Chapter 22…

Chapter 22

"Padre dear," said Carmen, "you know the question that we put under the altar of the old church? Well, God answered it, didn't He?"

"I--why, I had forgotten it, child. What was it? You asked Him to tell us why the people thought they had to die, did you not? Well--and what was His answer?"

"Why, He told us that they were frightened to death, you know."

"True, chiquita. Fear killed them--nothing else! They paid the penalty of death for believing that Feliz Gomez had slept on a bed where a man had died of the plague. They died because they--"

"Because they didn't know that God was everywhere, Padre dear," interrupted Carmen.

"Just so, chiquita. And that is why all people die. And yet," he added sadly, "how are we going to make them know that He is everywhere?"

"Why, Padre dear, by showing them in our talk and our actions that we know it--by proving it, you know, just as we prove our problems in algebra."

"Yes, poor Feliz, and Amado, and Guillermo died because they sinned," he mused. "They broke the first Commandment by believing that there was another power than God. And that sin brought its inevitable wage, death. They 'missed the mark,' and sank into the oblivion of their false beliefs. God above! that I could keep my own mentality free from these same carnal beliefs, and so be a true missionary to suffering humanity! But you, Carmen, you are going to be such a missionary. And I believe," he muttered through his set teeth, "that I am appointed to shield the girl until God is ready to send her forth! But what, oh, what will she do when she meets that world which lies beyond her little Simití?"

Rosendo had returned to Guamocó. "The deposit will not last much longer," he said to Josè, shaking his head dubiously. "And then--"

"Why, then we will find another, Rosendo," replied the priest optimistically.

"Ojalá!" exclaimed the old man, starting for the trail.

The day after Don Jorge's departure the Alcalde returned. He stole shamefacedly through the streets and barricaded himself in his house. There he gave vent to his monumental wrath. He cruelly abused his long-suffering spouse, and ended by striking her across the face. After which he sat down and laboriously penned a long letter to Padre Diego, in which the names of Josè and Carmen figured plentifully.

For Don Jorge had met the Alcalde in Juncal, and had roundly jeered him for his cowardly flight. He cited Josè and Rosendo as examples of valor, and pointed out that the Alcalde greatly resembled a captain who fled at the smell of gunpowder. Don Mario swelled with indignation and shame. His spleen worked particularly against Rosendo and the priest. Come what might, it was time Diego and his superiors in Cartagena knew what was going on in the parish of Simití!

A few days later an unctuous letter came to Josè from Diego, requesting that Carmen be sent to him at once, as he now desired to place her in a convent and thus supplement the religious education which he was sure Josè had so well begun in her. The priest had scarcely read the letter when Don Mario appeared at the parish house.

"Bien, Padre," he began smoothly, but without concealing the malice which lurked beneath his oily words, "Padre Diego sends for the little Carmen, and bids me arrange to have her conveyed at once to Banco. I think Juan will take her down, is it not so?"

Josè looked him squarely in the eyes. "No, señor," he said in a voice that trembled with agitation, "it is not so!"

"Hombre!" exclaimed Don Mario, swelling with suppressed rage. "You refuse to give Diego his own child?"

"No, señor, but I refuse to give him a child that is not his."

"Caramba! but she is--he has the proofs! And I shall send her to him this day!"

The Alcalde shrilled forth his rage like a ruffled parrot. Josè seized him by the shoulders and, turning him swiftly about, pushed him out into the road. He then entered the rear door of Rosendo's house and bade Doña Maria keep the child close to her.

A few minutes later Fernando Perez appeared at Josè's door. He was municipal clerk, secretary, and constable of Simití, all in one. He saluted the priest gravely, and demanded the body of the child Carmen, to be returned to her proper father.

Josè groaned inwardly. What could he do against the established authority?

"Bien, Padre," said Fernando, after delivering his message, "the hour is too late to send her down the river to-day. But deliver her to me, and she shall go down at daybreak."

"Listen," Josè pleaded desperately, "Fernando, leave her here to-night--this is sudden, you must acknowledge--she must have time to take leave of Doña Maria--and--"

"Señor Padre, the Alcalde's order is that she go with me now. I must obey."

Josè felt his control oozing fast. Scarce knowing what he did, he quickly stepped back through the rear door, and going to Rosendo's house, seized a large machete, with which he returned to face the constable.

"Look you, Fernando," he cried, holding the weapon menacingly aloft, "if you lay a hand on that girl, I will scatter your brains through yonder plaza!"

"Caramba!" muttered the constable, falling back. "Bien," he hastily added, "I will make this report to the Alcalde!" With which he beat an abrupt retreat.

Josè sank into a chair. But he hastily arose and went into Rosendo's house. "Doña Maria!" he cried excitedly, "leave Carmen with me, and do you hurry through the town and see if Juan is here, and if Lázaro Ortiz has returned from the hacienda. Bid them come to me at once, and bring their machetes!"

The woman set out on her errand. Josè seized his machete firmly in one hand, and with the other drew Carmen to him.

"What is it, Padre dear?" the child asked, her eyes big with wonder. "Why do you tremble? I wish you wouldn't always go around thinking that two and two are seven!"

"Carmen, child--you do not understand--you are too young, and as yet you have had no experience with--with the world! You must trust me now!"

"I do not trust you, Padre," she said sadly. "I can't trust anybody who always sees things that are not so."

"Carmen--you are in danger--and you do not comprehend--" cried the desperate man.

"I am not in danger--and I do understand--a great deal better than you do, Padre. Now let me go--you are afraid! People who are afraid die of the plague!" The irony of her words sank into his soul.

Juan looked in at the door. Josè rose hastily. "Did you meet Doña Maria?" he asked.

"No, señor," the lad replied.

"She is searching for you--have you your machete?"

"Yes, Padre, I have just come back from the island, where I was cutting wood."

"Good, then! Remain here with me. I need you--or may."

He went to the door and looked eagerly down the street. "Ah!" he exclaimed with relief, "here come Doña Maria and Lázaro! Now, friends," he began, when they were assembled before him, "grave danger threatens--"

"Padre!" It was Doña Maria's voice. "Where is Carmen?"

Josè turned. The child had disappeared.

"Lázaro!" he cried, "go at once to the Boque trail! Let no one pass that way with Carmen, if your life be the penalty! Juan, hurry to the lake! If either of you see her, call loudly, and I will come! Doña Maria, start through the town! We must find her! God above, help us!"

* * * * *

The afternoon dragged its interminable length across the valley. Josè wearily entered his house and threw himself upon a chair. He had not dared call at the Alcalde's house, for fear he might do that official violence. But he had seen Fernando in the street, and had avoided him. Then, of a sudden, a thought came to him from out the darkness. He sprang to his feet and hurried off toward the shales. There, beneath the stunted algarroba tree, sat the child.

"Carmen!" He rushed to her and clasped her in his arms. "Why did you do this--?"

"Padre," she replied, when she could get her breath, "I had to come out here and try to know for you the things you ought to know for yourself."

He said nothing; but, holding her hand tightly, he led her back to the house.

That evening Josè sent for Don Mario, the constable, and Juan and Lázaro. Assembling them before him in his living room, he talked with them long and earnestly.

"Compadres," he said, "this week we have passed through a sad experience, and the dark angel has robbed us of three of our beloved friends. Is it your wish that death again visit us?"

They looked at one another in wonder. The Alcalde scowled darkly at the priest beneath his heavy brows. Josè continued:

"Bien, it is planned to seize the little Carmen by force, and send her down the river to Padre Diego--"

"Dios y diablo!" Juan had sprung to his feet. "Who says that, Padre?" he demanded savagely. The Alcalde shrank back in his chair.

"Be calm, Juan!" Josè replied. "Padre Diego sends for her by letter--is it not so, Don Mario?"

The latter grunted. Juan wheeled about and stared menacingly at the bulky official.

"Now, friends," Josè pursued, "it has not been shown that Carmen belongs to Diego--in fact, all things point to the conclusion that she is not his child. My wish is to be just to all concerned. But shall we let the child go to him, knowing what manner of man he is, until it is proven beyond all doubt that he is her father?"

"Caramba! No!" exclaimed Juan and Lázaro in unison.

"And I am of the opinion that the majority of our citizens would support us in the contention. What think you, friends?"

"Every man in Simití, Padre," replied Lázaro earnestly.

"Don Mario," said Josè, turning to the Alcalde, "until it is established that Diego has a parent's claim to the girl, Juan and Lázaro and I will protect her with our lives. Is it not so, amigos?" addressing the two men.

"Hombre! Let me see a hand laid upon her!" cried Juan rising.

Lázaro spoke more deliberately. "Padre," he said. "I owe you much. I know you to be q good man--not like Padre Diego. I know not what claim he may have on the girl, but this I say: I will follow and support you until it is shown me that you are in the wrong."

Josè went over and clasped his hand. Then, to the town officials:

"Bien, amigos, we will let the matter rest thus, shall we not? We now understand one another. If harm comes to the child, the death angel will again stalk through this town, and--" he looked hard at Don Mario, whilst that official visibly shrank in size--"Bien," he concluded, "a sharp watch will be kept over the child. We will submit to proofs--but to nothing less. And violence will bring bloodshed and death."

"But--Caramba!" cried Don Mario, at last finding his voice. "If Diego has the Bishop back of him, he will force us to deliver the girl--or the Bishop will have the government soldiers sent here! I can ask for them--and if necessary I will!"

Josè paled slightly. He knew the Alcalde spoke truth. Don Mario, seeing that his words had taken effect, quickly followed up the advantage. "Now you, Juan and Lázaro, do you think the little whelp worth that?"

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Juan leaped across the floor and fell upon him. Josè seized the lad and, with Fernando's help, tore him loose. Lázaro held his machete aloft, ready to strike. Josè's voice rang out sharply:

"Hold, men! Stop! Go you to your homes now! Juan, do you stay here with me!"

The lad faced the Alcalde and shook his fist. "Bien," he sputtered, "send for the soldiers, fat dog that you are! But when I see them crossing the lake, I will come first to your house and cut open that big belly!"

"Arrest him, Fernando!" shrilled the Alcalde, shaking with rage.

"I will cut off the hand that is laid on Juan!" cried Lázaro, advancing.

"Men! Men! Don Mario and Fernando, go now! Enough of this! And for God's sake think twice before you make any further move!"

Don Mario and his constable departed in sullen silence. Josè let Lázaro out through the rear door, while he bade Juan pass the night in the parish house. A consultation was held with Doña Maria, and it was arranged that Carmen should sleep in the room with Josè, with Juan lying before the door, until Rosendo should return from the mountains. Then Josè sat down and wrote to the Bishop.

* * * * *

No reply came from Cartagena until Rosendo returned at the end of the month. Meanwhile, Josè had never for a moment permitted Carmen to leave his side. The child chafed under the limitation; but Josè and Doña Maria were firm. Juan lived with the priest; and Lázaro lurked about the parish house like a shadow. The Alcalde and his constable remained discreetly aloof.

But with Rosendo's return came letters from both Wenceslas and Diego. The latter had laid aside his unction, and now made a curt and peremptory demand upon Josè for the child. The letter from Wenceslas was noncommittal, stating only that he was quite uninformed of Diego's claim, but that an investigation should be made. Josè wondered if he had blundered in laying the case before him.

"Hombre!" ejaculated Rosendo, when he heard Josè's story. "It is as I feared! And now the Bishop has the matter in hand! Caramba! We shall lose her yet!

"And, Padre," he added, "the deposit is played out. There is no more gold there. And, now that we shall have none to send to the Bishop each month, Carmen's fate is settled--unless we go away. And where shall we go? We could not get out of the country." He hung his head and sat in gloomy dejection.

For more than a year Rosendo had panned the isolated alluvial deposit, and on his regular monthly returns to Simití he and the priest had sent from thirty to ninety pesos gold to Wenceslas. To this Josè sometimes added small amounts collected from the people of Simití, which they had gratuitously given him for Masses and for the support of the parish. Wenceslas, knowing the feeble strength of the parish, was surprised, but discreet; and though he continually urged Josè to greater efforts, and held out the allurements of "indulgences and special dispensations," he made no inquiries regarding the source of the monthly contributions.

For many days following, Rosendo and the priest went about as in a thick, black cloud. "Rosendo," said Josè at length, "go back to the mountains and search again. God was with us before. Have we any reason to doubt Him now?"

"And leave Carmen here, exposed to the danger that always hangs over her? Caramba, no! I would not go back now even if the deposit were not worked out! No!" Josè knew it would be futile to urge him.

Carmen came to the priest that same day. "Padre, I heard you and padre Rosendo talking this morning. Have you no money, no gold?"

"Why, child--there seems to be a need just at present," he replied lightly. "But we might--well, we might send another of your questions to God. What say you?"

"Of course!" she cried delightedly, turning at once and hurrying away for pencil and paper.

"Now," she panted, seating herself at the table. "Let us see; we want Him to give us pesos, don't we?"

"Yes--many--a large sum. Make it big," he said facetiously.

"Well, you know, Padre dear," she replied seriously, "we can't ask for too much--for we already have everything, haven't we? After all, we can only ask to see what we really already have.

"Say 'yes,' Padre dear," she pleaded, looking up appealingly at him staring silently at her. Oh, if she could only impart to him even a little of her abundant faith! She had enough, and to spare!

"Well, here it is," she said, holding out the paper.

He took it and read--"Dear, dear God: Padre Josè needs pesos--lots of them. What shall he do?"

"And now," she continued, "shall we put it under the altar of the old church?"

He smiled; but immediately assumed an expression of great seriousness. "Why not in the church here, the one we are using? The other is so far away?" he suggested. "And it is getting dark now."

"But--no, we will go where we went before," she concluded firmly.

Again he yielded. Taking matches and a piece of candle, he set off with the girl in a circuitous route for the hill, which they gained unobserved. Within the musty old church he struck a light, and they climbed over the débris and to the rear of the crumbling altar.

"See!" she cried joyously. "Here is my other question that He answered! Doesn't He answer them quick though! Why, it took only a day!"

She drew the old paper from beneath the adobe brick. Then she hesitated. "Let us put this question in a new place," she said. "Look, up there, where the bricks have fallen out," pointing to the part of the altar that had crumbled away.

Josè rose obediently to execute the commission. His thought was far off, even in Cartagena, where sat the powers that must be held quiet if his cherished plans were not to fail. He reached out and grasped one of the projecting bricks to steady himself. As he did so, the brick, which was loose, gave way with him, and he fell, almost across Carmen, followed by a shower of rubbish, as another portion of the old altar fell out.

"Hombre!" he ejaculated, picking himself up. "What good luck that the candle was not extinguished! And now, señorita, are you willing that we should bury this important question here on the floor; or must I again try to put it in the altar itself?"

"Up there," insisted the child, laughing and still pointing above.

He rose and looked about, searching for a convenient place to deposit the paper. Then something attracted his attention, something buried in the altar, but now exposed by the falling out of the fresh portion. It was metal, and it glittered in the feeble candle light. He reached in and hastily scraped away more of the hard mud. Then, trembling with suppressed excitement, he pulled out another brick. Clearly, it was a box that had been buried in there--who knows when? He gave the candle to Carmen and bade her stand up close. Then with both hands he carefully removed the adjacent bricks until the entire box was in view.

"Hombre!" he muttered. "What do you suppose this is? A box--"

"Oh!" exclaimed the girl in delight. "A box to put our question in, Padre!"

"More likely the answer itself, child!" muttered the excited priest, straining and tugging away at it. "Carmen! Stand aside!" he suddenly commanded. "Now--" He gave a final pull. A crash of falling bricks followed; the candle was extinguished; and both he and the child were precipitated to the floor.

"Carmen!" called the priest, choking with dust, "are you hurt?"

"No, Padre dear," came the laughing answer through the darkness. "But I'm pretty full of dust. And the candle is buried."

Josè groped about for the box. It lay near, a small, wooden coffer, bound about with two narrow bands of steel. He dragged it out and bore it down the aisle to the door, followed by Carmen.

"Padre!" she exclaimed eagerly. "What is it?"

He dusted it off and examined it carefully in the fast fading light. It was some twelve inches square by three deep, well made of mahogany, and secured by a small, iron padlock. On the top there was a crest of arms and the letters, "I de R," burned into the wood.

Night had closed in, and the priest and girl made their way hurriedly back home by way of the lake, to avoid being seen. Under his cassock Josè carried the box, so heavy that it chafed the skin from his hip as they stumbled along.

"Carmen, say nothing--but tell your padre Rosendo to come to me at once!"

With the doors secured, and Carmen and Doña Maria standing guard outside to apprise them of danger, Josè and Rosendo covertly examined the discovery.

"I de R!" pondered Rosendo, studying the box. Then--"Caramba! Padre--Caramba! It is Ignacio de Rincón! Hombre! And the crest--it is his! I have seen it before--years and years ago! Caramba! Caramba!" The old man danced about like a child.

"Ignacio de Rincón! Your grandfather!" he kept exclaiming, his eyes big as saucers. Then, hastening out to get his iron bar, he returned and with a blow broke the rusty padlock. Tearing open the hinged cover, he fell back with a loud cry.

Before their strained gaze, packed carefully in sawdust, lay several bars of yellow metal. Rosendo took them out with trembling hands and laid them upon the floor. "Gold, Padre, gold!" he muttered hoarsely. "Gold, buried by your grandfather! Caramba!--

"Hold these, Padre!" hurrying out and returning with a pair of homemade wooden balances. Again and again he carefully weighed the bars. Then he began to calculate. It seemed to Josè that the old man wasted hours arriving at a satisfactory result.

"Padre," he finally announced in tones which he strove vainly to control, "there cannot be less than six thousand pesos oro here!"

Josè drew a long breath. "Six thousand pesos--twenty-four thousand francs! It is a fortune! Rosendo, we are rich!"

The trembling old man replaced the bars and carried them to Josè's bed. The priest opened the door and called to Carmen.

"What was in the old box, Padre?" she asked happily, bounding into the room.

He stooped and picked her up, almost crushing her in his arms. "The answer to your question, chiquita. 'Before they call I will answer: and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.'"

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Chapter 23

When Josè awoke the next morning he quickly put his hand under his pillow. Yes, the little coffer was there! It had not been a dream. He drew it forth and raised the cover. The yellow bars glittered in the morning rays sifting through the overhanging thatch at the window. He passed his hand gently across them. What a fortunate discovery! And how strangely brought about. They were rich! Now he could take Carmen and flee! His heart leaped within him as he hastily threw on his scant attire and went out into the balsamic air of the tropical morning. Rosendo had gone to the village of Boque, starting before sun-up, so Doña Maria announced. Some sudden impulse had seized him, and he had set out forthwith, not stopping to discuss the motive with his faithful consort. Josè concluded his desayuno, and then summoned Carmen to the parish house for the day's lessons. She came with a song on her lips.

"Don't stop, chiquita! Sing it again--it is beautiful; and my soul drinks it in like heavenly dew!" he cried, as the child danced up to him and threw her plump arms about his neck.

She turned about and sat down on the dusty threshold and repeated the little song. The glittering sunlight streamed through her rich curls like stringers of wire gold. Cucumbra came fawning to her and nestled at her little bare feet, caressing them at frequent intervals with his rough tongue. Cantar-las-horas approached with dignified tread, and, stopping before his adored little mistress, cocked his head to one side and listened attentively, his beady eyes blinking in the dazzling light.

Josè marveled anew as he listened. Where had that voice come from? Had either of her parents been so gifted? he wondered. And yet, it was only the voicing of a soul of stainless purity--a conscience clear as the light that gilded her curls--a trust, a faith, a knowledge of immanent good, that manifested daily, hourly, in a tide of happiness whose far verge melted into the shore of eternity. As he sat with closed eyes the adobe hut, with its dirt floor and shabby furnishings, expanded into a castle, hung with richest tapestries, rarest pictures, and glittering with plate of gold. The familiar odors of garlic and saffron, which penetrated from the primitive kitchen of Doña Maria, were transmuted into delicate perfumes. The sun drew nearer, and suffused him with its glittering flood. The girl became a white-robed vision, and her song a benediction, voicing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will."

The song ended, and left the thought with him: "To men of good will?" Yes, to men of God's will--the will that is good--to men of sound mind--that mind which was in Christ Jesus--the mind that knows no evil! To such is eternal peace.

"Chiquita," the priest said gently, when the girl returned to him. "Your question was quickly answered yesterday, was it not?"

She laughed up into his face. "It was answered, Padre, before we asked it. God has the answers to all questions that could ever be asked. We would always know the answers if we thought the way He does."

"But--tell me, chiquita, do you think He put that little box up there in the altar purposely for us?"

"No, Padre--I guess it was hidden there by some man, long ago, who was afraid he would lose it. And since he was afraid he would lose it, why--he did, for now we have it."

"Yes, the thing that he greatly feared came upon him. But what is your idea regarding the way we happened to find it? Did God lead us to it?"

"God leads to everything good, Padre dear," was the simple response.

"Of course. But, in this particular case--would we have been led to the little box if you had not asked your question of God?"

"Why not, Padre? People are always led right when they think right."

"And so thinking right was the cause of this discovery, was it?" he pursued, relentlessly probing her thought to its depths.

"Why--yes, Padre--of course. We had to have money--you said so, you know. And you told me to ask for lots of pesos. Well, we both knew that God had already given us more pesos than we could ever know what to do with--He always does. He just can't help giving Himself to everybody. And He gave Himself to us--why, we have always had Him! We are in Him, you know. And when anybody just knows that--why, he sees nothing but good everywhere, and he always has all that he needs."

"All that he wants, you mean, chiquita?"

"No, Padre, not all that he wants. Just all that he needs. You might want all the gold in the world--but you wouldn't need it."

"No, that would be only a selfish, human want. It would be covetousness. But--you still think we were led right to the little box, do you?"

"I know it, Padre dear," she replied emphatically. "When we think good, we see good. It always comes out that way. It is just as sure as getting the right answers to my problems in algebra when I think right about them."

"And thinking right about them means using the right rule, does it not?"

"Yes--of course. If I didn't use the right rule--why, what sort of answers would I get? All jumbled up!"

"Surely--perfect chaos. But still," vigorously pursuing the subject, "you don't think we happened upon the little box just by good luck?"

"Padre," she shook her curls insistently, "things never happen, never! We see only what we think--always!"

