill up back of the second church is high, and no one lives near. I will get the blankets and we will pass the night out there."

"But, Rosendo!" Josè found his voice. "What is it? Is it--la cólera?"

"Quien sabe? Padre," returned Rosendo. "There has been plague here--these people, some of them, still remember it--but it was long ago. There have been cases along the river--and brought, I doubt not, by Turks, like this one."

"And do you think that it is now all along the river? That Bodega Central is being ravaged by the scourge? That it will sweep through the country?"

"Quien sabe? Padre. All I do know is that the people of Simití are terribly frightened, and the pestilence may wipe away the town before it leaves."

"But--good God! what can we do, Rosendo?"

"Nothing, Padre--but stay and meet it," the man replied quietly.

They reached the hill in silence. Then Rosendo wrapped himself in one of the blankets which he had picked up as he passed through the plaza, and lay down upon the shale.

But Josè slept not that night. The warm, sluggish air lay about him, mephitic in its touch. The great vampire bats that soughed through it symbolized the "pestilence that walketh in darkness." Lonely calls drifted across the warm lake waters from the dripping jungle like the hollow echoes of lost souls. Rosendo tossed fitfully, and now and then uttered deep groans. The atmosphere was prescient with horror. He struggled to his feet and paced gloomily back and forth along the brow of the hill. The second church stood near, deserted, gloomy, no longer a temple of God, but a charnel house of fear and black superstition. In the distance the ghostly white walls of the Rincón church glowed faintly in the feeble light that dripped from the yellow stars. There was now no thought of God--no thought of divine aid. Josè was riding again the mountainous billows of fear and unbelief; nor did he look for the Master to come to him through the thick night across the heaving waters.

The tardy dawn brought Doña Maria to the foot of the hill, where she deposited food, and held distant converse with the exiles. Don Mario had just departed, taking the direction across the lake toward San Lucas. He had compelled his wife to remain in Simití to watch over the little store, while he fled with two boatmen and abundant supplies. Others likewise were preparing to flee, some to the Boque river, some up the Guamocó trail. Doña Maria was keeping Carmen closely, nor would she permit her to as much as venture from the house.

"Why should not the señora take Carmen and go to Boque, Rosendo?" asked Josè. "Then you and I could occupy our own houses until we knew what the future had in store for us."

Rosendo agreed at once. Carmen would be safe in the protecting care of Don Nicolás. Doña Maria yielded only after much persuasion. From the hilltop Josè could descry the Alcalde's boat slowly wending its way across the lake toward the Juncal. Rosendo, having finished his morning meal, prepared to meet the day.

"Bien, Padre," he said, "when the sun gets high we cannot stay here. We must seek shade--but where?" He looked about dubiously.

"Why not in the old church, Rosendo?"

"Caramba, never!" cried Rosendo. "Hombre! that old church is haunted!"

Josè could never understand the nature of this man, so brave in the face of physical danger, yet so permeated with superstitious dread of those imaginary inhabitants of the invisible realm.

"Padre," suggested Rosendo at length. "We will go down there, nearer the lake, to the old shack where the blacksmith had his forge. He died two years ago, and the place has since been empty."

"Go then, Rosendo, and I will follow later," assented Josè, who now craved solitude for the struggle for self-mastery which he saw impending.

While Rosendo moved off toward the deserted shack, the priest continued his restless pacing along the crest of the hill. The morning was glorious--but for the blighting thoughts of men. The vivid green of the dewy hills shone like new-laid color. The lake lay like a diamond set in emeralds. The dead town glowed brilliantly white in the mounting sun. Josè knew that the heat would soon drive him from the hill. He glanced questioningly at the old church. He walked toward it; then mounted the broken steps. The hinges, rusted and broken, had let the heavy door, now bored through and through by comején ants, slip to one side. Through the opening thus afforded, Josè could peer into the cavernous blackness within. The sun shot its terrific heat at him, and the stone steps burned his sandaled feet. He pushed against the door. It yielded. Then through the opening he entered the dusty, ill-smelling old edifice.

When his eyes had become accustomed to the dimness within, he saw that the interior was like that of the other church, only in a more dilapidated state. There were but few benches; and the brick altar, poorer in construction, had crumbled away at one side. Dust, mold, and cobwebs covered everything; but the air was gratefully cool. Josè brushed the thick dust from one of the benches. Then he lay down upon it, and was soon sunk in heavy sleep.

* * * * *

The sun had just crossed the meridian. Josè awoke, conscious that he was not alone. The weird legend that hung about the old church filtered slowly through his dazed brain. Rosendo had said that an angel of some kind dwelt in the place. And surely a presence sat on the bench in the twilight before him! He roused up, rubbed his sleepy eyes, and peered at it. A soft laugh echoed through the stillness.

"I looked all around for the bad angel that padre Rosendo said lived here, and I didn't find anything but you."

"Carmen, child! What are you doing here? Don't come near me!" cried Josè, drawing away.

"Why, Padre--what is it? Why must I keep away from you? First, madre Maria tells me I must go to Boque with her. And now you will not let me come near you. And I love you so--" Tears choked her voice, and she sat looking in mute appeal at the priest.

Josè's wit seemed hopelessly scattered. He passed his hand dully across his brow as if to brush the mist from his befogged brain.

"Padre dear." The pathetic little voice wrung his heart. "Padre dear, when madre Maria told me I had to go to Boque, I went to your house to ask you, and--and you weren't there. And I couldn't find padre Rosendo either--and there wasn't anybody in the streets at all--and I came up here. Then I saw the blanket out on the hill, and I kept hunting for you--I wanted to see you so much. And when I saw the door of the church broken, I thought you might be in here--and so I came in--and, oh, Padre dear, I was so glad to find you--but I wouldn't wake you up--and while you were sleeping I just knew that God was taking care of you all the time--"

Josè had sunk again upon the bench.

"Padre dear!" Carmen came flying to him across the darkness and threw her arms about his neck. "Padre dear! I just couldn't stand it to leave you!" The flood-gates opened wide, and the girl sobbed upon his shoulder.

"Carmen--child!" But his own tears were mingling freely with hers. The strain of the preceding night had left him weak. He strove feebly to loosen the tightly clasped arms of the weeping girl. Then he buried his drawn face in her thick curls and strained her to his heaving breast. What this might mean to Carmen he knew full well. But--why not have it so? If she preceded him into the dark vale, it would be for only a little while. He would not live without her.

The sobs died away, and the girl looked up at the suffering man.

"Padre dear, you will not send me away--will you?" she pleaded.

"No! no!" he cried fiercely, "not now!"

A happy little sigh escaped her lips. Then she drew herself closer to him and whispered softly, "Padre dear--I love you."

A groan burst from the man. "God above!" he cried, "have you the heart to let evil attack such a one as this!"

The girl looked up at him in wonder. "Why, Padre dear--what is it? Tell me."

"Nothing, child--nothing! Did--er--did your madre Maria say why you must go to Boque?" he asked hesitatingly.

"She said Feliz Gomez died last night of the plague, and that the people were afraid they would all get sick and die too. And she said--Padre dear, she said you were afraid I would get sick, and so you told her to take me away. You didn't mean that, did you? She didn't understand you, did she? You are not afraid, are you? You can't be, you know, can you? You and I are not afraid of anything. We know--don't we, Padre dear?"

"What do we know, child?" he asked sadly.

"Why--why, we know that God is everywhere!" She looked at him wonderingly. What could she understand of a nature so wavering?--firm when the sun shone bright above--tottering when the blasts of adversity whirled about it? He had said such beautiful things to her, such wonderful things about God and His children only yesterday. And now--why this awful change? Why again this sudden lowering of standards?

He had sunk deep into his dark thoughts. "Death is inevitable!" he muttered grimly, forgetful of the child's presence.

"Oh, Padre dear!" she pleaded, passing her little hand tenderly over his cheek. Then her face brightened. "I know what it is!" she exclaimed. "You are just trying to think that two and two are seven--and you can't prove it--and so you'd better stop trying!" She broke into a little forced laugh.

Josè sat wrapped in black silence.

"Padre dear." Her voice was full of plaintive tenderness. "You have talked so much about that good man Jesus. What would he say if he saw you trying to make two and two equal seven? And if he had been here last night--would he have let Feliz die?"

The priest made no answer. None was required when Carmen put her questions.

"Padre dear," she continued softly. "Why didn't you cure Feliz?"

His soul withered under the shock.

"You have told me, often, that Jesus cured sick people. And you said he even made the dead ones live again--didn't you, Padre dear?"

"Yes," he murmured; "they say he did."

"And you read to me once from your Bible where he told the people that he gave them power over everything. And you said he was the great rule--you called him the Christ-principle--and you said he never went away from us. Well, Padre dear," she concluded with quick emphasis, "why don't you use him now?"

She waited a moment. Then, when no reply came--

"Feliz didn't die, Padre."

"Hombre! It's all the same--he's gone!" he cried in a tone of sullen bitterness.

"You think he is gone, Padre dear. And Feliz thought he had to go. And so now you both see it that way--that's all. If you would see things the way that good man Jesus told you to--well, wouldn't they be different--wouldn't they, Padre dear?"

"No doubt they would, child, no doubt. But--"

She waited a moment for him to express the limitation which the conjunctive implied. Then:

"Padre dear, how do you think he did it? How did he cure sick people, and make the dead ones live again?"

"I--I don't know, child--I am not sure. That knowledge has been lost, long since."

"You do know, Padre," she insisted; "you do! Did he know that God was everywhere?"

"Yes."

"And what did he say sickness was?"

"He classed it with all evil under the one heading--a lie--a lie about God."

"But when a person tells a lie, he doesn't speak the truth, does he?"

"No."

"And a lie has no rule, no principle?"

"No."

"And so it isn't anything--doesn't come from anything true--hasn't any real life, has it?"

"No, a lie is utterly unreal, not founded on anything but supposition, either ignorant or malicious."

"Then Jesus said sickness was a supposition, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"And God, who made everything real, didn't make suppositions. He made only real things."

"True, child."

"Well, Padre dear, if you know all that, why don't you act as if you did?"

Act? Yes, act your knowledge! Acknowledge Him in all your ways! Then He shall bring it to pass! What? That which is real--life, not death--immortality, not oblivion--love, not hate--good, not evil!

"Chiquita--" His voice was thick. "You--you believe all that, don't you?"

"No, Padre dear"--she smiled up at him through the darkness--"I don't believe it, I know it."

"But--how--how do you know it?"

"God tells me, Padre. I hear Him, always. And I prove it every day. The trouble is, you believe it, but I don't think you ever try to prove it. If you believed my problems in algebra could be solved, but never tried to prove it--well, you wouldn't do very much in algebra, would you?" She laughed at the apt comparison.

Josè's straining eyes were peering straight ahead. Through the thick gloom he saw the mutilated figure of the Christ hanging on its cross beside the crumbling altar. It reflected the broken image of the Christ-principle in the hearts of men. And was he not again crucifying the gentle Christ? Did not the world daily crucify him and nail him with their false beliefs to the cross of carnal error which they set up in the Golgotha of their own souls? And were they not daily paying the awful penalty therefor? Aye, paying it in agony, in torturing agony of soul and body, in blasted hopes, crumbling ambitions, and inevitable death!

"Padre dear, what did the good man say sickness came from?" Carmen's soft voice brought him back from his reflections.

"Sickness? Why, he always coupled disease with sin."

"And sin?"

"Sin is--is unrighteousness."

"And that is--?" she pursued relentlessly.

"Wrong conduct, based on wrong thinking. And wrong thinking is based on wrong beliefs, false thought."

"But to believe that there is anything but God, and the things He made, is sin, isn't it, Padre dear?"

"Sin is--yes, to believe in other powers than God is to break the very first Commandment--and that is the chief of sins!"

"Well, Padre dear, can't you make yourself think right? Do you know what you really think about God, anyway?"

Josè rose and paced up and down through the dark aisle.

"I try to think," he answered, "that He is mind; that He is infinite, everywhere; that He is all-powerful; that He knows all things; and that He is perfect and good. I try not to think that He made evil, or anything that is or could be bad, or that could become sick, or decay, or die. Whatever He made must be real, and real things last forever, are immortal, eternal. I strive to think He did make man in His image and likeness--and that man has never been anything else--that man never 'fell.'"

"What is that, Padre?"

"Only an old, outworn theological belief. But, to resume: I believe that, since God is mind, man must be an idea of His. Since God is infinite, man must exist in Him. I know that any number of lies can be made up about true things. And any number of falsities can be assumed about God and what He has made. I am sure that the material universe and man are a part of the lie about God and the way He manifests and expresses Himself in and through His ideas. Everything is mental. We must hold to that! The mental realm includes all truth, all fact. But there may be all sorts of supposition about this fact. And yet, while fact is based upon absolute and undeviating principle--and I believe that principle to be God--supposition is utterly without any rule or principle whatsoever. It is wholly subject to truth, to Principle, to God. Hence, bad or wrong thought is absolutely subject to good or real thought, and must go down before it. The mortal man is a product of wrong thought. He is a supposition; and so is the universe of matter in which he is supposed to live. We have already learned that the things he thinks he hears, feels, tastes, smells, and sees are only his own thoughts. And these turn out to be suppositions. Hence, they are nothing real."

"Well, Padre! How fast you talk! And--such big words! I--I don't think I understand all you say. But, anyway, I guess it is right." She laughed again.

"I know it is right!" he exclaimed, forgetting that he was talking to a child. "Evil, which includes sickness and death, is only a false idea of good. It is a misinterpretation, made in the thought-activity which constitutes what we call the human consciousness. And that is the opposite--the suppositional opposite--of the mind that is God. Evil, then, becomes a supposition and a lie. Just what Jesus said it was!"