"Yes, there surely does seem to be a definite law of cause and effect. But you did not think gold yesterday, chiquita."

"Oh, Padre dear, what a bother you are! No, I didn't think gold yesterday. I never think gold. But I always think good. And that is gold and everything else that we need. Can't you see? And it wasn't just because I thought good yesterday, but because I think good every day, that I saw the gold. It was because we needed it, and God had already given us all that we needed. And I knew that it just had to come. And so did you. Then, because we really needed it, and knew that it was right and that it must come--well, it did. Can't you see?" Her little face was very serious as she looked up appealingly into his.

"Yes, chiquita, yes, I see. I just wanted to know how you would explain it. It becomes clearer to me every day that there are no such things as miracles--never were! Christ Jesus never performed miracles, if by that we mean that he set aside God's laws for the benefit of mankind. But he acted in perfect accord with those laws--and no wonder the results seemed miraculous to dull-witted human minds, who had always seen only their coarse, material thought externalized in material laws and objects, in chance, mixed good and evil, and a God of human characteristics!"

"Yes--I--guess so, Padre dear--only, I don't understand your big words."

"Ah, chiquita, you understand far, far better than I do! Why, I am learning it all from you! But come, now for the lessons."

And Josè had learned by this time, too, that between merely recognizing righteousness as right-thinking, and actually practicing it--putting it to the test so as to "prove" God--there is a vast difference. Things cannot be "thought" into existence, nor evils "thought" away--the stumbling block of the mere tyro in the study of mental cause and effect. A vast development in spirituality must precede those "signs following" before mankind shall again do the works of the Master. Josè knew this; and he bowed in humble submission, praying for daily light.

* * * * *

At dusk Rosendo returned. "Bien, Padre, I have it now, I think!" he cried excitedly, pacing back and forth in the little room.

"What, Rosendo?" asked the wondering priest.

"The secret of the little box! Come, while we eat I will tell you!"

The little group gathered about the table, while Rosendo unfolded his theory.

"I went to Boque this morning to talk with Doña Lucia. She is very aged, the oldest inhabitant in these parts. Bien, I knew that she had known Don Ignacio, although she was not his slave. Her story brought back to me also the things my father had often told me about Don Ignacio's last trip to Simití. Putting all these things together, I think I now know how the little box came to be hidden in the altar of the old church."

The old man's eyes sparkled with happiness, while his auditors drew closer about him to drink in his dramatic recital. For Rosendo, like a true Latin, reveled in a wonder-tale. And his recitals were always accompanied by profuse gesticulation and wonderful facial expressions and much rolling of the eyes.

"Bien," he continued, "it was this way. Don Ignacio's possessions in Guamocó were enormous, and in the then prosperous city of Simití he had stores and warehouses and much property. When the War of Independence neared its end, and he saw that the Royalist cause was lost, he made a last and flying trip to Simití, going up the Magdalena river from Cartagena in his own champán, propelled by some of his still faithful slaves.

"Bien, he found that one of his foremen had just returned from the mountains with the final clean-up from La Libertad arrastras. These had been abandoned, for most of the slaves had deserted, or gone to fight the Spaniards. But the foreman, who was not a slave, but a faithful employe, had cleaned up the arrastras and hidden the amalgam until he could find a favorable opportunity to come down to Simití with it.

"Now, when Don Ignacio arrived here, he found the town practically deserted. So he and the foreman retorted the amalgam and melted the gold into bars. But, just as they had completed their task, a messenger came flying to town and reported that a body of Royalist soldiers were at Badillo, and that they had learned that Simití was the bodega of the rich Guamocó district, and were preparing to come over and sack the town. They were fleeing down the river to the coast, to get away to Spain as soon as possible, but had put off at Badillo to come over here. Fortunately, they had become very intoxicated, and their expedition was for that reason delayed.

"Bueno, at the news the foreman dropped everything and fled for his life. A few people gathered with the priest in the Rincón church, the one you are using now, Padre. The priest of the other old church on the hill fled. Caramba, but he was a coward--and he got well paid for it, too! But of that later.

"Don Ignacio's champán was at Badillo, and he had come across to Simití by canoe. Bien, he dared not take this gold back with him; and so he thought of hiding it in one of the churches, for that is always a sacred place. There were people in his own church, and so he hurried to the one on the hill. Evidently, as he looked about in the deserted building for a place to hide the bars, he saw that some of the bricks could easily be removed from the rear of the altar. A couple of hours sufficed to do the work of secreting the box. Then he fled across the shales to the town of Boque, where he got a canoe to take him down to the Magdalena; and there he waited until he saw the soldiers come across and enter the caño. Then he fled to Badillo. Don Nicolás, son of Doña Lucia, was his boatman, and he says that he remained with your grandfather at that place over night, and that there they received the report that the Royalists had been terribly whipped in the battle--the battle of--Caramba! I forget--"

"Of Ayacucho," suggested Josè.

"Just so," resumed Rosendo. "Bien, there was nothing for the poor man to do but hasten down the river to Cartagena as fast as possible, for he knew not what might have befallen his family. He did not dare go back to Simití then for the box. And so the gold was left in the altar."

"Hombre!" exclaimed Josè. "Now I understand what he meant by that note in his old diary, which we had in my father's house, in Spain! Of course! Arriving in Cartagena he went at once to the Department of Mines and tore out all the pages of the register that contained descriptions of his mineral properties. He intended some day to return to Guamocó and again locate them. And meantime, he protected himself by destroying all the registered locations. It was easy for him to do this, influential as he was in Cartagena. And doubtless at that stormy time the office of the Department of Mines was deserted. This note, Rosendo, I have read in his old diary, many times, but never knew to what it referred."

"Hombre!" ejaculated Rosendo. "Bueno, the soldiers sacked Simití and slaughtered all the people they could find. Then they set fire to the town, and left. My parents had fled to Guamocó.

"But now for the old church and the picture of the Virgin that was lost during the terrible storm when the priest fell dead. We will have to guess that later, when peace had been restored, the priest of the old church in prying around the altar discovered the loose bricks and the box behind them. Bueno, the night of the awful storm he had gone secretly to the church to remove the box. I remember that my father said the priest had arranged for my father to take him down to Bodega Central the very next day. You see, he was going to flee with the gold, the rogue! Bien, while he was in the church taking out the loose bricks, that storm broke--and, from what I remember, it was terrible! The heavens were ablaze with lightning; the thunder roared like cannon; and the lake rose right out of its bed! Caramba! The door of the church crashed open, and the wind whistled in and blew out the candles on the altar. The wind also tore loose a beautiful picture of the Virgin that was hanging near the altar. The picture was blown out of its frame and swept off to the hills, or into the lake. It was never seen again, although the frame was found just outside the door. Perhaps it was the extinguishing of the candles and the falling of the picture that frightened the old priest so terribly. At any rate he ran from the church to his house, and when he reached his door he fell dead of apoplexy.

"Bueno, after that you could never get any of the Simití people to enter the church again. They closed the doors and left it, just as it was, for they thought the curse of God had fallen upon it because it had been erected by the enemies of the Rincón family, whose patron saint was the blessed Virgin herself. Well, the old altar began to crumble, and parts of it fell away from time to time. And when the people heard the bricks falling they said it was the bad angel that the Virgin had locked in there--the angel of Satan that had extinguished the candles on the altar that night of the storm. Caramba! And I believed it, too! I am a fool, Padre, a fool!"

"We are all fools, Rosendo, when we yield ourselves to superstition and false belief," said Josè solemnly. "But you have worked out a very ingenious story, and I doubt not you have come very near to accounting in the right way for the presence of the little box in the altar. But now, amigo, come with me to my house. I would discuss a plan with you.

"It is this, Rosendo," he said, when they were alone. "We now have gold, and the way has been providentially opened. Carmen is in great danger here. What say you, shall we take her and leave Simití?"

Rosendo's face became grave. He did not reply for some moments.

"Padre," he said at length, "you are right. It would be best for her if we could get her away. But--you would have to leave the country. I see now that neither she nor you would be safe anywhere in Colombia if you left Simití."

"True, Rosendo," replied Josè. "And I am sure that no country offers the asylum that America does--the America of the north. I have never been there, amigo; but of all countries I learn that it is the most tolerant in matters religious. And it offers the greatest opportunities to one, like Carmen, just entering upon life. We will go there. And, Rosendo, prepare yourself and Doña Maria at once, for we had best start without delay."

But Rosendo shook his head. "No, Padre," he said slowly. "No. I could not go to the North with you; nor could Maria."

"But, Rosendo!" exclaimed the priest impatiently, "why?"

"Bien, Padre, we are old. And we know not the language of those up there. Nor the customs. We could not adapt ourselves to their ways of life--no, not at our age. Nor could we endure the change of climate. You tell me they have cold, ice, snow, up there. What could we do? We would die. No, we must remain here. But--" his voice choked.

"Bien, Padre, do you go, and take the girl. Bring her up to be a power for good in that great land. We--Maria and I--will remain in Simití. It is not permitted that we should ever leave. This has always been our home, and here we will die."

Josè exclaimed again in impatience. But the old man was immovable.

"No, Padre, we could not make so great a change. Anywhere in Colombia would be but little different from Simití. But up north--in that great country where they do those wonderful things you have told me about--no, Padre, Maria and I could not make so great a change.

"But, Padre," he continued, "what will you do--leave the Church? Or will you still be a priest up there?"

The question startled Josè rudely. In the great joy which the discovery of the gold had stimulated, and in the thought of the possibilities opened by it, he had given no heed to his status respecting the Church. Yet, if he remained in the Church, he could not make this transfer without the approval of the Vatican. And that, he well knew, could not be obtained. No, if he went, he must leave behind all ecclesiastical ties. And with them, doubtless, the ties which still bound him to his distant mother and the family whose honored name he bore. It was not so easy a matter to take the girl and leave Simití, now that he gave the project further consideration.

And yet he could not abandon the idea, however great his present sense of disappointment. He would cling to it as an ideal, some day to be realized, and to be worked up to as rapidly as might be, without exciting suspicion, and without abruptly severing the ties which, on serious reflection, he found he was not morally strong enough as yet to break.

"Bien, Rosendo," he concluded in chastened tones. "We will think it over, and try to devise ways to accomplish the greatest good for the child. I shall remain here for the present."

Rosendo's face beamed with joy. "The way will be shown us some time, Padre!" he exclaimed. "And while we wait, we will keep our eyes open, no?"

Yes, Josè would keep his eyes open and his heart receptive. After all, as he meditated the situation in the quiet of his little cottage that evening, he was not sorry that circumstances kept him longer in Simití. For he had long been meditating a plan, and the distraction incident upon a complete change of environment certainly would delay, if not entirely defeat, its consummation. He had planned to translate his Testament anew, in the light of various works on Bible criticism which the explorer had mentioned, and which the possession of the newly discovered gold now made attainable. He had with him his Greek lexicon. He would now, in the freedom from interruption which Simití could and probably would afford for the ensuing few months, give himself up to his consecrated desire to extract from the sacred writings the spiritual meaning crystallized within them. The vivid experiences which had fallen to him in Simití had resulted in the evolution of ideas--radically at variance with the world's materialistic thought, it is true--which he was learning to look upon as demonstrable truths. The Bible had slowly taken on a new meaning to him, a meaning far different from that set forth in the clumsy, awkward phrases and expressions into which the translators so frequently poured the wine of the spirit, and which, literally interpreted, have resulted in such violent controversies, such puerile ideas of God and His thought toward man, and such religious hatred and bigotry, bloodshed, suffering, and material stagnation throughout the so-called Christian era. He would approach the Gospels, not as books of almost undecipherable mystery, not as the biography of the blessed Virgin, but as containing the highest human interpretation of truth and its relation to mankind.

"I seek knowledge," he repeated aloud, as he paced back and forth through his little living room at night; "but it is not a knowledge of Goethe, of Kant, or Shakespeare; it is not a knowledge of the poets, the scientists, the philosophers, all whom the world holds greatest in the realm of thought; it is a knowledge of Thee, my God, to know whom is life eternal! Men think they can know Homer, Plato, Confucius--and so they can. But they think they can not know Thee! And yet Thou art nearer to us than the air we breathe, for Thou art Life! What is there out in the world among the multifold interests of mankind that can equal in importance a demonstrable knowledge of Thee? Not the unproven theories and opinions, the so-called 'authority' of the ancient Fathers, good men though they may have been; not modern pseudo-science, half-truths and relative facts, saturated with materialism and founded on speculation and hypothesis; but real knowledge, a knowledge of Thee that is as demonstrable as the simplest rule in mathematics! Alas! that men should be so mesmerized by their own beliefs as to say Thou canst not be known. Alas! for the burden which such thinkers as Spencer have laid upon the shoulders of stumbling mankind. For God can be known, and proven--else is Jesus responsible for the most cruel lie ever perpetrated upon the ignorant, suffering world!"

And so, putting aside a portion of his gold--his by right of inheritance as well as discovery--for the future purchase of such books and aids as he might require, Josè set his house in order and then plunged into such a search of the Scriptures as rendered him oblivious to all but the immediate interests of Carmen and her foster-parents. The great world again narrowed into the rock-bound confines of little Simití. Each rushing morn that shot its fiery glow through the lofty treetops sank quickly into the hush of noon, while the dust lay thick, white, and hot on the slumbering streets of the ancient town; each setting sun burned with dreamy radiance through the afternoon haze that drew its filmy veil across the seething valley; each night died into a stillness, lonely and awful. Nature changed her garb with monotonous regularity; the drowsing children of this tropic region passed their days in dull torpidity; Josè saw nothing of it all. At times a villager would bring a tale of grievance to pour into his ears--perhaps a jaguar had pounced upon his dog on his little finca across the lake, or a huge snake had lured a suckling pig into its cavernous maw. At times a credulous woman would stop before his open door to dilate upon the thick worms that hung upon the leaves of the algarrobas and dropped their wool-like fibers upon the natives as they passed below, causing intermittent fevers. Perhaps an anxious mother would seek him for advice regarding her little son, who had eaten too much dirt, and was suffering from the common "jipitera," that made his poor little abdomen protrude so uncomfortably. Again, Rosendo might steal in for a few moments' mysterious, whispered talk about buried treasure, or the fables of El Dorado and Parimé. Josè had time for them all, though as he listened his thought hovered ever about the green verge of Galilee.

By his side worked Carmen, delving assiduously into the mysteries of mathematics and the modern languages. When the day's work closed for them both, he often asked her to sing to him. And then, leaning back with closed eyes, he would yield himself to the soft dreams which her sweet voice called up from his soul's unfathomed depths. Often they walked together by the lake on a clear night; and on these little excursions, during which they were never beyond Rosendo's watchful eye, Josè reveled in the girl's airy gaiety and the spontaneous flow of her sparkling thought. He called her his domestic sunbeam; but in his serious moments--and they were many--he studied her with a wistful earnestness, while he sought to imbibe her great trust, her fearlessness, her unswerving loyalty to the Christ-principle of immanent Good. He would never permit restraint to be imposed upon her, even by Rosendo or his good wife. She knew not what it was to be checked in the freest manifestation of her natural character. But there was little occasion for restraint, for Carmen dwelt ever in the consciousness of a spiritual universe, and to it paid faithful tribute. She saw and knew only from a spiritual basis; and she reaped the rewards incident thereto. His life and hers were such as fools might label madness, a colorless, vegetative existence, devoid of even the elemental things that make mundane existence worth the while. But the appraisal of fools is their own folly. Josè knew that the torrid days which drew their monotonous length over the little town were witnessing a development in both himself and the child that some day would bear richest fruit. So far from being educated to distrust spiritual power, as are the children of this world, Carmen was growing up to know no other. Instead of the preponderance of her belief and confidence being directed to the material, she was developing the consciousness that the so-called evidence of the physical senses is but mortal thought, the suppositional opposite of the thought of the infinite God who says to mankind: "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end." Josè knew that his method of education was revolutionary. But he also knew that it was not wholly his; that the child had really taken this course herself, as if led thereto by a power beyond them both.

And so he watched her, and sought to learn from her as from Christ's own loving and obedient disciple. It was because of his obedience to God that Jesus was able to "prove" Him in the mighty works which we call miracles. He said, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Plain enough, indeed! And Carmen did do His will; she kept the very first Commandment; she walked by faith, and not by the sight of the human senses. She had been called an "hada," a witch, by the dull-witted folk of Simití; and some day it would be told that she had a devil. But the Master had borne the same ignominy. And so has every pioneer in Truth, who has dared to lay the axe at the roots of undemonstrable orthodox belief and entrenched human error.

Josè often trembled for the child when he thought of the probable reception that awaited her in the world without, in case she ever left Simití. Would her supreme confidence in good ever be weakened by an opposite belief in evil? Would her glorious faith ever be neutralized or counterbalanced by faith in a power opposed to God? He wondered. And sometimes in the fits of abstraction resulting from these thoughts, the girl would steal up to him and softly whisper, "Why, Padre, are you trying to make two and two equal seven?" Then he would laugh with her, and remember how from her algebraic work she had looked up one day and exclaimed, "Padre--why, all evil can be reduced to a common denominator, too--and it is zero!"

As recreation from the task of retranslating his Greek Testament, Josè often read to Carmen portions from the various books of the Bible, or told her the old sacred stories that children so love to hear. But Carmen's incisive thought cut deep into them, and Josè generally found himself hanging upon the naïve interpretations of this young girl. When, after reading aloud the two opposing accounts of the Creation, as given in the first and second chapters of Genesis, she asked, "But, Padre, why did God change His mind after He made people and gave them dominion over everything?" Josè was obliged to say that God had not made a mistake, and then gone back afterward to rectify it; that the account of the Creation, as given in Genesis, was not His, but was a record of the dawning upon the human thought of the idea of the spiritual Creation; that the "mist" which went up from the earth was suppositional error; and that the record of the Creation which follows after this was only the human mind's interpretation of the real, spiritual Creation, that Creation which is the ever unfolding of infinite Mind's numberless, perfect ideas. The book of Genesis has been a fetish to human minds; and not until the limitations imposed by its literal interpretation were in a measure removed did the human mentality begin to rise and expand. And when, reading from Isaiah, the grandest of the ancient prophets, the ringing words, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" the child asked him if that did not refer to the very kind of people with whom they had daily intercourse, he had been obliged to say that it did, and that that sort of man was far, very far, from being the man of God's own creating.

"The mist, child, which is mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis, is said to have gone up from the ground. That is, it went up from matter. And so it is typical of materialism, from which all evil comes. The material is the direct opposite of the spiritual. Every bit of evil that men think they can see, or know, or do, comes as testimony of the five material senses. These might well be called the 'ground' senses. In the book of Genesis, you will notice that the account of the real comes first; then follows the account of its opposite, the unreal man of dust."

"Surely, Padre!" she exclaimed. "The plus sign is followed by a minus sign, isn't it? And the man made of dust is the real man with a minus sign before him."

"The man of dust is the human mind's interpretation of the spiritual man, dear child," returned Josè. "All human beings are interpretations by the mortal, or human, mind of infinite Mind, God, and His spiritual Creation. The interpretation is made in the human mind, and remains there. The human mind does not see these interpretations outside of itself--it does not see real men, and houses, and trees, outside of itself--but it sees its mental interpretations of God, which it calls men, and houses, and trees, and so on. These things are what we might call mental concepts. They are the man and the creation spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis after the mist went up from matter, from the ground, from materialism, resulting in the testimony of the physical senses."

"But, Padre, they are not real--these mental concepts?"

"No. They are illusions. They are formed in mentalities that are themselves wrong interpretations of the infinite Mentality, called God. They are formed without any rule or principle. They are made up of false thoughts, false opinions, beliefs of power opposed to God, beliefs in evil, in sickness, disaster, loss, and death. They are the results of educated and inherited and attached beliefs. They are largely made up of fear-beliefs. The human mentalities see these various beliefs combined in what it calls men and women, houses, animals, trees, and so on, all through the material so-called creation. It is this wrong interpretation that has caused all the suffering and sorrow in the world. And it is this false stuff that the good man Jesus finally said he had overcome."

"How did he do it, Padre?"

"By knowing its nothingness, and by knowing the Allness of his Father, infinite Mind. He called this false stuff a lie about God. And he overcame that lie by knowing the truth--just as you overcome the thought that you cannot solve your algebraic problems by knowing the truth that will and does solve them."

"But, Padre, you said once that Jesus was the best man that ever lived. Was he just a man?"

"Yes, chiquita. That is, the human minds all about him saw their mental concepts of him as a man. But he was a human concept that most clearly represented God's idea of Himself. Mortal, human minds are like window-panes, chiquita. When a window-pane is very dirty, very much covered with matter, only a little light can get through it. Some human minds are cleaner, less material, than others, and they let more light through. Jesus was the cleanest mind that was ever with us. He kept letting more and more light--Truth--through himself, until at last all the matter, even the matter composing the material concept that people called his earthly body, dissolved in the strong light, and the people saw him no more. That is called the Ascension."

"And--Padre, don't we have to do that way, too?" she asked earnestly.

"Just so, chiquita. We must, every one of us, do exactly as Jesus did. We must wash ourselves clean--wash off the dirty beliefs of power apart from God; we must wash off the beliefs of evil as a power, created in opposition to Him, or permitted by Him to exist and to use His children; we must wash off beliefs of matter as real and created by Him. We must know that matter and all evil, all that decays and passes away, all discord and disease, everything that comes as testimony of the five physical senses, is but a part of the lie about Him, the stuff that has the minus sign before it, making it less than nothing. We must know that it is the suppositional opposite of the real--it is an illusion, seeming to exist, yet evaporating when we try to define it or put a finger on it, for it has no rule or principle by which it was created and by which it continues to exist. Its existence is only in human thought."

No, Josè assured himself, the Gospels are not "loose, exaggerated, inaccurate, credulous narratives." They are the story of the clearest transparency to truth that was ever known to mortals as a human being. They preserve the life-giving words of him whose mission it was to show mankind the way out of error by giving them truth. They contain the rule given by the great Mathematician, who taught mankind how to solve their life-problems. They tell the world plainly that there seems to exist a lie about God; that every real idea of the infinite Mind seems to have its suppositional opposite in a material illusion. They tell us plainly that resisting these illusions with truth renders them nugatory. They tell us clearly that the man Jesus was so filled with truth that he proved the nothingness of the lie about God by doing those deeds that seemed marvelous in the eyes of men, and yet which he said we could and should do ourselves. And we must do them, if we would throw off the mesmerism of the lie. The human concept of man and the universe must dissolve in the light of the truth that comes through us as transparencies. And it were well if we set about washing away the dirt of materialism, that the light may shine through more abundantly.