"But, Padre--I don't see why you don't act as if you really believed all that!"

"Fear--only fear! It has not yet been eradicated from my thought," he answered slowly.

"But, Padre, what will drive it out?"

"Love, child--love only, for 'perfect love casteth out fear.'"

"Oh, then, Padre dear, I will just love it all out of you, every bit!" she exclaimed, clasping her arms about him again and burying her face in his shoulder.

"Ah, little one," he said sadly, "I must love more. I must love my fellow-men and good more than myself and evil. If I didn't love myself so much, I would have no fear. If I loved God as you do, dearest child, I would never come under fear's heavy shadow."

"You do love everybody--you have got to, for you are God's child. And now," she added, getting down and drawing him toward the door, "let us go out of this smelly old church. I want you to come home. We've got to have our lessons, you know."

"But--child, the people will not let me come near them--nor you either, now," he said, holding back. "They think we may give them the disease."

She looked up at him with a tender, wistful smile. Then she shook her head. "Padre dear, I love you," she said, "but you make me lots of trouble. But--we are going to love all the fear away, and--" stamping her little bare foot--"we are going to get the right answer to your problem, too!"

The priest took her hand, and together they passed out into the dazzling sunlight.

On the brow of the hill stood Rosendo, talking excitedly, and with much vehement gesticulation, to Doña Maria, who remained a safe distance from him. The latter and her good consort exclaimed in horror when they saw Carmen with the priest.

"Caramba!" cried Rosendo, darting toward them. "I could kill you for this, Padre! Hombre! How came the child here, and with you? Dios mío! Have you no heart, but that, when you know you may die, you would take her with you?" He swung his long arms menacingly before the priest, and his face worked with passion.

The girl ran between the two men. "Padre Rosendo!" she cried, seizing one of his hands in both of her own. "I came of myself. He did not call me. I found him asleep. And he isn't going to die--nor I, either!"

Doña Maria approached and quietly joined the little group.

"Caramba! Go back!" cried the distressed Rosendo, turning upon her. "Hombre! Dios y diablo! will you all die?" He stamped the ground and tore his hair in his impotent protest.

"Na, Rosendo," said the woman placidly, "if you are in danger, I will be too. If you must die, so will I. I will not be left alone."

A thrill of admiration swept over the priest. Then he smiled wanly. "Bien," he said, "we have all been exposed to the plague now, and we will stand together. Shall we return home?"

Rosendo's anger soon evaporated, but his face retained traces of deep anxiety. "Maria tells me, Padre," he said, "that Amado Sanchez fell sick last night with the flux, and nobody will stay with him, excepting his woman."

"Let us go to him, then," replied the priest. "Doña Maria, do you and Carmen return to your house, whilst Rosendo and I seek to be of service to those who may need us."

Together they started down the main street of the town. Dead silence reigned everywhere. Many of the inhabitants had fled to the hills. But there were still many whose circumstances would not permit of flight. As they neared Rosendo's house the little party were hailed from a distance by Juan Mendoza and Pedro Cárdenas, neighbors living on either side of Rosendo and the priest.

"Hola, Padre and Don Rosendo!" they called; "you cannot return to your homes, for you would expose us to the plague! Go back! Go back! We will burn the houses over your heads if you return!"

"But, amigos--" Josè began.

"Na, Padre," they cried in tense excitement, "it is for the best! Go back to the hill! We will supply you with food and blankets--but you must not come here! Amado Sanchez is sick; Guillermo Hernandez is sick. Go back! You must not expose us!" The attitude of the frightened, desperate men was threatening. Josè saw that it would be unwise to resist them.

"Bien, compadres, we will go," he said, his heart breaking with sorrow for these children of fear. Then, assembling his little family, he turned and retraced his steps sadly through the street that burned in lonely silence in the torrid heat.

Carmen's eyes were big with wonder; but a happy idea soon drove all apprehension from her thought. "Padre!" she exclaimed, "we will live in the old church, and we will play house there!" She clapped her hands in merriment.

"Never!" muttered Rosendo. "I will not enter that place! It would bring the plague upon me! Na! na!" he insisted, when they reached the steps, "do you go in if you wish; but I will stay outside in the shadow of the building." Nor would the combined entreaties of Carmen and Josè induce him to yield. Doña Maria calmly and silently prepared to remain with him.

"Pull off the old door, Padre!" cried Carmen excitedly. "And open all the shutters. Look! Look, Padre! There goes the bad angel that padre Rosendo was afraid of!" A number of bats, startled at the noise and the sudden influx of light, were scurrying out through the open door.

"Like the legion of demons which Jesus sent into the swine," said Josè. "I will tell you the story some day, chiquita," he said, in answer to her look of inquiry.

The day passed quickly for the child, nor did she seem to cast another thought in the direction of the cloud which hung over the sorrowing town. At dusk, Mendoza and Cárdenas came to the foot of the hill with food and blankets.

"Amado Sanchez has just died," they reported.

"What!" cried Josè. "So soon? Why--he fell sick only yesterday!"

"No, Padre, he had been ailing for many days--but it may have been the plague just the same. Perhaps it was with us before Feliz brought it. But we have not exposed ourselves to the disease and--Padre--there is not a man in Simití who will bury Amado. What shall we do?"

Josè divined the man's thought. "Bien, amigo," he replied. "Go you back to your homes. To-night Rosendo and I will come and bury him."

Josè had sent Carmen and Doña Maria beyond the church, that they might not hear the grewsome tidings. When the men had returned to their homes, the little band on the hilltop ate their evening meal in silence. Then a bench was swept clean for Carmen's bed, for she insisted on sleeping in the old church with Josè when she learned that he intended to pass the night there.

Again, as the heavy shadows were gathering, Josè and Rosendo descended into the town and bore out the body of Amado Sanchez to a resting place beside the poor lad who had died the day before. To a man of such delicate sensibilities as Josè, whose nerves were raw from continual friction with a world with which he was ever at variance, this task was one of almost unendurable horror. He returned to the old church in a state bordering on collapse.

"Rosendo," he murmured, as they seated themselves on the hillside in the still night, "I think we shall all die of the plague. And it were well so. I am tired, utterly tired of striving to live against such odds. Bien, let it come!"

"Courage, compadre!" urged Rosendo, putting his great arm about the priest's shoulders. "We must all go some time, and perhaps now; but while we live let us live like men!"

"You do not fear death?"

"No--what is it that the old history of mine says? 'Death is not departing, but arriving.' I am not afraid. But the little Carmen--I wish that she might live. She--ah, Padre, she could do much good in the world. Bien, we are all in the hands of the One who brought us here--and He will take us in the way and at the time that He appoints--is it not so, Padre?"