Jesus did not say that his great deeds were accomplished contrary to law, but that they fulfilled the law of God. The law is spiritual, never material. Material law is but human limitation. Ignorance of spiritual law permits the belief in its opposite, material law, or laws of matter. False, human beliefs, opinions, and theories, material speculations and superstitions, parade before the human mind as laws. Jesus swept them all aside by knowing that their supposed power lay only in human acceptance. The human mind is mesmerized by its own false thought. Even Paul at times felt its mesmerism and exclaimed: "I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me." The very idea of good stirs up its opposite in the human consciousness. But Paul rose above it and saw its nothingness. Then he cried: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." He recognized the spiritual law that Jesus employed; and with it he overcame the mesmerism of the lie.

"To be a Christian, then," said Josè, "means not merely taking the name of Christ, and, while morally opposing sin, succumbing to every form of mesmerism that the lie about God exerts. No, it is infinitely more! It means recognizing the nature of God and His Creation, including Man, to be wholly spiritual--and the nature of the material creation and mankind as their opposite, as mental concepts, existing as false interpretations of the spiritual Universe and Man, and as having their place only in the false human consciousness, which itself is a mental activity concerned only with false thought, the suppositional opposite of God's thought. It means taking this Truth, this spiritual law, as we would take a mathematical rule or principle, and with it overcoming sin, sickness, discord of every name and nature, even to death itself. What, oh, what have so-called Christians been doing these nearly two thousand years, that they have not ere this worked out their salvation as Jesus directed them to do? Alas! they have been mesmerized--simply mesmerized by the lie. The millennium should have come long, long ago. It would come to-day if the world would obey Jesus. But it will not come until it does obey him."

Day after day, week after week, month after month, Josè delved and toiled, studied and pondered. The books which he ordered through the Empresa Alemania, and for which for some two months he waited in trembling anticipation and fear lest they be lost in transit, finally arrived. When Juan brought them up from Bodega Central, Josè could have wept for joy. Except for the very few letters he had received at rare intervals, these were the only messages that had penetrated the isolation of Simití from the outside world in the two long years of his exile. His starving mind ravenously devoured them. They afforded his first introduction to that fearlessly critical thought regarding things religious which has swept across the world like a tidal wave, and washed away so many of the bulwarks of superstition and ignorance bred of fear of the unknown and supposedly unknowable.

And yet they were not really his first introduction to that thought, for, as he pored over these books, his heart expanded with gratitude to the brusque explorer whom he had met in Cartagena, that genial, odd medley of blunt honesty, unquibbling candor, and hatred of dissimulation, whose ridicule of the religious fetishism of the human mentality tore up the last root of educated orthodox belief that remained struggling for life in the altered soil of his mind.

But, though they tore down with ruthless hand, these books did not reconstruct. Josè turned from them with something of disappointment. He could understand why the trembling heart, searching wearily for truth, turned always from such as they with sinking hope. They were violently iconoclastic--they up-rooted--they overthrew--they swept aside with unsparing hand--but they robbed the starving mortal of his once cherished beliefs--they snatched the stale and feebly nourishing bread from his mouth, and gave nothing in return. They emptied his heart, and left it starving. What did it boot to tell a man that the orthodox dream of eternal bliss beyond the gates of death was but a hoax, if no substitute be offered? Why point out the fallacies, the puerile conceptions, the worse than childish thought expressed in the religious creeds of men, if they were not to be replaced by life-sustaining truth? If the demolition of cherished beliefs be not followed by reconstruction upon a sure foundation of demonstrable truth, then is the resulting state of mind worse than before, for the trusting, though deceived, soul has no recourse but to fall into the agnosticism of despair, or the black atheism of positive negation.

"Happily for me," he sighed, as he closed his books at length, "that Carmen entered my empty life in time with the truth that she hourly demonstrates!"

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Chapter 24

Days melted into weeks, and these in turn into months. Simití, drab and shabby, a crumbling and abandoned relique of ancient Spanish pride and arrogance, drowsed undisturbed in the ardent embrace of the tropical sun. Don Jorge returned, unsuccessful, from his long quest in the San Lucas mountains, and departed again down the Magdalena river.

"It is a marvelous country up there," he told Josè. "I do not wonder that it has given rise to legends. I felt myself in a land of enchantment while I was roaming those quiet mountains. When, after days of steady traveling, I would chance upon a little group of natives hidden away in some dense thicket, it seemed to me that they must be fairies, not real. I came upon the old trail, Padre, the Camino Real, now sunken and overgrown, which the Spaniards used. They called it the Panamá trail. It used to lead down to Cartagena. Hombre! in places it is now twenty feet deep!"

"But, gold, Don Jorge?"

"Ah, Padre, what quartz veins I saw in that country! Hombre! Gold will be discovered there without measure some day! But--Caramba! This map which Don Carlos gave me is much in error. I must consult again with him. Then I shall return to Simití." Josè regretfully saw him depart, for he had grown to love this ruggedly honest soul.

Meantime, Don Mario sulked in his house; nor during the intervening year would he hold anything more than the most formal intercourse with the priest. Josè ignored him as far as possible. Events move with terrible deliberation in these tropic lands, and men's minds are heavy and lethargic. Josè assumed that Don Mario had failed in the support upon which he had counted; or else Diego's interest in Carmen was dormant, perhaps utterly passed. Each succeeding day of quiet increased his confidence, while he rounded out month after month in this sequestered vale on the far confines of civilization, and the girl attained her twelfth year. Moreover, as he noted with marveling, often incredulous, mental gaze her swift, unhindered progress, the rapid unfolding of her rich nature, and the increasing development of a spirituality which seemed to raise her daily farther above the plane on which he dwelt, he began to regard the uninterrupted culmination of his plans for her as reasonably assured, if not altogether certain.

Juan continued his frequent trips down to Bodega Central as general messenger and transportation agent for his fellow-townsmen, meanwhile adoring Carmen from a distance of respectful decorum. Rosendo and Lázaro, relaxing somewhat their vigilance over the girl, labored daily on the little hacienda across the lake. The dull-witted folk, keeping to their dismally pretentious mud houses during the pulsing heat of day, and singing their weird, moaning laments in the quiet which reigned over this maculate hollow at night, followed undeviatingly the monotonous routine of an existence which had no other aim than the indulgence of the most primitive material wants.

"Ah, Padre," Rosendo would say of them, "they are so easy! They love idleness; they like not labor. They fish, they play the guitar, they gather fruits. They sing and dance--and then die. Padre, it is sad, is it not?"

Aye, thought the priest, doubly sad in its mute answer to the heartlessly selfish query of Cain. No one, not even the Church, was the keeper of these benighted brothers. He alone had constituted himself their shepherd. And as they learned to love him, to confide their simple wants and childish hopes to him, he came to realize the immense ascendency which the priests of Colombia possess over the simple understanding of the people. An ascendency hereditary and dominant, capable of utmost good, but expressed in the fettering of initiative and action, in the suppression of ambition, and the quenching of every impulse toward independence of thought. How he longed to lift them up from the drag of their mental encompassment! Yet how helpless he was to afford them the needed lustration of soul which alone could accomplish it!

"I can do little more than try to set them a standard of thought," he would muse, as he looked out from the altar over the camellia-like faces of his adult children when he conducted his simple Sunday services. "I can only strive to point out the better things of this life--to tell them of the wonders of invention, of art, of civilization--I can only relate to them tales of romance and achievement, and beautiful stories--and try to omit in the recital all reference to the evil methods, aims, and motives which have manifested in those dark crimes staining the records of history. The world calls them historical incident and fact. I must call them 'the mist that went up from the ground and watered the face of the earth.'"

But Josè had progressed during his years in Simití. It had been hard--only he could know how hard!--to adapt himself to the narrow environment in which he dwelt. It had been hard to conform to these odd ways and strange usages. But he now knew that the people's reserve and shyness at first was due to their natural suspicion of him. For days, even weeks, he had known that he was being weighed and watched. And then love triumphed.

It is true, the dull staring of the natives of this unkempt town had long continued to throw him into fits of prolonged nervousness. They had not meant to offend, of course. Their curiosity was far from malicious. But at hardly any hour of the day or night could he look up from his work without seeing dark, inquisitive faces peering in through the latticed window or the open door at him, watchful of the minutest detail of his activity. He had now grown used to that. And he had grown used to their thoughtless intrusion upon him at any hour. He had learned, too, not to pale with nausea when, as was their wont of many centuries, the dwellers in this uncouth town relentlessly pursued their custom of expectorating upon his floor immediately they entered and stood before him. He had accustomed himself to the hourly intrusion of the scavenger pigs and starving dogs in his house. And he could now endure without aching nerves the awful singing, the maudlin wails, the thin, piercing, falsetto howls which rose almost nightly about him in the sacred name of music. For these were children with whom he dwelt. And he was trying to show them that they were children of God.

The girl's education was progressing marvelously. Already Josè had been obliged to supplement his oral instruction with texts purchased for her from abroad. Her grasp of the English language was his daily wonder. After two years of study she spoke it readily. She loved it, and insisted that her conversations with him should be conducted wholly in it. French and German likewise had been taken up; and her knowledge of her own Castilian tongue had been enriched by the few books which he had been able to secure for her from Spain.

Josè's anomalous position in Simití had ceased to cause him worry. What mattered it, now that he had endeared himself to its people, and was progressing undisturbed in the training of Carmen? He performed his religious duties faithfully. His people wanted them. And he, in turn, knew that upon his observance of them depended his tenure of the parish.

And he wanted to remain among them, to lead them, if possible, at least a little way along what he was daily seeing to be the only path out of the corroding beliefs of the human mind. He knew that his people's growth would be slow--how slow might not his own be, too! Who could say how unutterably slow would be their united march heavenward! And yet, the human mind was expanding with wonderful rapidity in these last days. What acceleration had it not acquired since that distant era of the Old Stone Man, when through a hundred thousand years of darkness the only observable progress was a little greater skill in the shaping of his crude flint weapons!

To Padre Diego's one or two subsequent curt demands that Carmen be sent to him, Josè had given no heed. And perhaps Diego, absorbed in his political activities as the confidential agent of Wenceslas, would have been content to let his claim upon the child lapse, after many months of quiet, had not Don Jorge inadvertently set the current of the man's thought again in her direction.

For Don Jorge was making frequent trips along the Magdalena river. It was essential to his business to visit the various riverine towns and to mingle freely with all grades of people, that he might run down rumors or draw from the inhabitants information which might result in valuable clues anent buried treasure. Returning one day to Simití from such a trip, he regaled Josè with the spirited recital of his experience on a steamboat which had become stranded on a river bar.

"Bien," he concluded, "the old tub at last broke loose. Then we saw that its engines were out of commission; and so the captain let her drift down to Banco, where we docked. I was forced, not altogether against my will, to put up with Padre Diego. Caramba! The old fox! But I had much amusement at his expense when I twitted him about his daughter Carmen, and his silly efforts to get possession of her!"

Josè shook with indignation. "Good heaven, friend!" he cried, "why can you not let sleeping dogs alone? Diego is not the man to be bearded like that! Would that you had kept away from the subject! And what did you say to him about the girl?"

"Caramba, man! I only told him how beautiful she was, and how large for her few years. Bien, I think I said she was the most beautiful and well-formed girl I had ever seen. But was there anything wrong in telling the truth, amigo?"

"No," replied Josè bitterly, as he turned away; "you meant no harm. But, knowing the man's brutal nature, and his assumed claim on the girl, why could you not have foreseen possible misfortune to her in dwelling thus on her physical beauty? Hombre, it is too bad!"

"Na, amigo," said Don Jorge soothingly, "nothing can come of it. Bien, you take things so hard!" But when Don Jorge again set out for the mountains he left the priest's heart filled with apprehension.

A few weeks later came what Josè had been awaiting, another demand upon him for the girl. Failure to comply with it, said Diego's letter, meant the placing of the case in the hands of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities for action.

Rosendo's face grew hard when he read the note. "There is a way, Padre. Let my woman take the girl and go up the Boque river to Rosa Maria, the clearing of Don Nicolás. It is a wild region, where tapirs and deer roam, and where hardly a man has set foot for centuries. The people of Boque will keep our secret, and she can remain hidden there until--"

"No, Rosendo, that will not do," replied Josè, shaking his head in perplexity. "The girl is developing rapidly, and such a course would result in a mental check that might spell infinite harm. She and Doña Maria would die to live by themselves up there in that lonely region. What about her studies? And--what would I do?"

"Then do you go too, Padre," suggested Rosendo.

"No, amigo, for that would cause search to be instituted by the Bishop, and we certainly would be discovered. But, to take her and flee the country--and the Church--how can I yet? No, it is impossible!" He shook his head dolefully, while his thoughts flew back to Seville and the proud mother there.

"Bien, Padre, let us increase our contributions to Don Wenceslas. Let us send him from now on not less than one hundred pesos oro each month. Will not that keep him quiet, no matter what Diego says?"

"Possibly," assented Josè. "At any rate, we will try it." They still had some three thousand pesos gold left.

* * * * *

"Padre," said Rosendo, some days later, as they sat together in the parish house, "what do you think Diego wants of the girl?"

Josè hesitated. "I think, Rosendo--" he began. But could even a human mind touch such depths of depravity? And yet--"I think," he continued slowly, "that Diego, having seen her, and now speculating on her future beauty of face and form--I think he means to place her in a convent, with the view of holding her as a ready substitute for the woman who now lives with him--"

"Dios! And that is my own daughter!" cried Rosendo, springing up.

"Yes--true, Rosendo. And, if I mistake not, Diego also would like to repay the score he has against you, for driving him from Simití and holding the threat of death over him these many years. He can most readily do this by getting Carmen away from you--as he did the other daughter, is it not so?"

Rosendo came and stood before the priest. His face was strained with fearful anxiety. "Padre," he said in a low voice, "I shall end this matter at once. I go to Banco to-morrow to kill Diego."

"You shall do nothing of the kind!" cried Josè, seizing his hand. "Why--Rosendo, it would mean your own death, or lifelong imprisonment!"

"And what of that, Padre?" said the old man with awful calmness. "I have nothing that is not hers, even to my life. Gladly would I give it for her. Let me die, or spend my remaining days in the prison, if that will save her. Such a price for her safety would be low."

While he was speaking, Fernando, the town constable, entered. He saluted the men gravely, and drew from his pocket a document to which was attached the Alcalde's official seal.

"Señores," he said with much dignity, as if the majesty of his little office weighed upon him, "I am commanded by Señor, the Alcalde, to exercise the authority reposing in him and place Don Rosendo Ariza under arrest. You will at once accompany me to the cárcel," he added, going up to the astonished Rosendo and laying a hand upon his shoulder.

"Arrest! Me! Hombre! what have I done?" cried the old man, stepping back.

"Bien, amigo, I do not find it my duty to tell you. The Señor Alcalde hands me the document and commands me to execute it. As for the cause--Bien, you must ask him."

"Come," said Josè, the first to recover from his astonishment, "let us go to him at once." He at any rate had now an opportunity to confront Don Mario and learn what plans the man had been devising these many months.

The Alcalde received the men in his little patio, scowling and menacing. He offered them no greeting when they confronted him.

"Don Mario," asked Josè in a trembling voice, "why have you put this indignity upon our friend, Rosendo? Who orders his arrest?"

"Ask, rather, Señor Padre," replied the Alcalde, full of wrath, "what alone saves you from the same indignity. Only that you are a priest, Señor Padre, nada más! His arrest is ordered by Padre Diego."

"And why, if I may beg the favor?" pursued Josè, though he well knew the sordid motive.

"Why? Caramba! Why lay the hands of the law upon those who deprive a suffering father of his child! Bien, Fernando," turning to the constable, "you have done well. Take your prisoner to the cárcel."

"No!" cried Rosendo, drawing back. "No, Don Mario, I will not go to the jail! I will--"

"Caramba!" shouted the Alcalde, his face purple. "I set your trial for to-morrow, in the early morning. But this night you will spend in the jail! Hombre! I will see if I am not Alcalde here! And look you, Señor Padre, if there is any disturbance, I will send for the government soldiers! Then they will take Rosendo to the prison in Cartagena! And that finishes him!"

Josè knew that, if Diego had the support of the Bishop, this was no idle threat. Rosendo turned to him in helpless appeal. "What shall I do, Padre?" he asked.

"It is best that you go to the jail to-night, Rosendo," said Josè with sinking heart. "But, Don Mario," turning menacingly to the Alcalde, "mark you, his trial takes place in the morning, and he shall be judged, not by you alone, but by his fellow-townsmen!"

"Have I not said so, señor?" returned Don Mario curtly, with a note of deep contempt in his voice.

As in most small Spanish towns, the jail was a rude adobe hut, with no furnishings, save the wooden stocks into which the feet of the hapless prisoners were secured. Thus confined, the luckless wight who chanced to feel the law's heavy hand might sit in a torturing position for days, cruelly tormented at night by ravenous mosquitoes, and wholly dependent upon the charity of the townsfolk for his daily rations, unless he have friends or family to supply his needs. In the present instance Don Mario took the extra precaution of setting a guard over his important prisoner.

Josè, benumbed by the shock and bewildered by the sudden precipitation of events, accompanied Rosendo to the jail and mutely watched the procedure as Fernando secured the old man's bare feet in the rude stocks. And yet, despite the situation, he could not repress a sense of the ridiculous, as his thought dwelt momentarily on the little opéra bouffe which these child-like people were so continually enacting in their attempts at self-government. But it was a play that at times approached dangerously near to the tragic. The passions of this Latin offshoot were strong, if their minds were dull and lethargic, and when aroused were capable of the most despicable, as well as the most grandly heroic deeds. And in the present instance, when the fleeting sense of the absurd passed, Josè knew that he was facing a crisis. Something told him that resistance now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest with violence, and perhaps have escaped. But that would have accomplished nothing for Carmen, the pivot upon which events were turning. Josè had reasoned that it were better to let the Alcalde play his hand first, in the small hope that as the cards fell he might more than match his opponent's strength with his own.

"Na, Padre, do not worry," said Rosendo reassuringly. "It is for her sake; and we shall have to know, as she does, that everything will come out right. My friends will set me free to-morrow, when the trial takes place. And then"--he drew the priest down to him and whispered low--"we will leave Simití and take to the mountains."

Josè bent his heavy steps homeward. Arriving at Rosendo's house, he saw the little living room crowded with sympathetic friends who had come to condole with Doña Maria. That placid woman, however, had not lost in any degree her wonted calm, even though her companions held forth with much impassioned declamation against the indignity which had been heaped upon her worthy consort. He looked about for Carmen. She was not with her foster-mother, nor did his inquiry reveal her whereabouts. He smiled sadly, as he thought of her out on the shales, her customary refuge when storms broke. He started in search of her; but as he passed through the plaza Mañuela Cortez met him. "Padre," she exclaimed, "is the little Carmen to go to jail, too?"

Josè stopped short. "Mañuela--why do you say that?" he asked hurriedly, his heart starting to beat like a trip-hammer.

"Because, Padre, I saw the constable, Fernando, take her into Don Mario's house some time ago."

Josè uttered an exclamation and started for the house of the Alcalde. Don Mario stood at the door, his huge bulk denying the priest admission.

"Don Mario!" panted Josè. "Carmen--you have her here?"

Fernando, who had been sitting just within the door, rose and came to his chief's side. Josè felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped outside and took his arm. The Alcalde's unlovely face expanded in a sinister leer. "It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if he becomes loco," he said significantly.

Josè tightened his grip upon himself. Fernando spoke quickly:

"It was necessary to take the girl in custody, too, Padre. But do not worry; she is safe."

"But--you have no right to take her--"

"There, Señor Padre, calm yourself. What right had you to separate her from her father?"

"Diego is not her father! He lies! And, Don Mario, you have no authority but his--"

"You mistake, Señor Padre," calmly interrupted the Alcalde. "I have a much higher authority."

Josè stared dully at him. "Whose, then?" he muttered, scarce hearing his own words.

"The Bishop's, Señor Padre," answered Don Mario, with a cruel grin.

"The Bishop! But--the old man--"

"Na, Señor Padre, but the Bishop is fairly young, you know. That is, the new one--"

"The new one!" cried the uncomprehending Josè.

"To be sure, Señor Padre, the new Bishop--formerly Señor Don Wenceslas Ortiz."

Josè beat the air feebly as his hand sought his damp brow. His confused brain became suddenly stagnant.

"Bien, Señor Padre," put in Fernando gently, pitying the priest's agony. "You had not heard the news. Don Mario received letters to-day. The old Bishop of Cartagena died suddenly some days ago, and Don Wenceslas at once received the temporary appointment, until the vacancy can be permanently filled. There is talk of making Cartagena an archbishopric, and so a new bishop will not be appointed until that question is settled. Meanwhile, Don Wenceslas administers the affairs of the Church there."

"And he--he--" stammered the stunned priest.

"To be sure, Señor Padre," interrupted Don Mario, laughing aloud; "the good Don Wenceslas no doubt has learned of the beautiful Carmen, and he cannot permit her to waste her loveliness in so dreary a place as Simití. And so he summons her to Cartagena, in care of his agent, Padre Diego, who awaits the girl now in Banco to conduct her safely down the river. At least, this is what Padre Diego writes me. Bien, it is the making of the girl, to be so favored by His Grace!"

Josè staggered and would have fallen, had not Fernando supported him. Don Mario turned into his house. But as he went he spitefully hurled back:

"Bien, Señor Padre, whom have you to blame but yourself? You keep a child from her suffering father--you give all your time to her, neglecting the other poor children of your parish--you send Rosendo into the mountains to search for La Libertad--you break your agreement with me, for you long ago said that we should work together--is it not so? You find gold in the mountains, but you do not tell me. Na, you work against me--you oppose my authority as Alcalde--Bien, you opposed even the authority of the good Bishop--may he rest with the Saints! You have not made a good priest for Simití, Señor Padre--na, you have made a very bad one! And now you wonder that the good Don Wenceslas takes the girl from you, to bring her up in the right way. Caramba! if it is not already too late to save her from your bad teachings!" His voice steadily rose while he talked, and ended in a shrill pipe.