Josè lapsed again into meditation. No, he could not say that it was so. The thoughts which he had expressed to Carmen that morning still flitted through his mind. The child was right--Rosendo's philosophy was that of resignation born of ignorance. It was the despair of doubt. And he did not really think that Carmen would be smitten of the plague. Something seemed to tell him that it was impossible. But, on the other hand, he would himself observe every precaution in regard to her. No, he would not sleep in the church that night. He had handled the body of the plague's second victim, and he could not rest near the child. Perhaps exposure to the night air and the heavy dews would serve to cleanse him. And so he wrapped himself in the blanket which Doña Maria brought from within the church, and lay down beside the faithful pair.

In the long hours of that lonely night Josè lay beneath the shimmering stars pondering, wondering. Down below in the smitten town the poor children of his flock were eating their hearts out in anxious dread and bitter sorrow. Was it through any fault of theirs that this thing had come upon them, like a bolt from a cloudless sky? No--except that they were human, mortal. And if the thing were real, it came from the mind that is God; if unreal--but it seemed real to these simple folk, terribly so!

His heart yearned toward them as his thought penetrated the still reaches of the night and hovered about their lonely vigil. Yet, what had he to offer? What balm could he extend to those wearing out weary hours on beds of agony below? Religion? True religion, if they could but understand it; but not again the empty husks of the faith that had been taught them in the name of Christ! Where did scholastic theology stand in such an hour as this? Did it offer easement from their torture of mind and body? No. Strength to bear in patience their heavy burden? No. Hope? Not of this life--nay, naught but the thread-worn, undemonstrable promise of a life to come, if, indeed, they might happily avoid the pangs of purgatory and the horrors of the quenchless flames of hell! God, what had not the Church to answer for!

And yet, these ignorant children were but succumbing to the evidence of their material senses--though small good it would do to tell them so! Could they but know--as did Carmen--that rejection of error and reception of truth meant life--ah, could they but know! Could he himself but know--really know--that God is neither the producer of evil, nor the powerless witness of its ravages--could he but understand and prove that evil is not a self-existing entity, warring eternally with God, what might he not accomplish! For Jesus had said: "These signs"--the cure of disease, the rout of death--"shall follow them that believe," that understand, that know. Why could he not go down to those beds of torture and say with the Christ: "Arise, for God hath made thee whole"? He knew why--"without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh of God must believe"--must know--"that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." The suffering victims in the town below were asleep in a state of religious dullness. The task of independent thinking was onerous to such as they. Gladly did they leave it to the Church to do their thinking for them. And thus did they suffer for the trust betrayed!

But truth is omnipotent, and "one with God is a majority." Jesus gave few rules, but none more fundamental than that "with God all things are possible." Was he, Josè, walking with God? If so, he might arise and go down into the stricken town and bid its frightened children be whole. If he fully recognized "the Father" as all-powerful, all-good, and if he could clearly see and retain his grasp on the truth that evil, the supposititious opposite of good, had neither place nor power, except in the minds of mortals receptive to it--ah, then--then----

A soft patter of little feet on the shales broke in upon his thought. He turned and beheld Carmen coming through the night.

"Padre dear," she whispered, "why didn't you come and sleep in the church with me?" She crept close to him. He had not the heart nor the courage to send her away. He put out his arm and drew her to him.

"Padre dear," the child murmured, "it is nice out here under the stars--and I want to be with you--I love you--love you--" The whisper died away, and the child slept on his arm.

"Perfect love casteth out fear."

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Chapter 20

Dawn brought Juan Mendoza and Pedro Cárdenas again to the hill, and with them came others. "Mateo Gil, Pablo Polo, and Juanita Gomez are sick, Padre," announced Mendoza, the spokesman. "They ask for the last sacrament. You could come down and give it to them, and then return to the hill, is it not so?"

"Yes," assented Josè, "I will come."

"And, Padre," continued Mendoza, "we talked it over last night, after Amado Sanchez died, and we think it would help if you said a Mass for us in the church to-day."

"I will do so this afternoon, after I have visited the sick," he replied pityingly.

Mendoza hesitated. Then--

"We think, too, Padre, that if we held a procession--in honor of Santa Barbara--perhaps she would pray for us, and might stop the sickness. We could march through the town this evening, while you stood here and prayed as we passed around the hill. What say you, Padre?"

Josè was about to express a vehement protest. But the anxious faces directed toward him melted his heart.

"Yes, children," he replied gently, "do as you wish. Keep your houses this afternoon while I visit the sick and offer the Mass. I will leave the hostia on the altar. You need not fear to touch it. Carry it with you in your rogation to Santa Barbara this evening, and I will stand here and pray for you."

The people departed, sorrowing, but grateful. Hope revived in the breasts of some. But most of them awaited in trembling the icy touch of the plague.

"Padre," said Rosendo, when the people had gone. "I have been thinking about the sickness, and I remember what my father told me he learned from a Jesuit missionary. It was that the fat from a human body would cure rheumatism. And then the missionary laughed and said that the fat from a plump woman would cure all diseases of mind and body. If that is so, Padre, and Juanita Gomez dies--she is very plump, Padre--could we not take some of the fat from her body and rub it on the sick--"

"God above, Rosendo! what are you saying!" cried Josè recoiling in horror.

"Caramba!" retorted the honest man. "Would you not try everything that might possibly save these people? What the missionary said may be true."

"No, my faithful ally," replied Josè. "You did not get the sense in which he said it. Neither human fat nor medicine of any kind will help these people. Nothing will be accomplished for them until their fear has been removed. For, I--well, the symptoms manifested by poor Feliz may have been those of Asiatic cholera. But--I begin to doubt. And as for Sanchez--Bien, we do not know--not for certain." He stopped and pondered the question.

"Padre," pursued Rosendo, "I have used the liver of a lizard for toothache, and it was very good."

"I have no doubt of it, Rosendo," replied Josè, with a smile. "And in days past stranger remedies than that were used by supposedly wise people. When the eyesight was poor, they rubbed wax from the human ear upon the eyes, and I doubt not marvelous restorations of sight were made. So also dogs' teeth were ground into powder and taken to alleviate certain bodily pains. Almost everything that could be swallowed has been taken by mankind to cure their aches and torments. But they still ache to-day; and will continue to do so, I believe, until their present state of mind greatly changes."

When the simple midday meal of corn arepa and black coffee was finished, Josè descended into the quiet town. "It is absurd that we should be kept on the hill," he had said to Rosendo, "but these dull, simple minds believe that, having handled those dead of the plague, we have become agents of infection. They forget that they themselves are living either in the same house with it, or closely adjacent. But it humors them, poor children, and we will stay here for their sakes."

"Caramba! and they have made us their sextons!" muttered Rosendo.

Josè shuddered. The clammy hand of fear again reached for his heart. He turned to Carmen, who was busily occupied in the shade of the old church.

"Your lessons, chiquita?" he queried, going to her for a moment's abstraction.

"No, Padre dear," she replied, smiling up at him, while she quickly concealed the bit of paper on which she had been writing.

"Then what are you doing, little one?" he insisted.

"Padre dear--don't--don't always make me tell you everything," she pleaded, but only half in earnest, as she cast an enigmatical glance at him.

"But this time I insist on knowing; so you might as well tell me."

"Well then, if you must know," she replied, her face beaming with a happiness which seemed to Josè strangely out of place in that tense atmosphere, "I have been writing a question to God." She held out the paper.

"Writing a question to God! Well--!"

"Why, yes, Padre dear. I have done that for a long, long time. When I want to know what to do, and think I don't see just what is best, I write my question to God on a piece of paper. Then I read it to Him, and tell Him I know He knows the answer and that He will tell me. And then I put the paper under a stone some place, and--well, that's all, Padre. Isn't it a good way?" She beamed at him like a glorious noonday sun.

The priest stood before her in wonder and admiration. "And does He tell you the answers to your questions, chiquita?" he asked tenderly.

"Always, Padre dear. Not always right away--but He never fails--never!"

"Will you tell me what you are asking Him now?" he said.

She handed him the paper. His eyes dimmed as he read:

"Dear, dear Father, please tell your little girl and her dear Padre Josè what it is that makes the people think they have to die down in the town."

"And where will you put the paper, little girl?" he asked, striving to control his voice.

"Why, I don't know, Padre. Oh, why not put it under the altar in this old church?" she exclaimed, pleased with the thought of such a novel hiding place.

"Excellent!" assented Josè; and together they entered the building. After much stumbling over rubbish, much soiling of hands and disturbing of bats and lizards, while Carmen's happy laugh rang merrily through the gloomy old pile, they laid the paper carefully away behind the altar in a little pocket, and covered it with an adobe brick.

"There!" panted the girl, the task finished. "Now we will wait for the answer."

Josè went down into the ominous silence of the town with a lighter heart. The sublime faith of the child moved before him like a beacon. To the sick he spoke words of comfort, with the vision of Carmen always before him. At the altar in the empty church, where he offered the Mass in fulfillment of his promise to the people, her fair form glowed with heavenly radiance from the pedestal where before had stood the dilapidated image of the Virgin. He prepared the sacred wafer and left a part of it on the altar for the people to carry in their procession to Santa Barbara. The other portion he took to the sick ones who had asked for the sacrament.

Two more had fallen ill that afternoon. Mateo Gil, he thought, could not live the night through. He knelt at the loathsome bedside of the suffering man and prayed long and earnestly for light. He tried not to ask, but to know. While there, he heard a call from the street, announcing the passing of Guillermo Hernandez. Another one! His heart sank again. The plague was upon them in all its cruel virulence.

Sadly he returned to the hill, just as the sun tipped the highest peaks of the Cordilleras. Standing on the crest, he waited with heavy heart, while the mournful little procession wended its sad way through the streets below. An old, battered wooden image of one of the Saints, rescued from the oblivion of the sacristía, had been dressed to represent Santa Barbara. This, bedecked with bits of bright colored ribbon, was carried at the head of the procession by the faithful Juan. Following him, Pedro Gonzales, old and tottering, bore a dinner plate, on which rested the hostia, while over the wafer a tall young lad held a soiled umbrella, for there was no canopy.

A slow chant rose from the lips of the people like a dirge. It struck the heart of the priest like a chill wind. "Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!" Tears streamed from his eyes while he gazed upon his stricken people. Slowly, wearily, they wound around the base of the hill, some sullen with despair, others with eyes turned beseechingly upward to where the priest of God stood with outstretched hands, his full heart pouring forth a passionate appeal to Him to turn His light upon these simple-minded children. When they had gone back down the road, their bare feet raising a cloud of thick dust which hid them from his view, Josè sank down upon the rock and buried his face in his hands.

"I know--I think I know, oh, God," he murmured; "but as yet I have not proved--not yet. But grant that I may soon--for their sakes."

Rosendo touched his shoulder. "There is another body to bury to-night, Padre. Eat now, and we will go down."

* * * * *

Standing over the new grave, in the solemn hush of night, the priest murmured: "I am the resurrection and the life." But the mound upon which Rosendo was stolidly heaping the loose earth marked only another victory of the mortal law of death over a human sense of life. And there was no one there to call forth the sleeping man.

"Behold, I give you power over all things," said the marvelous Jesus. The wondrous, irresistible power which he exerted in behalf of suffering humanity, he left with the world when he went away. But where is it now?

"Still here," sighed the sorrowing priest, "still here--lo, always here--but we know it not. Sunken in materiality, and enslaved to the false testimony of the physical senses, we lack the spirituality that alone would enable us to grasp and use that Christ-power, which is the resurrection and the life."

"Padre," said Rosendo, when they turned back toward the hill, "Hernandez is now with the angels. You gave him the sacrament, did you not?"

"Yes, Rosendo."

"Bien, then you remitted his sins, and he is doubtless in paradise. But," he mused, "it may be that he had first to pass through purgatory. Caramba! I like not the thought of those hot fires!"

"Rosendo!" exclaimed Josè in impatience. "Your mental wanderings at times are puerile! You talk like the veriest child! Do not be deceived, Hernandez is still the same man, even though he has left his earthly body behind. Do not think he has been lifted at once into eternal bliss. The Church has taught such rubbish for ages, and has based its pernicious teachings upon the grossly misunderstood words of Jesus. The Church is a failure--a dead, dead failure, in every sense of the word! And that man lying there in his grave is a ghastly proof of it!"

Rosendo looked wonderingly at the excited priest, whose bitter words rang out so harshly on the still night air.

"The Church has failed utterly to preserve the simple gospel of the Christ! It has basely, wantonly betrayed its traditional trust! It has fought and slain and burned for centuries over trivial, vulnerable non-essentials, and thrown its greatest pearls to the swine! It no longer prophesies; it carps and reviles! It no longer heals the sick; but it conducts a purgatorial lottery at so much a head! It has become a jumble of idle words, a mumbling of silly formulæ, a category of stupid, insensate ceremonies! Its children are taught to derive their faith from such legends as that of the holy Saint Francis, who, to convince a heretic, showed the hostia to an ass, which on beholding the sacred dough immediately kneeled! Good God!"

"Ca-ram-ba! But you speak hard words, Padre!" muttered Rosendo, vague speculations flitting through his brain as to the priest's mental state.

"God!" continued Josè heatedly, "the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master's day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully insulted God and man!--"

"Caramba, Padre! You are not well! Hombre, we must get back to the hill! You are falling sick!"

"I am not, Rosendo! You voice the Church's stock complaint of every man who exposes her shams: 'He hath a devil!'"

Rosendo whistled softly. Josè went on more excitedly:

"You ask if Hernandez is in paradise or purgatory. He is in a state no better nor worse than our own, for both are wholly mental. We are now in the fires of as great a purgatory as any man can ever experience! Yes, there is a purgatory--right here on earth--and it follows us after death, and after every death that we shall die, until we learn to know God and see Him as infinite good, without taint or trace of evil! The flames of hell are eternal to us as long as we eat of 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'--as long as we believe in other powers than God--as long as we believe sin and disease and evil to be as real and as potent as good! When we know these things as awful human illusions, and when we recognize God as the infinite mind that did not create evil, and does not know or behold it, then, and then only, will the flames of purgatory and hell in this state of consciousness which we mistakenly call life, and in the states of consciousness still to come, begin to diminish in intensity, and finally die out!"