Josè made as if to reach him; but Fernando held him back. The Alcalde got quickly within the house and secured the door. "Go now to your home, Padre," urged Fernando; "else I shall call help and put you in the stocks, too!"

"But I will enter that house! I will take the child from him!" shouted Josè desperately, struggling to gain the Alcalde's door.

"Listen to me, Padre!" cried Fernando, holding to the frenzied man. "The little Carmen--she is not in there!"

"Not--in--there! Then where is she, Fernando?--for God's sake tell me!" appealed the stricken priest. Great beads of perspiration stood upon his face, and tears rolled down his drawn cheeks.

Fernando could not but pity him. "Bien, Padre," he said gently; "come away. I give you my word that the girl is not in the house of the Alcalde. But I am not permitted to say where she is."

"Then I will search every house in Simití!" cried the priest wildly.

"Na, Padre, you would not find her. Come, I will go home with you." He took Josè's arm again and led him, blindly stumbling, to the parish house.

By this time the little town was agog with excitement. People ran from house to house, or gathered on the street corners, discussing the event.

"Caramba!" shrilled one wrinkled beldame, "but Simití was very quiet until the Cura came!"

"Na, señora," cried another, "say, rather, until that wicked little hada was brought here by Rosendo!"

"Cierto, she is an hada!" put in a third; "she cured Juanita of goitre by her charms! I saw it!"

"Caramba! she works with the evil one. I myself saw her come from the old church on the hill one day! Bien, what was she doing? I say, she was talking with the bad angel which the blessed Virgin has locked in there!"

"Yes, and I have seen her coming from the cemetery. She talks with the buzzards that roost on the old wall, and they are full of evil spirits!"

"And she brought the plague two years ago--who knows?" piped another excitedly.

"Quien sabe? But it was not the real plague, anyway."

"Bueno, and that proves that she caused it, no?"

"Cierto, señora, she cast a spell on the town!"

Josè sat in his little house like one in a dream. Fernando remained with him. Doña Maria had gone to the jail to see Rosendo. Juan had returned that morning to Bodega Central, and Lázaro was at work on the plantation across the lake. Josè thought bitterly that the time had been singularly well chosen for the coup. Don Mario's last words burned through his tired brain like live coals. In a sense the Alcalde was right. He had been selfishly absorbed in the girl. But he alone, excepting Rosendo, had any adequate appreciation of the girl's real nature. To the stagnant wits of Simití she was one of them, but with singular characteristics which caused the more superstitious and less intelligent to look upon her as an uncanny creature, possessed of occult powers.

Moreover, Josè had duped Don Mario with assurances of coöperation. He had allowed him to believe that Rosendo was searching for La Libertad, and that he should participate in the discovery, if made. Had his course been wholly wise, after all? He could not say that it had.

But--God above! it was all to save an innocent child from the blackest of fates! If he had been stronger himself, this never could have happened. Or, perhaps, if he had not allowed himself to be lulled to sleep by a fancied security bred of those long months of quiet, he might have been awake and alert to meet the enemy when he returned to the attack. Alas! the devil had left him for a season, and Josè had laid down "the shield of faith," while he lost himself in the intellectual content which the study of the new books purchased with his ancestral gold had afforded. But evil sleeps not; and with a persistency that were admirable in a better cause, it returned with unbated vigor at the moment the priest was off his guard.

* * * * *

Dawn broke upon a sleepless night for Josè. The Alcalde had sent word that Fernando must remain with the priest, and that no visits would be permitted to Rosendo in the jail. Josè had heard nothing from Carmen, and, though often during the long night he sought to know, as she would, that God's protection rested upon her; and though he sought feebly to prove the immanence of good by knowing no evil, the morning found him drawn and haggard, with corroding fear gnawing his desolate heart. Fernando remained mute; and Doña Maria could only learn that the constable had been seen leading the girl into Don Mario's house shortly after Rosendo's arrest.

At an early hour the people, buzzing with excitement, assembled for the trial, which was held in the town hall, a long, empty adobe house of but a single room, with dirt floor, and a few rough benches. The Alcalde occupied a broken chair at one end of the room. The trial itself was of the simplest order: any person might voice his opinion; and the final verdict was left to the people.

In a shaking voice, his frame tremulous with nervous agitation, Rosendo recounted the birth of the child at Badillo, and the manner of her coming into his family. He told of Diego's appointment to Simití, and of the loss of his own daughter. Waxing more and more energetic as his recital drew out, he denounced Diego as the prince of liars, and as worthy of the violent end which he was certain to meet if ever that renegade priest should venture near enough for him to lay his hands upon him. The little locket was produced, and all present commented on the probable identity of the girl's parents. Many affected to detect a resemblance to Diego in the blurred photograph of the man. Others scouted the idea. Don Mario swore loudly that it could be no other. Diego had often talked to him, sorrowfully, and in terms of deepest affection, about the beautiful woman whose love he had won, but whom his vows of celibacy prevented from making his lawful wife. The Alcalde's recital was dramatic to a degree, and at its close several excitedly attempted to address the multitude at the same time.

Oratory flowed on an ever rising tide, accompanied by much violent gesticulation and expectoration by way of emphasis. At length it was agreed that Diego had been, in times past, a bad man, but that the verbal proofs which he had given the Alcalde were undoubtedly valid, inasmuch as the Bishop stood behind them--and Don Mario assured the people that they were most certainly vouched for by His Grace. The day was almost carried when the eloquent Alcalde, in glowing rhetoric, painted the splendid future awaiting the girl, under the patronage of the Bishop. How cruel to retain her in dreary little Simití, even though Diego's claim still remained somewhat obscure, when His Grace, learning of her talents, had summoned her to Cartagena to be educated in the convent for a glorious future of service to God! Ah, that a like beautiful career awaited all the children of Simití!

Josè at length forced himself before the people and begged them to listen to him. But, when he opened his mouth, the words stumbled and halted. For what had he to say? To tell these people that he was striving to educate the girl away from them was impossible. To say that he was trying to save her from the Church would be fatal. And to reiterate that Diego's claim was a fabrication, added nothing of value to the evidence, for what did he know of the child's parentage? He feebly begged them to wait until Diego's claim had been either corroborated or annulled. But no; they had the Bishop's corroboration, and that sufficed. "And, Caramba!" cried Don Mario, interrupting the priest in a loud voice, "if we oppose the Bishop, then will he send the government soldiers to us--and you know what--"

"Cielo, yes!" came from the multitude in one voice.

Josè sank down thoroughly beaten. His hands were tied. The case now rested with her God.

The people drew apart in little groups to discuss the matter. Don Mario's beady eyes searched them, until he was certain of the way the tide was flowing. Then he rose and called for order.

"Bueno, amigos y amigas," he began with immense dignity; "what say you if we sum up the case as follows: The proofs have the support of the Bishop, and show that the girl is the daughter of Padre Diego. Rosendo is guilty of having kept her from her own father, and for that he should be severely punished. Let him be confined in the jail for six months, and be forced to pay to us a fine of one thousand pesos oro--"

"Caramba! but he has no such sum," cried the people with mouths agape.

"Bien, I say he can get it!" retorted the Alcalde, looking meaningly at Josè. "And he should pay it for depriving the child of a father's love and the religious instruction which he would have given her!"

Josè jumped to his feet. "Friends!" he cried, playing his last card. "Will you not remember that more than that amount is due Rosendo for the care of the child? Who will repay him?"

The whimsical, fickle people broke into excited exclamations.

"Cierto!"

"The Cura is right!"

"Let Rosendo pay no fine--he has no gold, anyway!"

"Cut down the sentence, Don Mario. We do not like this!"

The Alcalde saw that he had gone a bit too far. "Bueno, then," he amended. "We will cancel both the fine and Padre Diego's debt to Rosendo, and the sentence shall be reduced to--what say you all?"

"A month in the jail, Don Mario, no more," suggested one.

An exclamation of approval from the crowd drowned the protest which Josè sought vainly to voice. Rosendo rose quickly; but Fernando and others seized him.

"Bien, it is approved," bawled the Alcalde, waving his thick arms. "Take the prisoner to the cárcel, Señor Policía," turning to the constable.

"And the girl, Señor the Alcalde--when will you send her to her father?" called some one.

"Yes, Don Mario, she must be taken to Padre Diego at once," piped a woman's shrill voice.

"Bien," shouted the Alcalde, following his words with a long, coarse laugh, "I was wise enough to know what you would decide, and sent the girl down the river last night!"

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Chapter 25

The candles and smoky oil lamps of Banco threw a fitful shimmer out upon the great river, casting huge, spectral shadows across its muddy, swirling waters, and seeming rather to intensify the blackness that lay thick and menacing upon its restless bosom. Rivermen who follow their hazardous calling along the Magdalena do not lightly risk the dangers of travel by night in their native canoes, when at any moment a false stroke, a sudden crash against a tossing forest tree, and a cry through the inky blackness, might sound to the straining ears of hushed listeners on the distant banks the elements of another of the mighty river's grim nocturnal tragedies.

But on the night following the trial of Rosendo in distant Simití a canoe stole like a thing ashamed through the heavy shadows along the river's margin, and poked its blunt nose into the ooze at the upper edge of the town. Its two scantily clad bogas, steaming with perspiration and flecked with mud from the charged waters, sprang lightly from the frail craft and quickly made it fast to one of the long stilts upon which a ramshackle frame house rested. Then they assisted the third occupant of the canoe, a girl, to alight; and together they wended their way up the slippery bank and toward the town above.

"Caramba, compadre!" ejaculated one of the men, stumbling into a deep rut, "it is well you know where we go. Hombre! but I travel no more on the river by night. And, compadre, we had best ask Padre Diego to offer a candle to the Virgin for our safe arrival, no?"

The other man chuckled. "To be sure, friend Julio. Don Diego has much influence with virgins."

"Hombre! I like not his dirty work."

"Bien, amigo, what would you? You are well paid; and besides, you score against that baby-faced priest, Josè, who drove you out of Simití because you were not married to your woman. You cannot complain, compadre."

"Caramba! I have yet to see the color of the pesos. I do not much trust your Padre Diego."

"Na, amigo, a bit of rum will put new life into your soaked gizzard. Cierto, this trip down the river was a taste of purgatory; but you know we may as well get used to it here, for when we pobres are dead who will buy Masses to get us out?"

"Caramba!" muttered the other sullenly, as he stumbled on through the darkness, "but if we have no money the priests will let us burn forever!"

The girl went along with the men silently and without complaint, even when her bare feet slipped into the deep ruts in the trail, or were painfully bruised and cut by the sharp stones and bits of wood that lay in the narrow path. Once she fell. The man addressed as Julio assisted her to her feet. The other broke into a torrent of profane abuse.

"Na, Ricardo," interrupted Julio, "hold your foolish tongue and let the girl alone! You and I have cursed all the way from Simití, but she has made no complaint. She shames me. Caramba, I wish I were well out of this business!"

A few minutes later they struck one of the main thoroughfares. Then the men stopped to draw on their cotton shirts and trousers before entering the town. The road was better here, and they made rapid progress. The night was far spent, and the streets were deserted. In the main portion of the town ancient Spanish lamps, hanging uncertainly in their sconces against old colonial houses, threw a feeble light into the darkness. Before one of the better of these houses Julio and the girl were halted by their companion.

"Bien," he said, "it is here that the holy servant of God lives. Caramba, but may his garrafón be full!"

They entered the open door and mounted the stone steps. On the floor above they paused in the rotunda, and Ricardo called loudly. A side door opened and a young woman appeared, holding a lighted candle aloft. Ricardo greeted her courteously. "El Señor Padre, señorita Ana?" he said, bowing low. "You will do us the favor to announce our arrival, no?"

The woman stared uncomprehendingly at the odd trio. "The Padre is not here," she finally said.

"Dios y diablo!" cried Ricardo, forgetting his courtesy. "But we have risked our skins to bring him the brat, and he not here to receive and reward us! Caramba!"

"But--Ricardo, he is out with friends to-night--he may return at any moment. Who is the girl? And why do you bring her here?" She stepped forward, holding the candle so that its light fell full upon her face. As she did this the girl darted toward her and threw herself into the woman's arms.

"Anita!" she cried, her voice breaking with emotion, "Anita--I am Carmen! Do you not know me?"

The woman fell back in astonishment. "Carmen! What! The little Carmen, my father's--"

"Yes, Anita, I am padre Rosendo's Carmen--and yours!"

Ana clasped the girl in her arms. "Santa Maria, child! What brings you here, of all places?"

Ricardo stepped forward to explain. "As you may see, señorita, it is we who have brought her here, at the command of her father, Padre Diego."

"Her father!"

"Yes, señorita. And, since you say he is not in, we must wait until he returns."

The woman stood speechless with amazement. Carmen clung to her, while Ricardo stood looking at them, with a foolish leer on his face. Julio drew back into the shadow of the wall.

"Bien, señorita," said Ricardo, stepping up to the child and attempting to take her arm, "we will be held to account for the girl, and we must not lose her. Caramba! For then would the good Padre damn us forever!"

Carmen shrank away from him. Julio emerged swiftly from the shadow and laid a restraining hand on Ricardo. The woman tore Carmen from his grasp and thrust the girl behind herself. "Cierto, friend Ricardo, we are all responsible for her," she said quickly. "But you are tired and hungry--is it not so? Let me take you to the cocina, where you will find roast pig and a bit of red rum."

"Rum!" The man's eyes dilated. "Caramba! my throat is like the ashes of purgatory!"

"Come, then," said the woman, holding Carmen tightly by the hand and leading the way down the steps to the kitchen below. Arriving there, she lighted an oil lamp and hurriedly set out food and a large garrafón of Jamaica rum.

"There, compadre, is a part of your reward. And we will now wait until Padre Diego arrives, is it not so?"

While the men ate and drank voraciously, interpolating their actions at frequent intervals with bits of vivid comment on their river trip, the woman cast many anxious glances toward the steps leading to the floor above. From time to time she replenished Ricardo's glass, and urged him to drink. The man needed no invitation. Physical exhaustion and short rations while on the river had prepared him for just what the woman most desired to accomplish, and as glass after glass of the fiery liquor burned its way down his throat, she saw his scant wit fading, until at last it deserted him completely, and he sank into a drunken torpor. Then, motioning to Julio, who had consumed less of the rum, she seized the senseless Ricardo by the feet, and together they dragged him out into the patio and threw him under a platano tree.

"But, señorita--" began Julio in remonstrance, as thoughts of Diego's wrath filtered through his befuddled brain.

"Not a word, hombre!" she commanded, turning upon him. "If you lay a hand upon this child my knife shall find your heart!"

"But--my pay?"

"How much did Padre Diego say he would give you?" she demanded.

"Three pesos oro--and rations," replied the man thickly.

"Wait here, then, and I will bring you the money."

Still retaining Carmen's hand, she mounted the steps, listening cautiously for the tread of her master. Reaching the rotunda above, she drew Carmen into the room from which she had emerged before, and, bidding her conceal herself if Diego should arrive, took her wallet and hastily descended to where the weaving Julio waited.

"There, amigo," she said hurriedly, handing him the money. "Now do you go--at once! And do not remain in Banco, or Padre Diego will surely make you trouble. Your life is not safe here now. Go!" She pointed to the door; and Julio, impressed with a sense of his danger, lost no time in making his exit.

Returning to Carmen, the woman seated herself and drew the girl to her. "Carmen, child!" she cried, trembling, as her eyes searched the girl. "Tell me why you are here!"

"I do not know, Anita dear," murmured the girl, nestling close to the woman and twining an arm about her neck; "except that day before yesterday the Alcalde put padre Rosendo into the jail--"

"Into the jail!"

"Yes, Anita dear. And then, when I was going to see him, Fernando ran out of Don Mario's house and told me I must go in and see the Alcalde. Julio Gomez and this man Ricardo were there talking with Don Mario in the patio. Then they threw a ruana over me and carried me out through the patio and around by the old church to the Boque trail. When we got to the trail they made me walk with them to the Inanea river, where they put me into a canoe. They paddled fast, down to the Boque river; then to the Magdalena; and down here to Banco. They did not stop at all, except when steamboats went by--oh, Anita, I never saw a steamboat before! What big, noisy things they are! But Padre Josè had often told me about them. And when the big boats passed us they made me lie down in the canoe, and they put the ruana over me and told me if I made any noise they would throw me into the river. But I knew if I just kept still and knew--really knew--that God would take care of me, why, He would. And, you see, He did, for He brought me to you." A tired sigh escaped her lips as she laid her head on the woman's shoulder.

"But--oh, Santa Maria!" moaned the woman, "you are not safe here! What can I do?--what can I do?"

"Well, Anita dear, you can know that God is here, can't you? I knew that all the way down the river. And, oh, I am so glad to see you! Why, just think, it is eight years since you used to play with me! And now we will go back to Simití, will we not, Anita?"

"Pray to the Virgin to help us, child! You may have influence with her--I have none, for my soul is lost!"

"Why, Anita dear, that is not true! You and I are both God's children, and He is right here with us. All we have to do is to know it--just really know it."

"But, tell me, quick--Diego may be here any moment--why did he send Ricardo for you?"

The girl became very serious. "Anita dear, Padre Diego says I am his child."

"What!"

"Yes--his daughter--that he is my father. But--is it really so, Anita?"

"Madre de Dios!" cried the woman. "What a beast!--what a beast! He saw you in Simití when he was last there--and you are now a beautiful--No, child, you are not his daughter! The wretch lies--he is a sink of lies! He is rotten with sin! Oh, Dios!"

"Why, no, Anita dear, he is not a beast--we must love him, for he is God's child, too," said Carmen, patting the woman's wet cheek with her soft hand.

"He!--God's child!" She broke into a shrill of laughter. "Carita, he is Satan himself! You do not know him!"

"I don't mean that what you think you see is God's child, Anita dear; but that what you think you see stands for God's child, and isn't real. And if we know that, why, we will see the real child of God--the real man--and not what you call a beast."

Ana apparently did not hear. Her thought was with the future. Carmen looked about the room. "Oh, Anita," she exclaimed, "what a beautiful place, and what beautiful things you have!" She rubbed the tile floor with her bare foot. "Why, Anita dear, it is just like the palaces Padre Josè has told me about!" She walked around the room, touching the various toilet articles on the dresser, passing her hands carefully over the upholstered chairs, and uttering exclamations of wonder and delight. "Anita--Anita dear! Why, it is a palace! Oh! oh! oh!"

The woman looked up with a wan smile. "Chiquita, they are nothing. They are all cheap trinkets--nothing compared with what there is in the big world beyond us. You poor dear, you have lived all your life in miserable little Simití, and you haven't the slightest idea of what there is in the world!"

"But, Anita dear, Simití is beautiful," the girl protested.

"Beautiful!" The woman laughed aloud. "My dear, simple little girl! You have seen only this poor room, and you think it wonderful. I have been to Barranquilla and Cartagena with Padre Diego, and have seen houses a thousand times more beautiful than this. And yet, even those are nothing to what there is in the world outside."

Carmen went to the bed and passed her hand over the white counterpane. "Anita--why, is this--is this your--"

"Yes, chiquita, it is my bed. You have never seen a real bed, poor little thing."

"But--" the child's eyes were wide with wonder--"it is so soft--you sink way into it--oh, so soft--like the heron's feathers! I didn't sleep at all in the canoe--and I am so tired."

"You blessed lamb!" cried the woman, springing up and clasping the girl in her arms. "But--what can I do? When he returns, he may come right up here! Santa Maria, help me!--what shall I do?"

"Anita--let me sleep in your bed--it is so soft--but--" looking down dubiously at her muddy feet.

"Never mind them, child." The woman's face had set in grim determination. She went to the dresser and took out a small stiletto, which she quickly concealed in the bosom of her dress. "Get right in, just as you are! I will take care of Diego, if he comes! Santa Maria, I will--"

"Anita dear," murmured the girl, sinking down between the white sheets, "you and I will just know that God is everywhere, and that He will take care of us, and of Padre Diego too." With a sigh of contentment the child closed her eyes. "Anita dear," she whispered softly, "wasn't He good to bring me right to you? And to-morrow we will go back to Simití--and to padre Rosendo--and Padre Josè--and--and Cantar-las-horas--you haven't seen him for such a long time--such a long--long--Anita dear, I--love--you--"

The child dropped asleep, just as a heavy step fell outside the door. Ana sprang up and extinguished the lamp, then went quickly out into the rotunda. Padre Diego was standing on the top step, puffing and weaving unsteadily. The woman hurried to him and passed an arm about his waist.

"Oh!" she exclaimed in a tone of feigned solicitation. "I feared you had met with an accident! My heart beats like the patter of rain! Why do you stay out so late and cause me worry?"

The bloated face of the man leered like a Jack-o'-lantern. "Spiritual retreat, my love--spiritual retreat," he muttered thickly. "Imbibing the spirits, you know." He laughed heavily at his coarse joke.

The woman gave him a look of inexpressible disgust. "But you are home safe, at any rate," she said in a fawning voice; "and my fear is quieted. Come now, and I will help you into bed. Not in there!" she cried, as he lurched toward the door of the room where Carmen lay; "in your own room to-night!"

He swayed to and fro before her, as she stood with her back against the door.

"Nombre de Dios!" he muttered, "but you grow daily more unkind to your good Padre! Bien, it is well that I have a fresh little housekeeper coming!" He made again as if to enter the room. The woman threw her arms about his neck.

"Padre dear," she appealed, "have you ceased to love your Anita? She would spend this night alone; and can you not favor her this once?"

"Caramba!" he croaked in peevish suspicion, "but I think you have a paramour in there. Bien, I will go in and shrive his wicked soul!"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you!" cried the desperate woman, her hand stealing to the weapon concealed in her dress. "Pepito came this evening with the case of Oporto which you ordered long ago from Spain. I put it in your study, for I knew you would want to sample it the moment you returned."

"Caramba!" he cried, turning upon her, "why do you not tell me important things as soon as I arrive? I marvel that you did not wait until morning to break this piece of heavenly news! Bien, come to the study, and you shall open a bottle for me. Dios! but my throat is seared with Don Antonio's vile rum! My parched soul panteth for the wine of the gods that flows from sunny Spain! Caramba, woman, give yourself haste!"