He walked along in silence for some moments. Then he turned to Rosendo and put his hand affectionately upon the old man's shoulder. "My good friend," he said more calmly, "I speak with intense feeling, for I have suffered much through the intolerance, the unspirituality, and the worldly ambition of the agents of Holy Church. I suffer, because I see what she is, and how widely she has missed the mark. But, worse, I see how blindly, how cruelly, she leads and betrays her trusting children--and it is the thought of that which at times almost drives me mad! But never mind me, Rosendo. Let me rave. My full heart must empty itself. Do you but look to Carmen for your faith. She is not of the Church. She knows God, and she will lead you straight to Him. And as you follow her, your foolish ideas of purgatory, hell, and paradise, of wafers and virgins--all the tawdry beliefs which the Church has laid upon you, will drop off, one by one, and melt away as do the mists on the lake when the sun mounts high."

Carmen and Doña Maria sat against the wall of the old church, waiting for them. The child ran through the darkness and grasped Josè's hand.

"I wouldn't go to sleep until you came, Padre!" she cried happily. "I wanted to be sure you wouldn't sleep anywhere else than right next to me."

"Padre," admonished Rosendo anxiously, "do you think you ought to let her come close to you now? The plague--"

Josè turned to him and spoke low. "There is no power or influence that we can exert upon her, Rosendo, either for good or evil. She is obeying a spiritual law of which we know but little."

"And that, Padre?"

"Just this, Rosendo: 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.'"

The late moon peeped timidly above the drowsing treetops. Its yellow beams stole silently across the still lake and up the hillside to the crumbling church. When they reached the four quiet figures, huddled close against the ghostly wall, they filtered like streams of liquid gold through the brown curls of the little head lying on the priest's shoulder. And there they dwelt as symbols of Love's protecting care over the trusting children of this world, until the full dawn of the glorious sun of Truth.

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Chapter 21

Josè rose from his hard bed stiff and weary. Depression sat heavily upon his soul, and he felt miserably unable to meet the day. Doña Maria was preparing the coffee over a little fire back of the church. The odor of the steaming liquid drifted to him on the warm morning air and gave him a feeling of nausea. A sharp pain shot through his body. His heart stopped. Was the plague's cold hand settling upon him? Giddiness seized him, and he sat down again upon the rocks.

In the road below a cloud of dust was rising, and across the distance a murmur of voices floated up to his ears. Men were approaching. He wondered dully what additional trouble it portended. Rosendo came to him at that moment.

"Muy buenos dias, Padre. I saw a boat come across the lake some minutes ago. I wonder if Don Mario has returned."

The men below were ascending the hill. Josè struggled to his feet and went forth to meet them. A familiar voice greeted him cheerily.

"Hola, Señor Padre Josè! Dios mío, but your hill is steep!"

Josè strained his eyes at the newcomer. The man quickly gained the summit, and hurried to grasp the bewildered priest's hand.

"Love of the Virgin! don't you know me, Señor Padre?" he cried, slapping Josè roundly upon the back.

The light of recognition slowly came into the priest's eyes. The man was Don Jorge, his erstwhile traveling companion on the Magdalena river.

"And now a cup of that coffee, if you will do me the favor, my good Cura. And then tell me what ails you here," he added, seating himself. "Caramba, what a town! Diego was right--the devil himself made this place! But they say you have all taken to dying! Have you nothing else to do? Caramba, I do not wonder! Such a God-forsaken spot! Well, what is it? Speak, man!"

Josè collected his scattered thoughts. "The cholera!" he said hoarsely.

"Cholera! Caramba! so they told me down below, and I would not believe them! But where did it come from?"

"One of our men brought it from Bodega Central."

"Bodega Central!" ejaculated Don Jorge. "Impossible! I came from there this morning myself. Have been there two days. There isn't a trace of cholera in the place, as far as I know! You have all gone crazy--but small wonder!" looking out over the decrepit town.

The priest's head was awhirl. He felt his senses leaving him. His ears were reporting things basely false. "You say--" he began in bewilderment.

"I say what I have said, amigo! There is no more cholera in Bodega Central than there is in heaven! I arrived there day before yesterday, and left before sunrise this morning. So I should know."

Josè sank weakly down at the man's side. "But--Don Jorge--Feliz Gomez returned from there three nights ago, and reported that a Turk, who had come up from the coast, had died of the plague!"

Don Jorge's brows knit in perplexity. "I recall now," he said slowly, after some moments of study. "The innkeeper did say that a Turk had died there--some sort of intestinal trouble, I believe. When I told him I was bound for Simití, he laughed as if he would split, and then began to talk about the great fright he had given a man from here. Said he scared the fellow until his black face turned white. But I was occupied with my own affairs, and paid him little attention. But come, tell me all about it."

With the truth slowly dawning upon his clouded thought, Josè related the grewsome experiences of the past three days.

"Ca-ram-ba!" Don Jorge whistled softly. "Who would have thought it! But, was Feliz Gomez sick before he went to Bodega Central?"

"I do not know," replied Josè.

"Yes, señor," interposed Rosendo. "He and Amado Sanchez both had bowel trouble. Their women told my wife so, after you and I, Padre, had come up here to the hill. But it was nothing. We have it here often, as you know."

"True," assented Josè, "but we have never given it any serious thought."

Don Jorge leaned back and broke into a roar of laughter. "Por el amor del cielo! You are all crazy, amigo--you die like rats of fear! Did you ever put a mouse into a bottle and then scare it to death with a loud noise? Hombre! That is what has happened to you!" The hill reverberated with his loud shouts.

But Josè could not share in the merriment. The awful consequences of the innkeeper's coarse joke upon the childish minds of these poor, impressionable people pressed heavily upon his heart. Bitter tears welled to his eyes. He sprang to his feet.

"Come, Rosendo!" he cried. "We must go down and tell these people the truth!"

Don Jorge joined them, and they all hastened down into the town. Ramona Chaves met them in the plaza, her eyes streaming.

"Padre," she wailed, "my man Pedro has the sickness! He is dying!"

"Nothing of the kind, Ramona!" loudly cried Josè; "there is no cholera here!" He hastened to the bedside of the writhing Pedro.

"Up, man!" he shouted, seizing his hand. "Up! You are not sick! There is no cholera in Simití! There is none in Bodega Central! Feliz did not bring it! He and Amado had only a touch of the flux, and they died of fear!"

The priest's ringing words acted upon the man like magic. He roused up from his lethargy and stared at the assemblage. Don Jorge repeated the priest's words, and added his own laughing and boisterous comments. Pedro rose from his bed, and stood staring.