Suffering himself to be led by her, he staggered across the rotunda and into the room where long before he had entertained for a brief hour Don Jorge and the priest Josè. Ana quickly broke the neck of a bottle of the newly arrived wine and gave him a generous measure.

"Ah, God in heaven!" murmured the besotted priest, sinking into a chair and sipping the beverage; "it is the nectar of Olympus--triple distilled through tubes of sunlight and perfumed with sweet airs and the smiles of voluptuous houris! Ah, Lord above, you are good to your little Diego! Another sip, my lovely Ana--and bring me the cigarettes. And come, fat lass, do you sit beside me and twine your graceful arms about my neck, while your soft breath kisses my old cheek! Ah, Dios, who would not be human! Caramba! the good God may keep His heaven, if He will but give me the earth!"

Ana drew his head against her bosom and murmured hypocritical words of endearment in his ear, while she kept his glass full. Diego babbled like a child. He nodded; struggled to keep awake; and at length fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. Then she arose, and, assured that he would be long in his stupor, extinguished the light and hurried to her own room.

Carmen was sleeping peacefully. The woman bent over her with the lighted candle and looked long and wistfully. "Ah, Santa Maria!" she prayed, "if you will but save her, you may do what you will with me!"

Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she turned to the door and threw the bolt. Coming back to the bed, she again bent over the sleeping girl. "Santa Virgen!" she murmured, "how beautiful! Like an angel! Dios mío--and that beast, he has seen her, and he would--ah, Dios!"

Going again to the dresser, she took from a drawer a sandalwood rosary. Then she returned to the bed and knelt beside the child. "Blessed Virgin," she prayed, while her hot tears fell upon the beads, "I am lost--lost! Ah, I have not told my beads for many years--I cannot say them now! Santa Virgen, pray for me--pray for me--and if I kill him to-morrow, tell the blessed Saviour that I did it for the child! Ah, Santa Virgen, how beautiful she is--how pure--what hair--she is from heaven--Santa Virgen, you will protect her?" She kissed the cross repeatedly. "Madre de Dios--she is so beautiful, so pure--"

Carmen moved slightly, and the woman rose hastily from her knees. "Anita dear," murmured the child, "Jesus waked Lazarus--out of his--sleep. Anita, why do you not come? I am waiting for you."

"Yes, child, yes! But--Dios mío!" she murmured when Carmen again slept, "I am too wicked to sleep with so pure an angel!--no, I can not! I must not!"

She spread a light shawl upon the tile floor near the window and lay down upon it, drawing a lace mantilla over her face to protect it from the mosquitoes. "Santa Virgen", she murmured repeatedly, "pray the blessed Saviour to protect her to-morrow--pray for her, Madre de Dios--pray for her!"

* * * * *

The piercing shriek of a steamboat whistle roused the woman just as the first harbingers of dawn spread over the river a crimson flush that turned it into a stream of blood. The child was asleep. Ana bent over her and left a kiss on her forehead. Then she stole out of the room and into the study. Padre Diego lay sunk in his chair like a monster toad. The woman threw him a look of utter loathing, and then hastily descended into the patio. Ricardo lay under the platano tree, sleeping heavily. She roused him with a kick.

"Up, man!" she cried, shaking him by the shoulder. "Padre Diego sends you this money, and bids you go. He is well satisfied with your work." She held out a roll of pesos.

The man, after much vigorous persuasion, got heavily to his feet. "Caramba, señorita!" he muttered in a dazed voice. "That last tragito--it was a bit too much, no? But--Bien, I would see the good Padre. Caramba, my poor head! What rum! But, señorita, do me the great favor to ask the good Padre to see me one little moment. I must deliver this letter to him." He fumbled in his wallet and drew out an envelope.

"He will not see you, Ricardo. He--"

"Caramba!" ejaculated the man loudly, as his senses returned. "But I believe there is something wrong here! Bien, now I shall see the Padre! I am responsible to him!" He pushed the woman aside and entered the house.

Ana started after him, and seized his arm. A scuffle ensued, and Ricardo's voice was loud and shrill as they reached the stairs. The woman clung to him desperately. "Ricardo--anything you ask--double the amount, if you will go! Leave the house--I will tell the Padre--I will give him the letter--"

"Caramba, but I will see him myself!" shouted the lightheaded Ricardo.

"Dios y diablo!" A heavy voice rolled down from above. "Bien, enamorada, is this the paramour whom you hid in your room last night? Caramba, you might have chosen a handsomer one!"

Ana sank down with a moan and buried her face in her hands. Diego heavily descended the stairs. "Ha, Ricardo!" he exclaimed, recognizing the man. "Bien, so it is you! And the girl?"

"I do not know, Padre," cried the man excitedly. "Señorita Ana, she made me drunk last night. I brought the girl--I waited for you, but the señorita--"

"Caramba, I understand!" replied Diego, turning to the woman.

Ana had risen and was making for the stairs. Diego sprang to her and seized her by the wrist. With her free hand she drew the stiletto from her bosom and raised it to strike. Ricardo saw the movement, and threw himself upon her.

"Dios!" cried Diego, as Ricardo felled the woman and wrenched the weapon from her grasp. "My pretty angel, you have the venom of a serpent! Sly wench! did you think to deceive your doting Padre? But--Dios nos guarde!"

Carmen, awakened by the noise, had left her bed, and now stood at the head of the stairs, looking with dilated eyes at the strange scene being enacted below.

Silence fell upon the group. Ana lay on the ground, her eyes strained toward the girl. Ricardo bent over her, awaiting his master's command. He knew now that she had forever lost her power over the priest. Diego stood like a statue, his eyes riveted upon Carmen. The girl looked down upon them from the floor above with an expression of wonder, yet without fear.

Diego was the first to find his voice. "Ah, my pretty one!" he wheedled. "My lovely daughter! At last you come to your lonely padre! Wait for me, hermosissima!" He puffed painfully up the steps.

"Carmen!--run!--run! Don't let him come near you--!" screamed Ana in a voice of horror. Ricardo clapped his hand heavily over her mouth.

But the child did not move. Diego reached her and seized her hand.

"Carissima!" he panted, feasting his eyes upon her, while a thrill passed through his coarse frame. "Madre de Dios, but you have grown beautiful! Don Mario was right--you are surely the most voluptuous object in human form that has ever crossed my path. Bien, the blessed God is still good to his little Diego!"

He started away with her, but was detained by the loud voice of Ricardo.

"Bien, Padre, my pay!"

"Cierto, hombre!" exclaimed Diego. "I was about to forget. But--a father's joy--ah! Bien, come to me to-morrow--"

"Na, Señor Padre, but to-day--now! I have risked my life--and I have a wife and babes! You will pay me this minute!"

"Caramba, ugly beast, but I will consign you to hell! Maldito! get you gone! There are more convenient seasons than this for your business!" And, still holding tightly to the girl's hand, he led her into the study.

The woman turned upon Ricardo with the fury of a tiger. "See now what you have done!" she screamed. "This will cost your life, for you have put into his dirty hands the soul of an angel, and he will damn it! Santa Virgen! If you had only taken the money I brought you--"

"Demon-tongue, I will take it now!" He snatched the roll of bills from her hand and bolted through the door. With a low moan the woman sank to the ground, while oblivion drew its sable veil across her mind.

Reaching the study, Diego pushed Carmen into the room and then followed, closing the door after him and throwing the iron bolt. Turning about, he stood with arms akimbo upon his bulging hips and gazed long and admiringly at the girl as she waited in expectant wonder before him. A smile of satisfaction and triumph slowly spread over his coarse features. Then it faded, and his heavy jowls and deep furrows formed into an expression, sinister and ominous, through which lewdness, debauchery, and utter corruption looked out brazenly, defiantly, into the fair, open countenance of the young girl before him. A sense of weariness and dull pain then seemed to follow. He shook his heavy head and passed a hand across his brow, as if to brush aside the confusion left by the previous night's potations.

"Madre de Dios!" he muttered, falling heavily into a chair, "but had I known you were here, little rosebud, I should have tried to keep sober." He reached out to grasp her; but she eluded him and went quickly to the open window, where she stood looking down into the street below. The morning sunlight, streaming into the room, engulfed her in its golden flood and transmuted the child of earth into a creature divinely radiant, despite the torn gown and stains of river travel.

"Bien, carísíma," the man wheedled in a small, caressing voice, "where is your greeting to your glad padre? Dios mío!" he muttered, his eyes roving over her full figure, "but the Virgin herself was never more lovely! Come, daughter," he purred, extending his arms; "come to a father's heart that now, praise the Saints! shall ache no more for its lost darling."

The girl faced about and looked at him for a few moments. What her glance conveyed, the man was utterly incapable of understanding. Then she drew up a chair that stood near the window, and sinking into it, buried her face in her hands.

"Caramba, my smile of heaven! but why weep?" chirped Diego, affecting surprise. "Is it thus you celebrate your homecoming? Or are these, perchance, fitting tears of joy? Bien, your padre's doting heart itself weeps that its years of loneliness are at last ended." He held the sleeve of his gown to his eyes and sniffed affectedly.

The girl looked up quickly. "I am not weeping," she said.

"Bien, and what then?" he pursued.

"I was just knowing," she answered slowly, "that I was not afraid--that God was everywhere, even right here--and that He would not let any harm come to me."

Diego's eyes widened. Then he burst into a coarse laugh. "Hombre! and you ask Him to protect you from your adoring father! Come here, little wench. You are in your own home. Why be afraid?" He again held out his arms to her.

"I am not afraid--now," she answered softly. "But--I do not think God will let me come to you. If you were really my father, He would."

The man's mouth gaped in astonishment. A fleeting sense of shame swept through his festering mind. Then the lustful meanness of his corrupted soul welled up anew, and he laughed brutally. The idea was delightfully novel; the girl beautifully audacious; the situation piquantly amusing. He would draw her out to his further enjoyment. "So," he observed parenthetically, "I judge you are on quite familiar terms with God, eh?"

"Very," she replied, profoundly serious.

The joke was excellent, and he roared with mirth. "Bueno, pues!" he commented, reaching over and uncorking with shaking hand the bottle that stood on the table. Then, filling a glass, "Suppose you thank Him for sending his little Diego this estimable wine and your own charming self, eh? Then tell me what He says." Whereat he guffawed loudly and slapped his bulging sides.

The girl had already bowed her head again in her hands. A long pause ensued. Diego's beady eyes devoured the beautiful creature before him. Then he waxed impatient. "Bien, little Passion flower," he interrupted, "if you have conveyed to Him my infinite gratitude, perhaps He will now let you come to me, eh?"

Carmen looked up. A faint smile hovered upon her lips. "I have thanked Him, Padre--for you and for me," she said; "for you, that you really are His child, even if you don't know it; and for me that I know He always hears me. That was what the good man Jesus said, you know, when he waked Lazarus out of the death-sleep. Don't you remember? And so I kept thanking Him all the way down the river."

Diego's eyes bulged as if they would pop from his head, and his mouth fell open wide, but no sound issued therefrom. The girl went on quietly:

"I was not afraid on the river, Padre. And I was not afraid to come in here with you. I knew, just as the good man Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus, that God had heard me--He just couldn't be God if He hadn't, you know. And then I remembered what the good man said about not resisting evil; for, you know, if we resist evil we make it real--and we never, never can overcome anything real, can we? So I resisted evil with good, just as Jesus told us to do. I just knew that God was everywhere, and that evil was unreal, and had no power at all. And so the bogas didn't hurt me coming down the river. And you--you will not either, Padre."

She stopped and smiled sweetly at him. Then, very seriously:

"Padre, one reason why I was not afraid to come in here with you was that I thought God might want to talk to you through me, and I could help you. You need help, you know."

The man settled back in his chair and stared stupidly at her. His face expressed utter consternation, confusion, and total lack of comprehension. Once he muttered under his breath, "Caramba! she is surely an hada!" But Carmen did not hear him. Absorbed in her mission, she went on earnestly:

"You know, Padre, we are all channels through which God talks to people--just like the asequia out there in the street through which the water flows. We are all channels for divine love--so Padre Josè says."

The priest sat before her like a huge pig, his little eyes blinking dully, and his great mouth still agape.

"We are never afraid of real things, Padre, you know; and so I couldn't be afraid of the real 'you,' for that is a child of God. And the other 'you' isn't real. We are only afraid of our wrong thoughts. But such thoughts are not really ours, you know, for they don't come from God. But," she laughed softly, "when I saw you coming up the steps after me this morning--well, lots of fear-thoughts came to me--why, they just seemed to come pelting down on me like the rain. But I wouldn't listen to them. I turned right on them, just as I've seen Cucumbra turn on a puppy that was nagging him, and I said, 'Here, now, I know what you are; I know you don't come from God; and anything that doesn't come from God isn't really anything at all!' And so they stopped pelting me. The good man Jesus knew, didn't he? That's why he said so often, 'Be not afraid.'"

She paused again and beamed at him. Her big eyes sparkled, and her face glowed with celestial light. Diego raised a heavy arm and, groping for the bottle, eagerly drained another glass of wine.

"You think that wine makes you happy, don't you, Padre?" she observed, watching him gulp down the heavy liquor. "But it doesn't. It just gives you what Padre Josè calls a false sense of happiness. And when that false sense passes away--for everything unreal has just got to pass away--why, then you are more unhappy than you were before. Isn't it so?"

The astonished Diego now regained his voice. "Caramba, girl!" he ejaculated, "will you rein that runaway tongue!"

"No, Padre," she replied evenly, "for it is God who is talking to you. Don't you hear Him? You ought to, for you are a priest. You ought to know Him as well as the good man Jesus did. Padre, can you lay your hands on the sick babies and cure them?"

The man squirmed uncomfortably for a moment, and then broke into another brutal laugh. "Sick babies! Caramba! but we find it easier to raise new babies than to cure sick ones! But--little hada! Hombre! do hadas have such voluptuous bodies, such plump legs! Madre de Dios, girl, enough of your preaching! Come to me quick! I hunger for you! Come!"

"No, Padre," she answered quietly, "I do not want to come to you. But I want to talk to you--"

"Dios y diablo! enough of your gab! Caramba! with a Venus before me do you think I yearn for a sermon? Hombre! delay it, delay it--"

"Padre," she interrupted, "you do not see me. You are looking only at your bad thoughts of me."

"Ha! my thoughts, eh?" His laugh resembled the snort of an animal.

"Yes, Padre--and they are very bad thoughts, too--they don't come from God, and you are so foolish to let them use you the way you do. Why do you, Padre? for you don't have to. And you know you see around you only the thoughts that you have been thinking. Why don't you think good thoughts, and so see only good things?"

"Now Mary bless my soul!" he exclaimed in mock surprise. "Can it be that I don't see a plump little witch before me, but only my bad thoughts, eh? Ha! ha! Caramba! that is good! Bien, then," he coaxed, "come to your poor, deluded padre and let him learn that you are only a thing of thought, and not the most enchanting little piece of flesh that ever caused a Saint to fall!"

The girl sat silent before him. Her smile had fled, and in its place sadness and pity were written large upon her wistful face.

"Come, my little bundle of thought," he coaxed, holding out his fat, hairy arms.

"No, Padre," the girl answered firmly.

"Na, then, still afraid, eh?" he taunted, with rising anger.

"No, Padre; to be afraid would mean that I didn't understand God."

"Ha! Then come to me and prove that you do understand Him, eh?" he suggested eagerly. "Caramba! why do you sit there like a mummy? Are you invoking curses on the bald pate of your desolate father?"

"No, Padre; I am thanking God all the time that He is here, and that He will not let you hurt me."

The man's lust-inflamed eyes narrowed and the expression on his evil face became more sinister. "Maldita!" he growled, "will you come hither, or must I--"

"No." She shook her head slowly, and her heavy curls glistened in the sunlight. "No, Padre, God will not let me come to you."

Panting and cursing softly, the man got slowly to his feet. "Madre de Dios!" he muttered; "then we will see if your God will let me come to you!"

Carmen rose and stood hesitant. Her lips moved rapidly, though no sound came from them. They were forming the words of the psalmist, "In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me." It was a verse Josè had taught her long since, when his own heart was bursting with apprehension.

Diego stumbled heavily toward the child. She turned quickly as if to flee. He thrust out his hand and clutched her dress. The flimsy calico, frayed and worn, tore its full length, and the gown fell to the floor. She stopped and turned to face the man. Her white body glistened in the clear sunlight like a marble statue.

"Por el amor de Dios!" ejaculated the priest, straightening up and regarding her with dull, blinking eyes. Then, like a tiger pouncing upon a fawn, he seized the unresisting girl in his arms and staggered back to his chair.

"Caramba! Caramba!" he exclaimed, holding her with one arm about her waist, and with his free hand clumsily pouring another glass of wine. "Only a thing of thought, eh? Madre de Dios! Bien, pretty thought, drink with me this thought of wine!" He laughed boisterously at his crude wit, and forced the glass between her lips.

"I--am not afraid--I am not afraid," she whispered, drinking. "It cannot hurt me--nor can you. God is here!"

"Hurt you!" he panted, setting down the glass and mopping his hot brow, as he settled back into the chair again. "Caramba! who hurts when he loves?"

"You--do--not--love--me, Padre!" she gasped under his tight clutch. "You have--only a wrong thought--of me--of love--of everything!"

"Bien--but you love me, pretty creature, is it not so?" he mocked, holding up her head and kissing her full on the mouth.

"I--I love the real 'you'--for that is God's image," she murmured, struggling to hold her face away from his fetid breath. "But--I do not--love the way that image is--is translated--in your human mind!"

"Caramba!" he threw himself back and gave noisy vent to his risibility. "Chiquita mía! What grand language! Where did you learn it?"

For the moment the girl seemed to forget that she was in the fell clutches of a demon incarnate. Her thought strayed back to little Simití, to Cucumbra, to Cantar-las-horas, to--ah, was he searching for her now? And would he come?--

"It was Padre Josè; he taught me," she whispered sadly.

"Padre Josè! Maldito! The curse of God blast him, the monkey-faced mozo! Caramba! but he will teach you no more! You have a new master now to give you a few needed lessons, señorita mía, and--"

"Padre Diego!" her tense voice checked further expression of his low thought. "You have no power to curse anything! You have no power to harm me, or to teach me anything! God is here! He will protect me! He keeps all them that love Him!" She gasped again as his clutch tightened about her.

"Doubtless, my lily. Caramba! your skin is like the velvet!" He roughly drew the girl up on his knees. "To be sure He will protect you, my mariposa. And He is using me as the channel, you see--just as you said a few moments ago, eh?" His rude laugh again echoed through the room.

"He is not--using you--at all!" she panted. "Evil thoughts are--are using you. And all--they can do--is to kill themselves--and you!"

"Madre Maria! Is such a sad fate in store for me, my beautiful hada?" He chuckled and reached out again for the bottle. "Another little thought of wine, my love. It's only a thought, you know. Ha! ha! I must remember to tell Don Antonio of this!--Maldita!"

His clumsy movement had upset the bottle. Struggling to save its contents, he relaxed his hold on Carmen. Like a flash she wormed her supple body out under his arm, slid to the floor, and gained the window.

"Dios y diablo! Maldita! Maldita!" shrilled Diego, aflame with wrath. "Cursed wench! when I lay these hands again on you--!"

Struggling to his feet, he made for the girl. But at the first step the light rug slid along the smooth tiles beneath his uncertain tread. He threw out an arm and sought to grasp the table. But as he did so, his foot turned under him. There was a sharp, snapping sound. With a groan the heavy man sank to the floor.

For a moment Carmen stood as if dazed. Diego lay very still. Then the girl picked up her torn dress and approached him carefully. "It was his bad thoughts," she whispered; "he slipped on them; they threw him! I knew it--I just knew it!"

Passing to one side, she gained the door, threw back the bolt, and hurried out into the rotunda. Crouched on the floor, the stiletto clasped in her hand, sat Ana, her face drenched with tears, and her chest heaving. When she saw the girl she sprang to her feet.

"Carmen! Ah, Dios! your dress!--Madre Maria! I could not save you; I could not break through the heavy door; but I can punish him!" She burst into a flood of tears and started into the room.

"No, Anita!" cried the girl, throwing herself into the woman's arms. "He is punished! He did not hurt me--God would not let him! Look! Anita, look!" pointing to the body on the floor.

The woman stopped abruptly. "Carmen!" she whispered in awed tones, "did God strike him dead?"

"I don't know, Anita--but come! No!" clinging to the woman's skirt; "Anita dear, do not go in there! Leave him! Come away with me!"

The woman's eyes were wild, her hair loose and disheveled. "Caramba!" she cried, "but we will make sure that the beast is dead before we go! And if we leave this blade in his heart, it may be a warning to others of his kind!"

"No, Anita--no! God will not let you kill him! You must not! Your murder-thoughts will kill you if you do! Come! Listen--it is a steamboat whistle! Oh, Anita--if it is going up the river--we can take it--"

Ana hesitated. "But--leave him? He may--"

"Yes, Anita, yes; leave him with God!" pleaded the girl excitedly. "Come away, Anita--"

"But where, child?" asked the bewildered woman.

"To Simití!"

"Simití! Never! Why--why, my father would kill me!"

"No, Anita dear; he loves you; he prays for you; he wants you! Oh, Anita, come! It is right--it is just what God has planned, I know! Pin my dress together, and then hurry!"

The woman moved as if in a cloud. Mechanically she descended the stairs and left the house, her hand tightly clasped by Carmen. Dully she suffered herself to be led hurriedly to the river. A boat, up-bound, was just docking. The captain stood leaning over the rail and shouting his commands. Ana recognized him. It was Captain Julio.

"Loado sea Dios!" murmured the weeping woman, hurrying up the gang plank with the child. She hastened past the astonished passengers to the captain and drew him to one side.

"The child--" she gasped, "Rosendo Ariza's--of Simití--leave her at Badillo--they will take her over--"

"Wait, señora," interrupted the captain tenderly. "Is it not time for you to go home, too?" He laid a hand on her shoulder and looked down into her streaming eyes. "Come," he said quietly. And, leading them down the deck, he opened the door of a vacant cabin and bade them enter. "You can tell me your story when we are under way," he said, smiling as he closed the door. "Bien," he muttered, his brow clouding as he strode off. "I have been looking for this for some time. But--the child--Ariza's--ah, the priest Diego! I think I see--Caramba! But we will not tarry long here!"