Together, their little band augmented at every corner by the startled people, they hurried to the homes of all who lay upon beds of sickness, spreading the glad tidings, until the little town was in a state of uproar. Like black shadows before the light, the plague fled into the realm of imagination from which it had come. By night, all but Mateo Gil were up and about their usual affairs. But even Mateo had revived wonderfully; and Josè was confident that the good news would be the leaven of health that would work a complete restoration within him in time. The exiles left the hilltop and the old church, and returned again to their homes. Don Jorge took up his abode with Josè.

"Bien," he said, as they sat at the rear door of the priest's house, looking through the late afternoon haze out over the lake, "you have had a strange experience--Caramba! most strange!--and yet one from which you should gather an excellent lesson. You are dealing with children here--children who have always been rocked in the cradle of the Church. But--" looking archly at Josè, "do I offend? For, as I told you on the boat a year ago, I do not think you are a good priest." He laughed softly. "Bien," he added, "I will correct that. You are good--but not a priest, is it not so?"

"I have some views, Don Jorge, which differ radically from those of the faith," Josè said cautiously.

"Caramba! I should hope so!" his friend ejaculated.

"But," interposed Josè, anxious to direct the conversation into other channels, "may I ask how and where you have occupied yourself since I left the boat at Badillo?"

"Ah, Dios!" said Don Jorge, shaking his head, although his eyes twinkled. "I have wandered ever since--and am poorer now than when I started. I left our boat at Puerto Nacional, to go to Medellin; and from there to Remedios and Guamocó. But while in the river town I met another guaquero--grave hunter, you know--who was preparing to go to Honda, to investigate the 'castles' at that place. There is a strange legend--you may have heard it--hanging over those rocks. It appears that a lone hermit lived in one of the many caverns in the great limestone deposits rising abruptly from the river near the town of Honda. How he came there, no one knew. Day after day, year after year, he labored in his cave, extending it further into the hillside. People laughed at him for tunneling in that barren rock, for gold has never been found anywhere in it. But the fellow paid them no attention; and gradually he was accepted as a harmless fanatic, and was left unmolested to dig his way into the hill as far as he would. Years passed. No one knew how the fellow lived, for he held no human intercourse. Kind people often brought food and left it at the mouth of his cavern, but he would have none of it. They brought clothes, but they rotted where they were left. What he ate, no one could discover. At last some good soul planted a fig tree near the cave, hoping that the fruit in time would prove acceptable to him. One day they found the tree cut down. Bien, time passed, and he was forgotten. One day some men, passing the cave, found his body, pale and thin, with long, white hair, lying at the entrance. But--Caramba! when they buried the body they found it was that of a woman!"

He paused to draw some leaves of tobacco from his wallet and roll a thick cigar. The sudden turn of his story drew an expression of amazement from the priest.

"Bien," he resumed, "where the woman came from, and who she was, never was learned. Nor how she lived. But of course some one must have supplied her with food and clothes all these years. Perhaps she was some grand dame, with a dramatic past, who had come there to escape the world and do penance for her sins. What sorrow, what black tragedy that cave concealed, no one may ever know! Nor am I at all interested in that. The point is, either she found gold there, or had a quantity of it that she brought with her--at least so I thought at the time. So, when the guaquero at Puerto Nacional told me the story, nothing would do but I must go with him to search the cave. Caramba! We wasted three full months prying around there--and had our labor for our pains!"

He tilted his chair back and puffed savagely at his cigar.

"Well, then I got on the windy side of another legend, a wild tale of buried treasure in the vicinity of Mompox. Of course I hurried after it. Spent six months pawing the hot dirt around that old town. Fell in with your estimable citizen, Don Felipe, who swindled me out of a hundred good pesos oro on a fraudulent location and a forged map. Then I cursed him and the place and went up to Banco."

"Banco!" Josè's heart began beating rapidly. Don Jorge went on:

"Your genial friend Diego is back there. Told me about his trip to Simití to see his little daughter."

"What did he say about her, amigo?" asked Josè in a controlled voice.

"Not much--only that he expected to send for her soon. You know, Rosendo's daughter is living with him. Fine looking wench, too!"

"But, Don Jorge," pursued Josè anxiously, "what think you, is the little Carmen Diego's child?"

"Hombre! How should I know? He no doubt has many."

"She does not look like him," asserted Josè, clinging to his note of optimism.

"No. And fortunate she is in that! Caramba, but he looks like an imp from sheol!"

Josè saw that little consolation was to be derived from Don Jorge as far as Carmen was concerned. So he allowed the subject to lapse.

"Bien," continued Don Jorge, whose present volubility was in striking contrast to his reticence on the boat the year before, "I had occasion to come up to Bodega Central--another legend, if I must confess it. And there Don Carlos Norosí directed me here."

"What a life!" exclaimed Josè.

"Yes, no doubt it appears so to you, Señor Padre," replied Don Jorge. "And yet my business, that of treasure hunting, has in times past proved very lucrative. The Indian graves of Colombia have yielded enormous quantities of gold. The Spaniards opened many of them; and in one, that of a famous chieftain, discovered down below us, near Zaragoza, they found a solid gold pineapple, a marvelous piece of workmanship, and of immense value. They sent it to the king of Spain. Caramba! it never would have reached him if I had been there!

"But," he resumed, "we have no idea of the amount of treasure that has been buried in various parts of Colombia. This country has been, and still is, enormously rich in minerals--a veritable gold mine of itself. And since the time of the Spanish conquest it has been in a state of almost constant turmoil. Nothing and nobody has been safe. And, up to very recent times, whenever the people collected a bit of gold above their daily needs, they promptly banked it with good Mother Earth. Then, like as not, they got themselves killed in the wars, and the treasure was left for some curious and greedy hunter like myself to dig up years after. The Royalists and Tories buried huge sums all over the country during the War of Independence. Why, it was only a year or so ago that two men came over from Spain and went up the Magdalena river to Bucaramanga. They were close-mouthed fellows, well-dressed, and evidently well-to-do. But they had nothing to say to anybody. The innkeeper pried around until he discovered that they spent much time in their room poring over maps and papers. Then they set off alone, with an outfit of mules and supplies to last several weeks. Bueno, they came back at last with a box of good size, made of mahogany, and bound around with iron bands. Caramba! They did not tarry long, you may be sure. And I learned afterward that they sailed away safely from Cartagena, box and all, for sunny Spain, where, I doubt not, they are now living in idleness and gentlemanly ease on what they found in the big coffer they dug up near that old Spanish city."

Josè listened eagerly. To him, cooped up for a year and more in the narrow confines of Simití, the ready flow of this man's conversation was like a fountain of sparkling water to a thirsty traveler. He urged him to go on, plying him with questions about his strange avocation.

"Caramba, but the old Indian chiefs were wise fellows!" Don Jorge pursued. "They seemed to know that greedy vandals like myself would some day poke around in their last resting places for the gold that was always buried with them--possibly to pay their freight across the dark river. And so they dug their graves in the form of an L, in the extreme tip of which the royal carcasses were laid. In this way they have deceived many a grave-hunter, who dug straight down without finding the body, which was safely tucked away in the toe of the L. I have gone back and reopened many a grave that I had abandoned as empty, and found His Royal Highness five or six feet to one side of the straight shaft I had previously sunk."

"I suppose," mused Josè, "that you now follow this work because of its fascination--for you must have found and laid aside much treasure in the years that you have pursued it."

"Caramba!" ejaculated the guaquero. "I have been rich and poor, like the rising and setting of the sun! What I find, I spend again hunting more. It is the way of the world. The man who has enough money never knows it. And his greed for more--more that he needs not, and cannot possibly spend on himself--generally results, as in my case, in the loss of what he already has. But there are reasons aside from the excitement of the chase that keep me at it."

He fell strangely silent, and Josè knew that there were aroused within him memories that seared the tissues of the brain as they entered.

"Amigo," Don Jorge resumed. His voice was low, tense and cold. "There are some things which I am trying to forget. This exciting and dangerous business of mine keeps my thought occupied. I care nothing now for the treasure I may discover. But I crave forgetfulness. Do you understand?"

"Surely, good friend," replied Josè quickly; "and I ask pardon for recalling those things to you."

"De nada, amigo!" said Don Jorge, with a gesture of deprecation. Then: "I told you on the boat that I had lost a wife and girl. The Church got them both. I tell you this because I know you, too, have grievances against her. Caramba! Yet I will tell you only a part. I lived in Maganguey, where my wife's brother kept a store and did an excellent commission business. I was mining and hunting graves in the Cauca region, sometimes going up the Magdalena, too, and working on both sides of the river. Maganguey was a convenient place for me to live, as it stands at the junction of the two great rivers. Besides, my wife wished to remain near her own people. Bien, we had a daughter. She grew up fair and good. And then, one day, the priest told my wife that the girl was destined to a great future, and must enter a convent and consecrate herself to the Church. Caramba! I am not a Catholic--was never one! My parents were patriots, and both took part in the great war that gave liberty to this country. But they were liberal in thought; and I was never confirmed to the Church. Bien, the priest made my life a hell--my wife became estranged from me--and one day, returning from the Cauca, I found my house deserted. Wife and girl and the child's nurse had gone down the river!"

The man's face darkened, and hard lines drew around his mouth.

"They had taken my money chest, some thousands of pesos. I sought the priest. He laughed at me, and--Caramba! I struck him such a blow between his pig eyes that he lay senseless for hours!"

Josè glanced at the broad shoulders and the great knots of muscle on the man's arms. He was of medium height, but with a frame of iron.

"Bien, Señor Padre, I, too, fled wild and raving from Maganguey that night, and plunged into the jungle. Months later I drifted down the river, as far as Mompox. And there one day I chanced upon old Marcelena, the child's nurse. Like a cayman I seized her and dragged her into an alley. She confessed that my wife and girl were living there--the wife had become housekeeper for a young priest--the girl was in the convent. Caramba! I hurled the woman to the ground and turned my back upon the city!"

Josè's interest in the all too common recital received a sudden stimulus.

"Your daughter's name, Don Jorge, was--"

"Maria, Señor Padre."

"And--she would now be, how old, perhaps?"

"About twenty-two, I think."

"Her appearance?"

"Fair--complexion light, like her mother's. Maria was a beautiful child--and good as she was beautiful."

"But--the child's nurse remained with her?"

"Marcelena? Yes. She was devoted to the little Maria. The woman was old and ugly--but she loved the child."

"Did you not inquire for them when you were in Mompox a few months ago?" pursued Josè eagerly.

"I made slight inquiry through the clerk in the office of the Alcalde. I did not intend to--but I could not help it. Caramba! He made further inquiry, but said only that he was told they had long since gone down to Cartagena, and nothing had been heard from them."

The gates of memory's great reservoir opened at the touch of this man's story, and Josè again lived through that moonlit night in Cartagena, when the little victim of Wenceslas breathed out her life of sorrow and shame in his arms. He heard again the sobs of Marcelena and the simple-minded Catalina. He saw again the figure of the compassionate Christ in the smoke that drifted past the window. And now the father of that wronged girl sat before him, wrapped in the tatters of a shredded happiness! Should he tell him? Should he say that he had cared for this man's little grandson since his advent into this sense of existence that mortals call life? For there could be no doubt now that the little Maria was his daughter.

"Don Jorge," he said, "you have suffered much. My heart bleeds for you. And yet--"

"Na, Padre, there is nothing to do. Were I to find my family I could only slay them and the priests who came between us!"

"But, Don Jorge," cried Josè in horror, "you surely meditate no such vengeance as that!"

The man smiled grimly. "Señor Padre," he returned coldly, "I am Spanish. The blood of the old cavaliers flows in my veins. I have been betrayed, trapped, fooled, and my honored name has been foully soiled. What will remove the stain, think you? Blood--nothing else! Caramba! The priest of Maganguey who poured the first drop of poison into my wife's too willing ears--Bien, I have said enough!"

"Hombre! You don't mean--"

"I mean, Señor Padre, that I drifted down the river, unseen, to Maganguey one night. I entered that priest's house. He did not awake the next morning."

"God!" exclaimed Josè, starting up.

"Na, Padre, not God, but Satan! He rules this world."

Josè sank back in his chair. Don Jorge leaned forward and laid a hand upon his knee. "My friend," he said evenly, "you are young--how old, may I ask?"

"Twenty-seven," murmured Josè.

"Caramba! A child! Bien, you have much to learn. I took to you on the boat because I knew you had made a mess of things, and it was not entirely your fault. I have seen others like you. You are no more in the Church than I am. Now why do you stay here? Do I offend in asking?"

Josè hesitated. "I--I have--work here, señor," he replied.

"True," said Don Jorge, "a chance to do much for these poor people--if the odds are not too strong against you. But--are you working for them alone? Or--does Diego's child figure in the case? No offense, I assure you--I have reason to ask."

Josè sought to read his eyes. The man looked squarely into his own, and the priest found no deception in their black depths.

"I--señor, she cannot be Diego's child--and I--I would save her!"

Don Jorge nodded his head. "Bien," he said, "to-morrow I leave for San Lucas. I will return this way."

After the evening meal the guaquero spread his petate upon the floor and disposed himself for the night. He stubbornly refused to accept the priest's bed. "Caramba!" he muttered, after he had lain quiet for some time, "why does not the Church permit its clergy to marry, like civilized beings! Do you know, Señor Padre, I once met a woman in Bogotá and held some discussion with her on this topic. She said, as between a priest who had children, and a married minister, she would infinitely prefer the priest, because, as she put it, no matter how dissolute the priest, the sacraments from his hands would still retain their validity--but never from those of a married minister! Caramba! what can you do against such bigotry and awful narrowness, such dense ignorance! Cielo!"

The following morning, before sunrise, Don Jorge and his boatmen were on the lake, leaving Josè to meditate on the vivid experiences of the past few days, their strange mental origin, and the lesson which they brought.

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