A few minutes later the big boat, her two long funnels vomiting torrents of smoke and sparks, thrust her huge wheel into the thick waters and, swinging slowly out into mid-stream, turned her flat nose toward the distant falls of Tequendama. In one of her aft cabins a woman lay on a cot, weeping hysterically. Over her bent a girl, with a face such as the masters have sought in vain. The tenderly whispered words might have been the lingering echo of those voiced in the little moonlit death-chamber of Cartagena long agone.

"Anita dear, He is with us, right here. And His arms are wide open. And He says, 'Anita, come!'"

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Chapter 26

"But, Padre dear, why are you so surprised that Padre Diego did not hurt me? I would have been much more surprised if he had. You are always so astonished when evil doesn't happen--don't you ever look for good? Why, I don't ever look for anything else! How could I when I know that God is everywhere?"

Josè strained her closer to himself. "The sense of evil--it overwhelms me at times, carita--"

"But, Padre dear, why don't you know right then that it is nothing? If you did, it would fade away, and only good would overwhelm you." She nestled closer to the man and clasped her arms more tightly about his neck. "Why, Padre," she resumed, "I was not a bit surprised when Captain Julio came and told us we were near Bodega Central, and that he could see you and Juan and Lázaro sitting on the steps of the inn."

"Yes, chiquita, we were resting for a moment. If a down-river boat came by we were going to take it. If not, we expected to go in the canoe."

"Padre dear, what did you intend to do in Banco?"

The man hesitated. "Don't speak of it, child--we--"

"Juan and Lázaro have knives. I saw them. Padre--have you one, too?"

"I?--chiquita--"

"Padre dear, God never fights with knives. Anita had a knife; but God wouldn't let her use it. He always has better ways than that. I don't know what happened to Padre Diego, except that he fell over his wicked thoughts. You know, Padre dear, somewhere in the Bible you read to me that 'With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles.' I thought of that when Padre Diego had his arm around me and held me so tight that I could hardly breathe. It was only an arm of flesh, after, all, and it couldn't hold me."

"Bien, Padre," interrupted Juan, coming up from the boat, "if we are to reach Simití to-night we must start at once."

"Bueno, then let us set out," returned Josè, rising. A muffled sob reached his ears. He turned to the woman huddled in the shadow of the door.

"Come, Ana," he said cheerily; "to-night you will again be home."

"No, Padre--I do not go with you. I--"

"Anita!" In an instant Carmen's arms were around her. "When padre Rosendo sees us, you and me, why--"

"Carísima!" The woman's tears flowed fast while she hugged the girl to her bosom. "No--no--he would drive me from his house! No--let me stay here. I will get work in the posada, perhaps. Or Captain Julio will take me to Honda on his next trip, and get me a place--"

"Then we must ask him to get a place for us both," interrupted Carmen, sitting calmly down beside her. "And think, Anita, how sad padre Rosendo will be when he sees the men come back without us!"

"Carmen! I shall throw myself into the river!" cried the sorrowing woman, rising. "You don't know what it is--"

"Yes, I do, Anita," returned the girl quickly; "it is nothing--just zero--and you can't drown it! If it would do any good we would both jump into the river--that is, if God told us to--wouldn't we? But it doesn't help any to die, you know, for then we would have it all to do over again."

"Ana," said Josè, laying a hand on the woman's shoulder, "you do not understand her--neither do I, wholly. But if she tells you to go with us to Simití, why, I think I would go. I would leave it all with her. You may trust her influence with Rosendo. Come."

He took her hand and led her, weeping, but no longer resisting, down to the canoe. Carmen followed, dancing like an animated sunbeam. "What fun, oh, what fun!" she chirped, clapping her hands. "And just as soon as we get home we will go right up to the cárcel and let padre Rosendo out!"

"Na, chiquita," said Josè, shaking his head mournfully; "we have no power to do that."

"Well, then, God has," returned the girl, nothing daunted.

Juan pushed the heavily laden canoe from its mooring, and set its direction toward Simití. Silence drew over the little group, and the hours dragged while the boat crept slowly along the margin of the great river. The sun had passed its meridian when the little craft turned into the caño. To Josè the change brought a most grateful relief. For, though his long residence in Simití had somewhat inured him to the intense heat of this low region, he had not yet learned to endure it with the careless indifference of the natives. Besides, his mind was filled with vivid memories of the horrors of his first river trip. And he knew that every future experience on the water would be tinged by them.

In the shaded caño the sunlight, sifting through the interlocking branches of ancient palms and caobas, mellowed and softened into a veil of yellow radiance that flecked the little stream with splashes of gold. Juan in the prow with the pole labored in silence. At times he stopped just long enough to roll a huge cigar, and to feast his bright eyes upon the fair girl whom he silently adored. Lázaro, as patron, sat in the stern, saturnine and unimpassioned. The woman, exhausted by the recent mental strain, dozed throughout the journey. Carmen alone seemed alive to her environment. Every foot of advance unfolded to her new delights. She sang; she chirped; she mimicked the parrots; she chattered at the excited monkeys. It was with difficulty that Josè could restrain her when her sharp eyes caught the glint of brilliant Passion flowers and orchids of gorgeous hue clinging to the dripping trees.

"Padre!" she exclaimed, "they are in us, you know. They are not out there at all! We see our thoughts of them--and lots of people wouldn't see anything beautiful about them at all, just because their thoughts are not beautiful. Padre, we see--what you said to me once--we see our interpretations of God's ideas, don't we? That is what I told Padre Diego. But--well, he will just have to see some day, won't he, Padre dear? But now let us talk in English; you know, I haven't spoken it for such a long time."

Josè gazed at her in rapt silence. What a rare interpretation of the mind divine was this child! But he wondered why one so pure and beautiful should attract a mind so carnal as that of Diego. And yet--

"Ah!" he mused, "it is again that law. Good always stirs up its suppositional opposite. And the most abundant good and the greatest purity stir up the most carnal elements of the human mind. All history shows it. The greater the degree of good, the greater the seeming degree of evil aroused. The perfect Christ stirred the hatred of a world. Carmen arouses Diego simply because of her purity. Yet she knows that he can not harm her."

His eyes met the girl's, and she answered his unspoken thought in the tongue which she was fast adopting. "We have to love him, you know, Padre dear."

"Love whom? Diego?"

"Why, yes, of course. We can't help loving him. Oh, not the 'him' that the human mind looks at, but the real 'him,' you know--the 'him' that is God's image. And you know there just isn't any other 'him,' now is there?"

"God above!" murmured Josè, "if I could but keep my thought as straight as she does!"

"But, Padre dear, your thought is straight. You know, God's thought is the only thought there really is. Any other thought has the minus sign, and so it is zero. If we will always think of the real Padre Diego, and love that, why, the unreal one will fade away from our thought."

"Do you suppose, chiquita, that if we love him we will make him repent?"

The child pondered the question for a moment. Then:

"Padre, what did you tell me once about the word 'repent'?"

"It comes from the Greek word 'metanoia.'"

"Yes," she reflected; "but what did you say that--"

"Oh, yes, I told you it meant a complete and radical change of thought."

"Well!" she exclaimed, her eyes brightening.

Josè waited expectantly. It was heaven to have this girl before him and to drink in the naïve expressions of her active mind.

"Padre dear, when John the baptiser said, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' did he mean to tell the people that they must have a complete change of thought?"

Josè laughed. And then he grew serious. "Chiquita," he answered, "I have no doubt he meant just that. For you have taught me that there can be no salvation without such a complete and radical change."

"No," she said with quick emphasis; "for God is mind, you know. And His thought is the only real thought there is or can be. The thoughts of mortals are the opposites of His thoughts, and so they are illusions, and, like all lies, must pass away. If people want to be immortal, they must think as God thinks, for He is immortal. They must stop thinking that there is any power but God. They must stop letting in thoughts of sickness, of sin, of wickedness, and all those things that in English you call 'discord.' God says in the Bible, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.' Well, God is immortal and perfect. And if we want to be like Him we must think His thoughts. For our thoughts become--things. Don't you see?"

Josè's face clouded. "I see, chiquita--sometimes very clearly--and then again I don't see," he said slowly.

"You do see!" she insisted, getting up on her knees and facing him. "And you see as God sees! And if you hold this thought always, why, it will--it will be--"

"Externalized; is that what you are trying to say?" he suggested.

"Yes, just that. Jesus said, 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.'"

"But, Carmen--I-- What you say is doubtless true in essence--but I think you have not grasped it all--there are so many gaps that your simple little system of religion does not fill in--so many great questions that you do not answer. I see, in part--and then, again, I don't see at all. And when you were stolen away from Simití I saw nothing but the evil--and it nearly killed me!"

The girl studied him for a few moments. The man had always been an enigma to her. She could not understand a nature that soared into the spiritual empyrean one moment, and in the next fell floundering into the bottomless pit of materialism. The undulating curve which marked the development of the Rincón mind was to her a thing incomprehensible.

"Padre dear," she said at length, a little sadly. "When you look at the first chapter in the Bible and read there how God made everything, and man in His image, in the image of Mind, you see, and are very happy. But when you go on to the second chapter and read how the Lord God--not God, but the Lord God--made a man of dirt, and how this dirt man listened to his false thoughts and fell, why, then you are unhappy. Don't you see any difference between them? Can't you see that one is a story of the real creation; and the other is the human mind's interpretation of the creation--an interpretation made according to the way the human mind thinks the creating ought to have been in matter? You told me this yourself. And the second chapter shows how far the human mind can go--it shows how limited it is. The human mind couldn't get any farther than that--couldn't make a man out of anything but dirt. It couldn't understand the spiritual creation. And so it made a creation of its own. It couldn't understand God; and so it made a Lord God, just like itself. Can't you see? Padre dear, can't you? And if you see, can't you stick to it and live it, until all the unreal passes away?"

Josè smiled into her earnest little face. "I will never cease to try, chiquita," he said. "But we were talking about loving Diego, weren't we? Yes, you are right, we must try to love him, for the good Jesus said we must love our enemies."

"But, if we love everybody, then we haven't any enemies. You can't love a real enemy--and so there aren't any real ones. We see in other people only what is in our own thought. If we see evil as real, why, then we will see bad men and women all around us, for we only look at our thoughts. But, if we look only at God's thoughts--Padre dear, I didn't see anything but God's thought when Padre Diego had me in his arms. I knew it wasn't real, but was just the human way of looking at things. And I knew that love was the great principle of everything, and that it just couldn't fail, any more than the principle of algebra could fail to solve my problems. Well," she concluded with a little sigh, "it didn't."

"Dear little girl, you must be patient, very patient, with your blundering old Padre Josè. He is groping for the light--"

In an instant, throwing the canoe into imminent danger of upsetting, the impulsive girl had hurled herself into his lap and clasped her arms about his neck. Juan and Lázaro by a quick and skillful effort kept the craft upright.

"Oh, Padre dear!" she cried, "I didn't mean to say a word that would make you unhappy--Padre dear, I love you so! Padre, look at your little girl, and tell her that you love her!"

He clasped her fiercely. "No--no!" he murmured, "I--I must not--and--yet--chiquita--I adore you!" He buried his face in her shoulder.

Juan made a wry mouth as he looked at the girl in the priest's arms. Then he suggested that a separation would more evenly balance the boat. Carmen laughed up at him, but slipped down into the keel and sat with her head propped against Josè's knees.

"Padre dear," she said, looking up at him with twinkling eyes, "I heard Lázaro say a little while before we started that he had lived many years in Simití, and that it had always been very quiet until you came."

"Ay de mí!" sighed Josè. "I can readily believe that the whole world was quiet until I entered it."

"But, Padre, perhaps you had to come into it to shake it up."

He laughed. "Chiquita," he said, "if ever you go out into it, with your radical views regarding God and man; and if the stupid old world will give ear to you, there will be such a shaking up as it has never experienced since--"

"Padre dear," she interrupted, "I am not going out into the world. I shall stay in Simití--with you."

He looked down at her, tenderly, wistfully. And then, while her words still echoed through his mind, a great sigh escaped him.

Dusk had closed in upon them when the canoe emerged into the quiet lake. Huge vampire bats, like demons incarnate, flouted their faces as they paddled swiftly toward the distant town. Soft evening calls drifted across the placid waters from the slumbering jungle. Carmen's rich voice mingled with them; and Juan and Lázaro, catching the inspiration, broke into a weird, uncanny boating song, such as is heard only among these simple folk. As they neared the town the song of the bogas changed into a series of loud, yodelling halloos; and when the canoe grated upon the shaly beach, Doña Maria and a score of others were there to welcome the returned travelers.

At the sight of Ana, a murmur ran through the crowd. Doña Maria turned to the woman.

"It is Anita, madre dear," Carmen quickly announced, as she struggled out of Doña Maria's arms and took the confused Ana by the hand.

The light of recognition came into Doña Maria's eyes. Quietly, and without demonstration, she went to the shrinking woman and, taking the tear-stained face in her hands, impressed a kiss upon each cheek. "Bien," she said in a low, tender voice, "we have waited long for you, daughter. And now let us go home."

* * * * *

The glow of dawn had scarce begun to creep timidly across the arch of heaven when Fernando knocked at the portal of Rosendo's house and demanded the custody of Carmen. Josè was already abroad.

"And now, Fernando," demanded the priest, "what new outrage is this?"

The constable flushed with embarrassment. "Na, Padre, a thousand pardons--but it is the order of the Alcalde, and I only obey. But--you may knock me down," he added eagerly, "and then I can return to him and say that I could not take the girl, even by force!" The honest fellow, ashamed of his mission, hung his head. Josè seized his hand.

"Fernando!" he cried, "what say the people of Simití?"

"They are with you, Padre. They would demand Rosendo's release, if there were proof that the girl--"

"Good, then! we have the proof," broke in Josè. "Rosendo knows of our return?"

"Yes, the guard informed him this morning. The Alcalde, you know, permits no one to approach the prisoner."

"And does he know that Ana is here?"

"The guard did not tell him, for fear of exciting the old man. Hombre! I think there is no one in town who would venture to tell Rosendo that."

"Bien pues, Fernando, I think the time has come! Go quietly back and summon every one to a meeting in the town hall at once. Tell them--"

"Bien, Padre, I shall know what to tell them. But," anxiously, "Don Mario has the power to--"

"And we have a greater power," quickly replied the priest, his thought dwelling on Carmen.

An hour later the town hall was a babel of clacking tongues. Men, women and children hurried, chattering, to and fro, exchanging diverse views and speculating eagerly on the probable outcome of the meeting. Josè stood before them, with Carmen's hand clasped tightly in his. Don Mario, purple and trembling with rage, was perched upon a chair, vainly trying to get the ear of the people.

In the midst of the hubbub a hush fell suddenly over the concourse. All heads turned, and all eyes fastened upon Ana, as she entered the room and moved timidly toward Josè. The people fell back to make a passage for her. Her shoulders were bent, and her face was covered with a black mantilla.

Don Mario, as his glance fell upon her, again attempted to address the multitude. A dozen voices bade him cease. A strong arm from behind pushed him from the chair. His craven heart began to quake, and he cast anxious glances toward the single exit.

Gently removing the mantilla from the face of the woman, Josè turned her toward the people. "Friends!" he said in a loud, penetrating voice, "behold the work of Diego!"

He paused for the effect which he knew would be made upon this impressionable people. Then, when the loud murmur had passed, he drew Carmen out before him and, pointing to her, said dramatically, "And shall we also throw this innocent child to the wolf?"

The assembly broke into a roar. Fists were shaken under the Alcalde's nose, and imprecations were hurled at him from all sides. Don Mario drew his soiled handkerchief and mopped his steaming brow. Then his voice broke out in a shriek: "The soldiers--this day I shall summon them--it is a riot!"

"Caramba! He speaks truth!" cried a voice from the crowd. The babel commenced anew.

"The soldiers! Caramba! Let Diego have his child!"

"Maldita!"

"Who says it is not his?"

"I do!"

It was Ana. Clasping Josè's arm to steady herself, she had turned to confront the excited assembly.

Silence descended upon them all. Josè held up his hand. A sob escaped the woman. Then:

"The priest Diego had a child--a girl. Her name--it was--Carmen. The child is--dead."

"Caramba! girl, how know you that?" shrilled a woman's excited voice.

"I know, because I--was--its--mother!"

Pandemonium burst upon the room at the woman's words. Don Mario started for the door, but found his way blocked. "Diego had other children!" he shouted; "and this girl is one of them!"

"It is false!" cried Ana in a loud voice. "I have lived with him eight years! I know from his own lips that I speak the truth! See what he has done to me! Would I lie?"

"To the cárcel! Release Rosendo!"

"We will write to the President at Bogotá! Don Mario must be removed!"

"Caramba! Such an Alcalde!"

"Let him send for the soldiers, if he wishes to die!"

"To the cárcel!"

As a unit the fickle people streamed from the room and started for the jail. Don Mario was borne along on the heaving tide. Josè and Carmen followed; but Ana fell back and returned to the house of Rosendo.

The guard at the jail, seeing the concourse approaching, threw down his machete and fled. Rosendo's eyes were big with speculation, though his heart beat apprehensively. The people jammed into the small hut until it swayed and threatened to collapse.

"The key to the lock--Caramba! the guard has it!"

"Catch him!"

"No! bring a barra!"

Juan quickly produced a long iron bar, and with a few lusty efforts sprung the stocks. A dozen hands lifted the cramped Rosendo out and stood him upon his feet. Carmen squirmed through the crowd and threw herself into his arms.

Then, with shouts and gesticulations, a triumphal procession quickly formed, and the bewildered and limping Rosendo was escorted down the main street of the town and across the plaza to his home. At the door of the house Josè turned and, holding up a hand, bade the people quietly disperse and leave the liberated man to enjoy undisturbed the sacred reunion with his family. With a parting shout, the people melted quickly away, and quiet soon reigned again over the ancient town.

"Bien, Padre," said Rosendo, pausing before his door to clasp anew the priest's hand, "you have not told me what has caused this. Was it the little Carmen--"

He stopped short. Glancing in at the door, his eyes had fallen upon Ana. To Josè, hours seemed suddenly compressed into that tense moment.

Slowly Rosendo entered the house and advanced to the shrinking woman. Terror spread over her face, and she clutched her throat as the big man stalked toward her. Then, like a flash, Carmen darted in front of her and faced Rosendo.

"It is Anita, padre dear," she said, looking up into his set face, and clasping his hand in both of hers. "She has come home again. Aren't we glad!"

Rosendo seemed not to see the child. His voice came cold and harsh. "Bien, outcast, is your lover with you, that I may strangle him, too?" He choked and swallowed hard.

"Padre!" cried Carmen, putting both her hands against him. "See! Those bad thoughts nearly strangled you! Don't let them get in! Don't!"

"Bien, girl!" snarled the angry man, still addressing the cowering woman. "Did you tire of him, that you now sneak home? Or--Caramba!" as Ana rose and stood before him, "you come here that your illegal brat may be born! Not under my roof! Santa Maria! Never! Take it back to him! Take it back, I say!" he shouted, raising his clenched fist as if to strike her.

Carmen turned swiftly and threw herself upon the woman. Looking over her shoulder, she addressed the raging man:

"Padre Rosendo! this is not your house! It is God's! He only lets you have it, because He is good to you! Shame on you, for daring to drive Anita away--your own little girl!" Her voice rose shrill, and her words cut deep into the old man's embittered heart.

"Shame on you, padre Rosendo!" quickly flowed the scorching words. "If God were like you He would drive you from the house, too! Are you so much better than the good Jesus that you can drive away a woman who sins? Shame on you, padre! Are you better than the good father who was so glad to see his prodigal son? If God were to punish you for your sins, would He even let you live? Did He not set you free this very morning? And do you now thank Him by driving your little girl from her own home? Do you know that it was Anita who made you free, and who brought me here? God used her to do that. And is this the way you thank Him? Then you will lose us both, for we will not stay with you!"

Josè stepped up and took Rosendo's arm. Carmen turned about and continued her scoriation:

"Padre Rosendo, if the good, pure God was willing to use Anita to save me from Padre Diego and bring me back to you, are you so wicked and so ungrateful that you throw His love back in His face? Shame on you, padre! Shame! Shame!"

"Caramba!" cried Rosendo, tears bursting from his eyes. "She has fouled my name--it was a good name, though my parents were slaves--it was a good name--and she blackened it--she--"

"Padre Rosendo, there are only two names that have never been blackened! Your human name is nothing--it is zero--it counts for foolishness with God! You yourself are making your name blacker now than Anita ever did! She repents, and comes to her father; and he is so much more wicked than she that he drives her out!--"

"Enough, Carmen, child!" interrupted Josè. "Come, Rosendo; go into the parish house! Carmen, go with him!"

Carmen hesitated. Then a smile lighted up her face, and she reached up and took Rosendo's hand. Together they passed silently out and into the priest's house.

Ana sank to the floor, where she buried her face in her hands and wept violently.

"Wait, Ana," said Josè, tenderly stroking the unhappy woman's hair. "Wait. They will soon return. And you shall remain here, where you belong."

A half hour passed. Then Josè, wondering, went quietly to the door of his house and looked in. Rosendo sat at the table, with Carmen on his knees.

"And, padre," the child was saying, "the good Jesus told the woman not to sin any more; and she went away happy. Padre, God has told Anita not to sin any more--and she has come to us to be happy. We are going to make her so, aren't we? Padre Diego couldn't hurt me, you know, for God wouldn't let him. And he hasn't hurt Anita--God wouldn't let him keep her--wouldn't let her stay with him. Don't you see, padre? And we have got to be like Him--we are like Him, really. But now we have got to show it, to prove it, you know."

Rosendo's head was bent over the girl. Neither of them saw Josè. The child went on with increased animation:

"And, padre dear, God sends us Anita's little baby for us to love and protect. Oh, padre, if the little one is a boy, can't we call it Josè?"

"Yes, chiquita," Josè heard the old man murmur brokenly.

"And--padre, if it is a girl--what shall we call it?"

The man's arm tightened about her. "We--we will call it--Carmencita," he whispered.

The girl clapped her hands. "Can't you see, padre, that God sends us Anita's baby so that Padre Diego shall not have it? And now let's go and tell her so, right away!" she cried, jumping down.

Josè slipped quickly back and stood beside the woman when Carmen and Rosendo entered the room. The old man went directly to his daughter, and, taking her in his brawny arms, raised her from the floor and strained her to his breast. Tears streamed down his swart cheeks, and the words he would utter choked and hung in his throat.

"Padre," whispered the delighted child, "shall I tell her our names for the baby?"

Josè turned and stole softly from the room. Divine Love was there, and its dazzling effulgence blinded him. In the quiet of his own chamber he sought to understand the marvelous goodness of God to them that serve Him.

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Chapter 27

The reversal of a life-current is not always effected suddenly, nor amid the din of stirring events, nor yet in an environment that we ourselves might choose as an appropriate setting. It comes in the fullness of time, and amid such scenes as the human mind which undergoes the transformation may see externalized within its own consciousness by the working of the as yet dimly perceived laws of thought.

Perhaps some one, skilled in the discernment of mental laws and their subtle, irresistible working, might have predicted the fate which overtook the man Josè, the fulsome details of which are herein being recounted. Perhaps such a one might say in retrospect that the culmination of years of wrong thinking, of false beliefs closely cherished, of attachment to fear, to doubt, and to wrong concepts of God, had been externalized at length in eddying the man upon this far verge of civilization, still clinging feebly to the tattered fragments of a blasted life. But it would have been a skilled prognostician, indeed, who could have foreseen the renewal of this wasted life in that of the young girl, to whom during the past four years Josè de Rincón had been transferring his own unrealized hopes and his vast learning, but without the dross of inherited or attached beliefs, and without taint of his native vacillation and indecision of mind.

For what he had been striving to fit her, he knew not. But in a vaguely outlined way he knew that he was being used as a tool to shape in some degree the mental development of this strange girl. Nor, indeed, as the years passed, did she continue to seem so strange to him. On the contrary, he now thought it more marvelous by far that the world, after nineteen centuries of Christianity, did not think and act more as did this girl, whose religious instruction he knew to have been garnered at the invisible hand of God. That she must some day leave him, despite her present earnest protestations, he felt to be inevitable. And the thought pierced his soul like a lance. But he could not be certain that with maturity she would wish to remain always in the primitive environment in which she had been nurtured. Nor could he, even if she were willing, immolate her upon the barb of his own selfishness.

As for himself, the years had but seemed to increase the conviction that he could never leave the Church, despite his anomalous position and despite his renewed life--unless, indeed, she herself cast him forth. Each tenderly hopeful letter from his proud, doting mother only added to this conviction by emphasizing the obstacles opposing such a course. Her declining years were now spent among the mental pictures which she hourly drew upon the canvas of her imagination, pictures in which her beloved son, chastened and purified, had at length come into the preferment which had always awaited loyal scions of the house of Rincón. Hourly she saw the day draw nearer when he should be restored to her yearning arms. Each dawn threw its first rays upon his portrait, which hung where her waking eyes might open upon it. Each night the shadow cast by the candle which always burned beneath it seemed to her eager sight to crown that fair head with a bishop's mitre--a cardinal's hat--aye, at times she even saw the triple crown of the Vicar of Christ resting upon those raven locks. Josè knew this. If her own pen did not always correctly delineate her towering hopes, his astute uncle did not fail to fill in whatever hiatus remained. And the pressure of filial devotion and pride of race at times completely smothered within him the voice of Truth which Carmen continually sounded, and made him resolve often that on the day when she should leave him he would bury his head in the lap of Mother Church and submit without further resistance to the sable veil of assumed authority which he knew she would draw across his mind. Convincing as were the proofs which had come to him of the existence of a great demonstrable principle which the Christ had sought to make a dull world recognize, nevertheless he had as yet failed to rise permanently above the mesmerism of human belief, which whispered into his straining ears that he must not strive to progress beyond his understanding, lest, in the attempt to gain too rapidly, he lose all. To sink into the arms of Mother Church and await the orderly revelation of Truth were less dangerous now than a precipitate severance of all ties and a launching forth into strange seas with an untried compass.

The arguments to which he listened were insidious. True, they reasoned, he had seemed to see the working of mental law in his own restoration to health when he had first come to Simití. He had seemed to see Rosendo likewise restored. But these instances, after all, might have been casual. That Carmen had had aught to do with them, no one could positively affirm. True, he had seen her protected in certain unmistakable ways. But--others were likewise protected, even where there had been no thought of an immanent, sheltering God. True, the incident of the epidemic in Simití two years before had impressed upon him the serious consequences of fear, and the blighting results of false belief. He had profited by that lesson. But he could not hope suddenly to empty his mentality of its content of human thought; nor did wisdom advise the attempt. He had at first tried to rise too rapidly. His frequent backsliding frightened and warned him.

Thus, while the days sped by, did the priest's thought ebb and flow. As morn broke, and the gallant sun drove the cowardly shadows of night across the hills, his own courage rose, and he saw in Carmen the pure reflection of the Mind which was in Christ Jesus. As night fell, and darkness slunk back again and held the field, so returned the legion of fears and doubts that battled for his soul. Back and forth in the arena of his consciousness strove the combatants, while he rushed irresolutely to and fro, now bearing the banner of the powers of light, now waving aloft, though with sinking heart, the black flag of the carnal host. For a while after his arrival in Simití he had seemed to rise rapidly into the consciousness of good as all-in-all. But the strain which had been constantly upon him had prevented the full recognition of all that Carmen saw, and each rise was followed by a fall that left him for long periods immersed in despair.

Following the return of Carmen and the ripple of excitement which her abduction had spread over the wonted calm of Simití, the old town settled back again into its accustomed lethargy, and Josè and the girl resumed their interrupted work. From Ana it was learned that Diego had not voiced the command of Wenceslas in demanding the girl; and when this became known the people rose in a body to her support. Don Mario, though he threatened loudly, knew in his heart he was beaten. He knew, likewise, that any further hostile move on his part would result in a demand by the people for his removal from office. He therefore retired sulking to the seclusion of his patio, where he sat down patiently to await the turn of events.

Rosendo, his great heart softened toward his erring daughter, again rejoiced in the reunion of his broken family circle. But his soul burned within him as, day after day, he saw Ana move silently about like a sorrow incarnate. At times, when perchance he would come upon her huddled in a corner and weeping quietly, he would turn away, cursing deeply and swearing fulsome vengeance upon the lecherous beast who had wrought her ruin.

"Padre," he one day said to Josè, "I shall kill him--I know it. The girl's suffering is breaking my heart. He is like an evil cloud hanging always over my family. I hate him! I hate him, as the devil hates the light! And I shall kill him. Be prepared." And Josè offered no remonstrance, for the case lay not in his hands.

Carmen again entered upon her interrupted studies with ardent enthusiasm. And her first demand was that she be allowed to plunge into a searching study of the Bible. "Padre," she exclaimed, "it is a wonderful book! Why--do the people in the world know what a book this is? For if they did, they would never be sick or unhappy again!"

He knew not how to answer her. And there was no need that he should.

"Padre!" Her eyes were aflame with holy light. "See! Here it is--the whole thing! 'Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.' But--don't the people know what that means?"

"Well, chiquita, and what does it mean?" he asked indulgently.

"Why--the unrighteous man is the man who thinks wrong thoughts--thoughts of power opposed to God--thoughts of sin, of sickness, of accidents, and all sorts of evil things--beliefs that these things are real, and that God made or caused them!"

"Bien, and you think the Bible speaks truth?"

"Padre! how can you ask that? Why, it says right here that it is given by inspiration! That means that the men or women who wrote it thought God's thoughts!"

"That He wrote it, you mean?"

"No, but that those who wrote it were--well, were cleaner window-panes than other people--that they were so clean that the light shone through them better than it did through others."

"And what do you think now about Jesus?" he inquired.

"Why, as you once said, that he was the very cleanest window-pane of all!" she quickly replied.

From that hour the Bible was the girl's constant companion. Daily she pored over it, delighted, enraptured. Josè marveled at her immediate spiritual grasp. Instead of the world's manner of looking upon it as only a collection of beautiful promises and admonitions, she saw within it the statement of a principle that offered itself as a mighty tool with which to work out humanity's every-day problems here and now. From the first she began to make out little lists of collated scriptural verses, so arranging them that she could read in them a complete expression of an idea of God. These she would bring to Josè and, perching herself upon his lap, would expound them, to her own great delight and the wonder of the man who listened.

"See, Padre," she said, holding up one of these lists, "it says that 'in that day' whatever we ask of him will be given to us. Well, 'that day' means when we have washed our window-panes clean, and the light shines through so clear that we can ask in His name. It means when we have stopped saying that two and two are seven."

"Which means," Josè interpolated, "asking in his character."

"Yes," she replied, "for then we will be just like him. And then whatever we ask 'believing' will be given to us, for believing' will then be 'understanding,' will it not? When we know--really know--that we have things, why--why, we have them, that's all!"

She did not wait for his reply, but went on enthusiastically:

"You know, Padre, in order to be like him we have got to 'seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness'--His right-thinking. Well, Jesus said the kingdom of God was within us. Of course it is, for it is all a question of right-thinking. When we think right, then our right thoughts will be--what you said--"

"Externalized," he supplied.

"Yes. We will see them all around us, instead of seeing, as we do now, a lot of jumbled-up thoughts of good and evil which we call people and things. They will all be good then. And then will be the time when 'God shall wipe away all tears.' It is, as you say in English, 'up to us' to bring this about. It is not for God to do it at all. Don't you see that He has already done His part? He has made everything, and 'behold it was very good.' Well, He doesn't have to do it all over again, does He? No. But we have got to wash our windows clean and let in the light that comes from Him. That light comes from Him all the time, just as the beams come from the sun, without ever stopping. We never have to ask the sun to shine, do we? And neither do we have to ask God to be good to us, nor tell Him what we think He ought to do for us. We only have to know that He is good, to us and to everything, all the time."

"Yes, chiquita, we must be truly baptised."

"That is what it means to be baptised, Padre--just washing our window-panes so clean that the light will come in."

"And that light, little one, is truth. It certainly is a new way of looking at it, at least, chiquita."

"But, Padre, it is the only way," she persisted.

"Bien, I would not say that you were mistaken, Carmen."

"No, Padre, for we can prove it. And, look here," she continued, referring to her list. "If the kingdom of heaven is within us, then everything that comes to us in life comes from within, and not from without. And so, things never happen, do they? Don't you see?"

"I see," he replied seriously, "that from the mouths of babes and sucklings comes infinite wisdom."

"Well, Padre dear, wisdom is God's light, and it comes through any one who is clean. It doesn't make any difference how old or young that person is. Years mean nothing but--but zero."

"How can you say that, chiquita?"

"Why, Padre, is God old?"

"No. He is always the same."

"And we are really like Him?"

"The real 'we'--yes."

"Well, the unreal 'we' is already zero. Didn't you yourself say that the human, mortal man was a product of false thought, thought that was the opposite of God's thought, and so no thought at all? Didn't you say that such thought was illusion--the lie about God and what He has made? Then isn't the human 'we' zero?"

"Well--but--chiquita, it is often hard for me to see anything but this sort of 'we,'" returned the man dejectedly.

"Oh, Padre!" she entreated, "why will you not try to look at something else than the human man? Look at God's man, the image of infinite mind. You have got to do it, you know, some time. Jesus said so. He said that every man would have to overcome. That means turning away from the thoughts that are externalized as sin and sickness and evil, and looking only at God's thoughts--and, what is more, sticking to them!"

"Yes," dubiously, "I suppose we must some time overcome every belief in anything opposed to God."

"Well, but need that make you unhappy? It is just because you still cling to the belief that there is other power than God that you get so discouraged and mixed up. Can't you let go? Try it! Why, I would try it even if a whole mountain fell on me!"

And Josè could but clasp the earnest girl in his arms and vow that he would try again as never before.

* * * * *

Meantime, while Josè and his little student-teacher were delving into the inexhaustible treasury of the Word; while the peaceful days came into their lives and went out again almost unperceived, the priest Diego left the bed upon which he had been stretched for many weeks, and hobbled painfully about upon his scarcely mended ankle. While a prisoner upon his couch his days had been filled with torture. Try as he might, he could not beat down the vision which constantly rose before him, that of the beautiful girl who had been all but his. He cursed; he raved; he vowed the foulest vengeance. And then he cried piteously, as he lay chained to his bed--cried for something that seemed to take human shape in her. He protested that he loved her; that he adored her; that without her he was but a blasted cedar. His nurses fled his bedside. His physician stopped his ears. Only Don Antonio was found low enough in thought to withstand the flow of foul language which issued from the baffled Diego's thick lips while he moved about in attendance upon the unhappy priest's needs.

Then came from the acting-Bishop, Wenceslas, a mandate commissioning Diego upon a religio-political mission to the interior city of Medellin. The now recovered priest smiled grimly when he read it. Then he summoned Ricardo.

"Prepare yourself, amigo," he said, "for a work of the Lord. I go into the interior. You accompany me as far as Badillo, where we disembark for stinking Simití. And, amigo, do you secure a trustworthy companion. The work may be heavy. Meantime, my blessing and absolution."

Then he sat down and despatched a long letter to Don Mario.

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Chapter 28

"Rosendo," said Josè one morning shortly thereafter, as the old man entered the parish house for a little chat, "a Decree has been issued recently by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office whereby, instead of the cloth scapulary which you are wearing, a medal may be substituted. I have received several from Cartagena. Will you exchange yours?"

"Cierto, Padre--but," he hesitated, "is the new one just as--"

"To be sure, amigo. It carries the same indulgences. See," exhibiting the medal. "The Sacred Heart and the blessed Virgin. But I have arranged it to wear about the neck."

Rosendo knelt reverently and crossed himself while Josè hung the new scapulary over his head. The old man beamed his joy. "Caramba!" he exclaimed, rising, "but I believe this one will keep off more devils than that old cloth thing you made for me!"

"Why, Rosendo!" admonished Josè, repressing a smile, "did I not bless that one before the altar?"

"Cierto, Padre, and I beg a thousand pardons. It was the blessing, wasn't it? Not the cloth. But this one," regarding it reverently, "this one--"

"Oh, yes, this one," put in Josè, "carries the blessing of His Grace, acting-Bishop Wenceslas."

"And a Bishop is always very holy, is he not, Padre?" queried Rosendo. "It makes no difference who he is, for the office makes him holy, is it not so, Padre?"

"Oh, without doubt," returned Josè, his thought reverting to the little Maria and the babe which for four years he had been supporting in distant Cartagena.

"Na, Padre," remonstrated Rosendo, catching the insinuation, "we must not speak ill of the Bishop, lest he be a Saint to-morrow! But, Padre," he went on, changing the topic, "I came to tell you that Don Luis has given me a contract to cut wood for him on the island. A quantity, too. Hombre! I shall earn much money by its terms. I set out to-morrow morning before daybreak."

Josè reflected. The man's words aroused within him a faint suspicion. Don Luis and the Alcalde were boon companions. Josè wondered if in this commission he could see the gloved hand of Don Mario. But he gave no hint of his thought to Rosendo.

The next morning, long before sun-up, a mist lay thick over the valley, so thick that Rosendo, as he made his way down to the lake, scarce could distinguish the road ahead of him. The dry season had passed, and the rains were now setting in. As he hurried along, the old man mused dubiously on the contract which Don Luis had made with him. To cut wood in the rainy season!--but, after all, that was no concern of his. And yet--why had Padre Josè grown suddenly quiet when he learned of the contract yesterday? His bare feet fell softly upon the shales, and he proceeded more cautiously as he neared the water's edge.

"Hombre!" he muttered, striving to penetrate the mist; "only a loco ventures out on the lake in such weather!"

He reached the boat, and placed in it the rope and axe which he had brought. Then, still troubled in thought, he sat down on the edge of the canoe and dropped into a puzzled meditation.

Suddenly through the fog he heard a sound. Somebody was approaching. A fisherman, perhaps. But fishermen do not go out on the lake in dense fogs, he remembered. The tread sounded nearer. He waited, speculating. Then through the mist loomed the thick body of a man. Straining his eyes, Rosendo recognized Padre Diego.

With a bound the old man was upon his feet. His thick arm shot out like a catapult; and his great fist, meeting Diego squarely upon the temple, felled him like an ox.

For a moment Rosendo stood over the prostrate priest, like a lion above its prey. Then he reached into the canoe and drew out the axe. Holding it aloft, he stood an instant poised above the senseless man; then with a mighty swing he whirled about and hurled it far out into the lake. He seemed suddenly bereft of his senses. Incoherent muttering issued from his trembling lips. He looked about in bewilderment. A thought seemed to impress him. He took the rope from the boat and quickly bound Diego hand and foot. This done, he picked up the unconscious priest and tossed him into the canoe as if he had been a billet of wood. Jumping in after him, he hastily pushed off from the shore and paddled vigorously in the direction of the island. Why he was doing this he had not the faintest idea.

It was all the work of a few seconds; yet when his reason came again Rosendo found himself far out in the thick fog, and his prisoner moaning softly as consciousness slowly returned. The sense of direction which these sons of the jungle possess is almost infallible, and despite the watery cloud which enveloped him, the old man held his course undeviatingly toward the distant isle, into the low, muddy shore of which his boat at length forced its way under the impulse of his great arms.

The island, a low patch a few acres in extent, lay far out in the lake like a splotch of green paint on a plate of glass. Its densely wooded surface, rising soft and oozy only a few feet above the water, was destitute of human habitation, but afforded a paradise for swarms of crawling and flying creatures, which now scattered in alarm at the approach of these early visitors coming so unexpectedly out of the heavy fog.

When the canoe grounded, Rosendo sprang out and pulled it well up into the mud. Then he lifted the priest out and staggered into the thick brush, where he threw his burden heavily upon the ground. Leaving his prisoner for a moment, he seized his machete and began to cut back into the brush. A grunt of satisfaction came from his lips. Returning to the now conscious Diego, he grasped the rope which bound him and dragged him along the newly opened trail into a little clearing which lay beyond. There he propped him up against a huge cedar. As he did this, Diego's mouth opened wide and a piercing scream issued. "Ricardo--help!" he called.

The cry echoed dismally across the desolate island. In an instant Rosendo was upon him, with his knife clutched in his fist. "Repeat that, cayman," he cried furiously, "and this finds your wicked heart!"

The craven Diego shook with fear; but he fell silent before the threat of the desperate man into whose hands he had so unwittingly fallen.

Rosendo stepped back and stood before his captive, regarding him uncertainly. Diego's quick intuition did not fail to read the old man's perplexity; and his own hope revived accordingly. It was a pretty trick, this of Rosendo's--but, after all, he would not dare too much. Diego gradually became easier in mind. He even smiled unctuously at his captor.

"Bien, amigo," he said at length, "is this your customary reception to visitors in your village? Caramba! but what will the good Bishop say when he learns that you have thus mistreated his trusted agent?"

Rosendo stood before him like a statue. His thought was confused, and it moved slowly. In the cries of the disturbed birds he seemed now to hear the warning voice of Carmen. In the watery vapor that rolled over him he seemed to feel the touch of her soft, restraining hand.

"Bien, compadre," purred Diego, "would it not be well for you to loosen this bit of thread, that we may make our way back to the village? Caramba! but it cuts sore--and I am soft, my friend, for I have been ill."

Rosendo's wrath flared up anew. "What made you ill, cayman?" he shouted, drawing nearer to the shrinking Diego and shaking a great fist in his face. "What made you ill, buzzard? Caramba! I would that your illness had carried you off and saved me the task of sending you down to purgatory!"

Diego became thoroughly alarmed again. "But--Rosendo--caro amigo, let us reason together! Ah, compadre--loosen but a little this rope which cuts into my tender skin as your bitter words do into my soul!"

"Na, vulture, but you will drown more quickly thus!" retorted Rosendo, his huge frame trembling with agitation.

Diego's heart stopped. Then he sought to collect himself. He was in a desperate plight. But the man before him was an ignorant peon. It was not the first time that he had set his own wit against another's brute strength. The ever-present memory of the girl became more vivid. It glowed before him. What was it she had said? "You see only your thoughts of me--and they are very bad!" Was he seeing now only his own bad thoughts? But she had said they were unreal. And this episode--Hombre! he would not be afraid. His thought was vastly more powerful than that of a simple peon! He smiled again at his fear.

"But, amigo," he resumed gently, "if you had wished to drown me, why did you bring me here? But--ah, well, I have long been prepared to go. I have been sadly misunderstood--disbelieved--persecuted! Ah, friend Rosendo, if you could know what I do--but--Bien, it is of no consequence now. Come, then, good fellow, despatch me quickly! I have made my peace with God." Diego ceased talking and began to murmur prayers.

Rosendo stared at him in amazement. The wind was being taken from his sails. Diego noted the effect, and resumed his speech. His voice was low and soft, and at times great tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Rosendo, friend, I wish to go. I weary of life. There is no stain upon my soul. And yet, I grieve that you must tarnish yours with my blood. But," his eyes brightening and his tone becoming more animated, "Rosendo, I will pray the blessed Virgin for you. When I am with her in paradise I will ask her to beg the gentle Saviour to forgive you. Bien, good friend, we shall all be together in heaven some day." He started his orisons again, and soon was praying like a locomotive: "Ora pro nobis! Santa Maria, ora pro nobis!"

He stopped and sighed gently. Rosendo stood stupidly before him.

"Rosendo--I must say this before I die--I came to Simití to see you. I was approaching the boat to hold converse with you. But, you struck me--there, qué importa! And yet--it was about the gentle Ana, your beautiful daughter--But, wait, Rosendo--God above! hear me through--"

Rosendo had started again toward him.

"Good friend, hear me first, then kill me quickly, for I much desire to go to my home above!" Diego spoke rapidly. The impression must be made upon Rosendo at once, or all was lost. The wily priest knew the peon mind.

"Bien, good friend, you have misunderstood me. But I forgive you. I--Rosendo--I--you will keep my secret, will you not? Bien, I have left the Church. I am no longer a priest. It was for good reasons that God took me from the priesthood for other work in His field. Bien, the bonds of celibacy removed, behold! my first thought is for my beautiful Ana. I came to ask you for her hand. I would render legitimate her unborn child. I would return to her the peace which she lost when we became so deeply enamored of each other. Rosendo, I have come to Simití to lay my life before you--to yield it to the mother of my child--to offer it in future service as a recompense for the unhappiness which, the Virgin knows, I did not willingly bring upon her, or you!"

Rosendo's head was now in a whirl. His eyes protruded, and his mouth was agape. "But--the little Carmen--" he muttered.

"Alas! friend," said Diego sadly, shaking his head, while he quickly grasped the cue, "I have ceased my endeavors to make you believe that she is my child. Caramba! I can only leave it to the blessed Virgin to restore her to me when we have both passed the portals of death."

"You still claim to be her father? You--!"

"Caro amigo," returned Diego gently, "in these last moments I see in her the beautiful image of her blessed mother, who was taken from me long before I met and loved your Ana. But I despair of enforcing my claim. I await now the reunion which death alone can effect. And so, friend, be quick! But do not make me suffer. Drown me not, I pray you, but rather open an artery and let me fall gently asleep here beneath this noble tree."

A light came into Rosendo's troubled eyes. A cunning smile lurked about his mouth.

"Bien pues, it shall be as you wish, vulture," he replied in a tone which again struck terror to Diego's heart. He drew his knife and approached the horrified priest.

"Caramba!" shrieked Diego, shrinking back against the tree. "Hombre! you do not intend--"

"Why not, vampire?" returned Rosendo, the sardonic smile spreading across his grim features. "Did you not ask it?"

"But--Hombre! Back!--Caramba! Back!--Rosendo--God above! But would you go down to hell with murder on your soul?"

"Cierto, carrion! I kill the body. But you go down with a load of murdered souls!"

"Rosendo--God!--it means hell for eternity to you!"

"To be sure, dog-meat," calmly replied Rosendo. "But hell will be heaven to me as I sit forever and hourly remind you of the suffering Ana and the beautiful Carmen, whom you tried to ruin! Is it not so?"

"Ah, God!" Diego saw that he had lost. Wild thoughts flashed through his mind with lightning speed. Desperation lent them wings. A last expedient came to him. He fixed his beady eyes upon Rosendo and muttered: "Coward! coward! you bind a sick man and stick him like a pig!"

Rosendo hesitated. Diego quickly followed up his slight advantage.

"We give a deer, a tapir, a jaguar, a chance for its life. We fear them not. But you--coward, you are afraid of a sick man! And a priest!"

Rosendo could bear the taunt no longer. "Caramba!" he cried, "what would you?" He leaped to the sitting man and at a stroke severed his bonds. Diego got slowly to his feet.

"Bien, spew of the vampire! you have now a chance!"

Diego extended his empty hands, palms up. He smiled significantly. Rosendo caught the insinuation.

"Caramba! take the knife! Hombre! but I will kill you with my bare hands!" He threw the long knife to Diego, who stooped and picked it up.

Stepping quickly back, holding the weapon firmly clenched before him, the priest slowly circled Rosendo, as if looking for an opening. An evil smile played constantly over his heavy face, and his little eyes glittered like diamonds. Rosendo stood like a rock, his long arms hanging at his side.

Then, with a shrill, taunting laugh, Diego turned suddenly and plunged into the newly-cut trail toward the lake. In an instant he was lost in the fog.

For a moment Rosendo stood dumb with amazement. Then he sprang after the priest. But it was too late. Diego had reached the canoe, leaped quickly in, and pushed off. Rosendo saw the mist swallow him. He was left a prisoner, without a boat, and with two miles of shrouded water stretching between him and the town!

A low moan burst from him. He had been tricked, outwitted; and the evil genius which for years had menaced his happiness was heading straight toward the town, where his accomplice, Ricardo, awaited. What would they do, now that he was out of the way? The thought seared his brain. Great beads of water, distilled from his agony, burst through his pores. The Juncal river lay off to the west, and at a much less distance than Simití. He might swim to it and secure a canoe at the village. But--the lake was alive with crocodiles!

Chagrin and apprehension overwhelmed him, and he burst into a flood of bitter tears. He threw himself upon the ground, and tossed and moaned in despair. The fog thickened. A twilight darkness settled over the waters. Nature--God himself--seemed to conspire with Diego.

Rosendo suddenly rose to his feet. He drew the new medal scapulary around in front of him and kissed it, reverently crossing himself. "Santa Virgen," he prayed, "help me--it is for the child!" Then, taking between his teeth the knife which Diego had dropped, he rushed into the water and struck out for the distant village of Juncal.

* * * * *

Late that afternoon, while the tropical rain was descending in torrents, Rosendo staggered into the parish house, where Carmen and Josè were absorbed in their work. "Padre!" he gasped, "Loado sea Dios!" as his eyes fell upon the girl. Then he sank to the floor in utter exhaustion.

"Rosendo! what is it?" cried Josè, bending over him in apprehension, while Carmen stood lost in wonder.

"Padre Diego--!" cried Rosendo, raising himself up on his elbow. "Has he been here?"

"Padre Diego!" cried both Josè and the girl in astonishment. Instinctively Josè's arm went about the child. Rosendo dragged himself to a chair and sank limply into it.

"Then, Padre, he will come. He is in Simití. He is no longer a priest!"

Slowly the story came out, bit by bit. Josè listened in horror. Carmen's face was deeply serious.

"Bien, Padre," said Rosendo, concluding his dramatic and disconnected recital, "I plowed through the water--Caramba! I knew not at what moment I should feel the jaws of a cayman seize upon me! But the Virgin had heard my prayer. I must offer a candle this night. But I did not land at Juncal. It was some half league farther west. Bien, I was then glad, for had I appeared in the village, all would have said that I had murdered Diego! And so I struck out along the trail that skirts the lake, and followed it around until I came here. Caramba! but see how my feet are cut! And the rain--H_ombre_! it beat me down--I fell again and again! And then, the fear that I was too late--Ah, Dios! But she is safe--Caramba! the Virgin be praised!"

"But, Rosendo," said Josè anxiously, "where can Diego--"

"He is here, Caramba! in Simití! Hombre! but I shall set out at once and search every house! And he shall do well if he escape this time!"

But dusk was falling; and the old man, his strength sapped, listened not unwillingly to Josè's better counsel. With the coming of night the rain ceased, and the clouds rolled up and slipped down behind the mountains, leaving the moon riding in splendor across the infinite blue. Then Josè, leaving Carmen with Rosendo, walked to and fro through the streets of the old town, listening and watching. He wandered down to the lake. He climbed the hill where stood the second church. He thought he caught the gleam of a light within the old edifice. He crept nearer. There were men inside. Their voices sounded ghostly to his straining ears.

"But, friend Ricardo, he set out before dawn, and is not yet returned. I fear he has either abandoned us, or has walked into our good Rosendo's jaws."

"Hold your tongue, bleating calf!" cried the other petulantly. "It is more likely that he and Don Mario lie pickled in rum under the palms of the Alcalde's patio!"

Josè waited to hear no more. He hurried down through the main street and past the house of Don Mario. The door stood open, and he could see the portly figure of the official outlined against the back wall. It was evident that Diego was not there. He returned in perplexity to his house and sat far into the night, musing on the strange incident.

With the coming of the new day Rosendo appeared with fresh suggestions. "Bien, Padre," he said, "there is nothing to do now but take the girl and flee to the Boque river and to the hacienda of Don Nicolás."

Josè related his experience of the previous night. Rosendo whistled softly. "Caramba!" he muttered, "but this is a mystery! And--but here comes Juan."

The lad entered excitedly. "Your canoe, Don Rosendo--as I started out on the lake to fish I saw it, far in the distance. I brought it in. There was neither pole nor paddle in it. And it was half full of water. It must have drifted all night. Did it break away from its mooring, think you?"

Rosendo looked at Josè. The latter replied quickly: "That is the most reasonable supposition, Juan. But Rosendo is very grateful to you for securing it again."

When the lad had gone, Rosendo sat with bowed head, deeply perplexed.

"The pole and paddle, Padre, were left on the island. I took them out when we landed. Diego pushed off without them. He--the boat--it must have drifted long. But--did he land? Or--"

He stopped and scratched his head. "Padre," he said, looking up suddenly with an expression of awe upon his face, "do you suppose--do you think that the Virgin--that she--made him fall from the canoe into the lake--and that a cayman ate him? Ca-ram-ba!"

Josè did not vouchsafe a reply. But his heart leaped with a great hope. Rosendo, wrapped in profound meditation, wandered back to his house, his head bent, and his hands clasped tightly behind his back.

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Chapter 29

The rainy season dragged its reeking length through the Simití valley with fearful deliberation. Josè thought that he should never again see the sun. The lake steamed like a cauldron. Great clouds of heavy vapor rolled incessantly upward from the dripping jungle. The rain fell in cloud-bursts, and the narrow streets of the old town ran like streams in a freshet.

Then, one day, Rosendo abruptly announced, "Padre, the rains are breaking. The dry season is at hand. And the little Carmen is fourteen years old to-day."

It gave the priest a shock. He had been six years in Simití! And Carmen was no longer a child. Youth ripens quickly into maturity in these tropic lands. The past year had sped like a meteor across an evening sky, leaving a train of mingled light and darkness. Of Diego's fate Josè had learned nothing. Ricardo and his companion had disappeared without causing even a ripple of comment in Simití. Don Mario remained quiet for many weeks. But he often eyed Josè and Rosendo malignantly through the wooden grill at his window, and once he ordered Fernando to stop Rosendo and ply him with many and pointed questions. The old man was noncommittal, but he left a dark suspicion, which was transmitted to the receptive mind of the Alcalde. Acting-Bishop Wenceslas likewise was growing apprehensive as the weeks went by, and both Josè and Don Mario were the recipients of letters of inquiry from him regarding the whereabouts of the priest Diego. In the course of time came other letters from Cartagena, and at length an order for a most scrutinizing search to be made for the Bishop's confidential agent.

It was of no avail. Rosendo's oft-repeated testimony revealed nothing. The citizens of Simití had not seen the man. The Alcalde had nothing but his suspicions to offer. And these might have fallen harmlessly upon the acting-Bishop's well occupied thought, had it not been for the complicating influence of certain other events. The first of these was the exhaustion of the gold which Josè and Carmen had discovered in the old church. The other was the outbreak of the religio-political revolution which Diego had predicted some six years before, and which, in these latter days, Don Jorge, on his infrequent journeys through Simití had repeatedly announced as inevitable and imminent. Their combined effect was such as to wrest Carmen away from Josè, and to set in a new direction the currents of their lives.

For some time past Josè had patched with growing anxiety the shrinking of his gold supply, and had striven to lessen the monthly contributions to Cartagena, meanwhile trying to know that the need now looming daily larger before him would be met. He had not voiced his apprehension to Carmen. But he and Rosendo had discussed the situation long and earnestly, and had at length resolved that the latter should again return to Guamocó to wash the Tiguí sands.

The old man sighed, but he uttered no protest. Yet each day Josè thought he grew quieter. And each day, too, he seemed to become more tender of his sad-faced daughter, Ana, and of the little grandson who had come into his humble home only a few weeks before. He delayed his preparations for specious reasons which Josè knew cost him much effort to invent. He clung to Carmen. He told his rosary often before the church altar, and with tears in his eyes. And at night he would come to Josè and beg him to read from the Bible and explain what he thought the Saviour had really meant to convey to the humble fishermen of Galilee.

Josè's heart was wrung. But at last the day arrived when he had nothing to send to Cartagena beyond the mere pittance which the poor members of his little parish contributed. But this he sent as usual. The next month he did the same. Then came a letter from Wenceslas, requesting an explanation. And then it was that Josè realized that in his excess of zeal he had fallen into his own trap. For, having established the custom of remitting a certain amount to the Bishop each month, he must not resent now the implication of dishonesty when the remittances fell off, or ceased altogether. He took the letter to Rosendo. "Bien, Padre," said the latter slowly, "the time has come. I set out for Guamocó at dawn."

In the days that followed, Josè could frame no satisfactory reply to Wenceslas, and so the latter wrote to the Alcalde. Don Mario eagerly seized the proffered opportunity to ingratiate himself into ecclesiastical favor. Rosendo was again in the hills, he wrote, and with supplies not purchased from him. Nor had he been given even a hint of Rosendo's mission, whether it be to search again for La Libertad, or not. There could be no doubt, he explained in great detail, of Josè's connivance with Rosendo, and of his unauthorized conduct in the matter of educating the girl, Carmen, who, he made no doubt, was the daughter of Padre Diego--now, alas! probably cold in death at the violent hands of the girl's foster-father, and with the priest Josè's full approbation. The letter cost the portly Don Mario many a day of arduous labor; but it brought its reward in another inquiry from Cartagena, and this time a request for specific details regarding Carmen.

Don Mario bestrode the clouds. He dropped his customary well-oiled manner, and carried his head with the air of a conqueror. His thick lips became regnant, imperious. He treated his compatriots with supercilious disdain. And to Josè he would scarce vouchsafe even a cold nod as they passed in the street. Again he penned a long missive to Cartagena, in which he dilated at wearisome length upon the extraordinary beauty of the girl, as well as her unusual mental qualities. He urged immediate action, and suggested that Carmen be sent to the convent in Mompox.

* * * * *

Wenceslas mused long over the Alcalde's letters. Many times he smiled as he read. Then he sent for a young clerical agent of the See, who was starting on a mission to Bogotá, and requested that he stop off a day at Badillo and go to Simití to report on conditions in that parish. Incidentally, also, to gather what data he might as to the family of one Rosendo Ariza.

In due course of time the agent made his report. The parish of Simití stood in need of a new Cura, he said. And the girl--he found no words to describe or explain her. She must be seen. The Church had need of prompt action, however, to secure her. To that end, he advised her immediate removal to Cartagena.

Again Wenceslas deliberated. Aside from the girl, to whom he found his thought reverting oftener than he could wish in that particular hour of stress, his interest in Simití did not extend beyond its possibilities as a further contributor to the funds he was so greatly needing for the furtherance of his complex political plans. As to the Alcalde--here was a possibility of another sort. That fellow might become useful. He should be cultivated. And at the same time warned against precipitate action, lest he scatter Rosendo's family into flight, and the graceful bird now dwelling in the rude nest escape the sharp talons awaiting her.

He called for his secretary. "Send a message to Francisco, our Legate, who is now in Bogotá. Bid him on his return journey stop again at Simití. We require a full report on the character of the Alcalde of that town."

* * * * *

Meantime, Josè did not permit his mental torture to interfere with Carmen's education. For six years now that had progressed steadily. And the results? Wonderful, he thought--and yet not wholly attributable to his peculiar mode of tutelage. For, after all, his work had been little more than the holding of her mind unwarped, that her instinctive sense of logic might reach those truthful conclusions which it was bound to attain if guided safely past the tortuous shifts of human speculation and undemonstrable theory. To his great joy, these six years had confirmed a belief which he had held ever since the troublous days of his youth, namely, that, as a recent writer has said, "adolescent understanding is along straight lines, and leaps where the adult can only laboriously creep." There had been no awful hold of early teaching to loosen and throw off; there were no old landmarks in her mind to remove; no tenacious, clinging effect of early associations to neutralize. And, perhaps most important of all, the child had seemed to enter the world utterly devoid of fear, and with a congenital faith, amounting to absolute knowledge, in the immanence of an omnipotent God of love. This, added to her eagerness and mental receptivity, had made his task one of constant rejoicing in the realization of his most extravagant dreams for her.

As a linguist, Carmen had become accomplished. She spoke English fluently. And it was only a matter of practice to give her a similar grasp of French, Italian, and German. As for other instruction, such knowledge of the outside world as he had deemed wise to give her in these six years had been seized upon with avidity and as quickly assimilated. But he often speculated curiously--sometimes dubiously--upon the great surprises in store for her should she ever leave her native village. And yet, as often as such thought recurred to him he would try to choke it back, to bar his mind against it, lest the pull at his heartstrings snap them asunder.

Often as he watched her expanding so rapidly into womanhood and exhibiting such graces of manner, such amiability of disposition, such selfless regard for others, combined with a physical beauty such as he thought he had never before gazed upon, a great yearning would clutch his soul, and a lump would rise in his throat. And when, as was so often the case, her arms flew impulsively about his neck and she whispered words of tender endearment in his ear, a fierce determination would seize him, and he would clutch her to himself with such vehemence as to make her gasp for breath. That she might marry he knew to be a possibility. But the idea pierced his soul as with a sword, and he thought that to see her in the arms of another, even the man of her choice, must excite him to murder. One day, shortly after her fourteenth birthday, she came to him and, perching herself as was her wont upon his knees, and twining her arms about his neck, said, with traces of embarrassment, "Padre dear, Juan--he asked me to-day to marry him."

Josè caught his breath. His ears rang. She--marry a peon of Simití! To be sure, Juan had often reminded him of the request he had made for her hand long ago. But Josè had not considered the likelihood of the lad's taking his question directly to her. And the girl--

"And what did you reply?" he asked thickly.

"Padre dear--I told him that--" She stopped abruptly.

"Well, chiquita; you told him--what?" His voice trembled.

She flushed, still hesitating. He held her back from him and looked squarely into her wide eyes.

"You told him, chiquita--"

"That--well, Padre dear, I told him that--that I might never marry."

Josè sighed. "And do you think, little girl, that you will always hold to that resolution?"

"Yes, Padre, unless--"

"Well, chiquita, unless--"

"Unless you marry, too, Padre," she said, dropping her eyes.

"Unless I marry! I--a priest! But--what has that to do with it, girl?"

"Well--oh, Padre dear--can't you see? For then I would marry--" She buried her face in his shoulder.

"Yes, chiquita," he said, dully wondering.

Her arms tightened about his neck. "You," she murmured.

It was the first expression of the kind that had ever come from her lips. Josè's heart thumped violently. The Goddess of Fortune had suddenly thrown her most precious jewel into his lap. Joy welled up in flood tides from unknown depths within. His eyes swam. Then--he remembered. And thick night fell upon his soul.

Minutes passed, and the two sat very quiet. Then Carmen raised her head. "Padre," she whispered, "you don't say anything. I know you love me. And you will not always be a priest--not always," shaking her beautiful curls with suggestive emphasis.

Why did she say that? He wondered vaguely. The people called her an hada. He sometimes thought they had reason to. And then he knew that she never moved except in response to a beckoning hand that still, after all these years, remained invisible to him.

"Chiquita," he said in low response, "I fear--I fear that can never be. And even if--ah, chiquita, I am so much older than you, little girl--almost seventeen years!"

"You do not want to marry me, even if you could, Padre?" she queried, looking wistfully into his eyes, while her own grew moist.

He clutched her to him again. "Carmen!" he cried wildly, "you little know--you little know! But--child, we must not talk of these things! Wait--wait!"

"But, Padre dear," she pleaded, "just say that you do love me that way--just say it--your little girl wants to hear it."

God above! She, pleading that he would say he loved her! His head sank upon his breast. He silently prayed that his tortured soul might burst and let his wasted life ebb into oblivion while his pent-up misery poured out.

"Carmen!" he cried with the despair of the lost. "I love you--love you--love you! Nay, child, I adore you! God! That I might hold you thus forever!"

She reached up quickly and kissed him. "Some day, Padre dear," she murmured softly, "you will stop thinking that two and two are seven. Then everything good will come to you."

She sank back in his arms and nestled close to him, as if she longed to enter his empty heart and fill the great void with her measureless love.

"And, Padre dear," she whispered, "your little girl will wait for you--yes, she will wait."

* * * * *

It was some days later that Rosendo, after returning almost empty handed from the hills, came to Josè and said, "Padre, I have sold my hacienda to Don Luis. I need the money to purchase supplies and to get the papers through for some denouncements which I have made in Guamocó. I knew that Don Mario would put through no papers for me, and so I have asked Lázaro to make the transaction and to deliver the titles to me when the final papers arrive. I have a blank here to be filled out with the name and description of a mineral property. I--what would be a good name for a mine, Padre?"

"Why do you ask that, Rosendo?" queried Josè in surprise.

"Because, Padre, I want a foreign name--one not known, here. Give me an American one. Think hard."

Josè reflected. "There is a city, a great city, that I have often heard about, up in the States," he said finally.

He took up the little atlas which he had received long since with other books from abroad. "Look," he said, "it is called Chicago. Call your property the Chicago mine, Rosendo. It is a name unknown down here, and there can no confusion arise because of it."

"Caramba!" Rosendo muttered, trying to twist his tongue around the word, "it is certain that no one else will use that name in Guamocó! But that makes my title still more secure, no?"

"But, Rosendo," said Josè, when the full significance of the old man's announcement had finally penetrated, "you have sold your finca! And to acquire title to property that you can never sell or work! Why, man! do you realize what you have done? You are impoverished! What will you do now? And what about Carmen? for we have nothing. And the sword that hangs above us may fall any day!"

"Bien, Padre, it is for her sake that I have done it. Say no more. It will work out in some way. I go back to-morrow. But, if the titles should come from Cartagena during my absence--and, Padre, if anything should happen to me--for the love of the Virgin do not let them out of your hands! They are for her."

Yet Rosendo departed not on the morrow. He remained to mingle his tears with those of the sorrowing Ana. For the woman, whose heart had been lighter since the arrival of her babe, had come to the priest that day to have the child christened. And so, before the sun might fill the plaza with its ardent midday heat, Rosendo and his family repaired to the church. There before the altar Josè baptised the little one and gave it his own name, thus triumphantly ushering the pagan babe into the Christian Catholic world. The child cried at the touch of the baptismal water.

"Now," commented Rosendo, "the devil has gone out of him, driven out by the holy water."

But, as Josè leaned over the babe and looked into its dark eyes, his hand stopped, and his heart stood still. He raised his head and bent a look of inquiry upon the mother. She returned the look with one that mutely voiced a stifled fear and confirmed his own. "Padre!" she whispered hoarsely. "What is it? Quick!"

He took a candle from the altar and passed it before the child's eyes.

"Padre! He sees! Santa Virgen! Do not tell me--Dios mío!" The mother's voice rose to a wail, as she snatched her babe away.

A loud exclamation escaped Rosendo. Doña Maria stood mute; but Josè as he looked at her divined her thought and read therein a full knowledge of the awful fact that she had never voiced to the heart-broken mother.

"Padre!" cried the perplexed Rosendo. "Maria!" turning in appeal to his wife. "Speak, some one! Santa Virgen, speak! Ana, what ails the child?"

Josè turned his head aside. Carmen crowded close to the weeping Ana. Doña Maria took Rosendo's arm.

"The babe, Rosendo," she said quietly, "was born--blind."

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