Chapter 30…

Chapter 30

The "revolutionist" of Latin America is generally only the disgruntled politician. His revolution is seldom more than a violent squabble among greedy spoilsmen for control of the loose-jointed administration. But the great Mosquera Revolution which burst into flame in New Granada in 1861 was fed with fuel of a different nature. It demonstrated, if demonstration were necessary, that the Treaty of Westphalia did not write finis to the history of bloodshed in the name of Christ; that it had but banked the fires of religious animosity, until the furnace should be transferred from the Old World to the New, where the breath of liberty would again fan them into vigorous activity.

The Mosquera War tore asunder Church and State; but left unhappy Colombia prone and bleeding. It externalized a mighty protest of enlightenment against Rome's dictates in temporal affairs. And, as has before happened when that irresistible potentiality, the people, has been stirred into action, the Church was disestablished, its property confiscated, and its meddling, parasitical clergy disenfranchised.

But then, too, as almost invariably occurs when the masses find that they have parted with cherished prejudices and effete customs, and have adopted ideas so radical as to lift them a degree higher in the scale of progress, they wavered. The Church was being humiliated. Their religion was under contempt. The holy sacrament of marriage was debased to a civil ceremony. Education was endangered by taking it out of the hands of the pious clergy. Texts unauthorized by Holy Church were being adopted. Where would this radical modernism end? The alarm spread, fanned by the watchful agents of Rome. Revolt after revolt occurred. And twenty years of incessant internecine warfare followed.

Fear and prejudice triumphed. A new Constitution was framed. And when it was seen that Roman Catholicism was therein again declared to be the national religion of the Republic of Colombia; when it was noted that the clergy, obedient to a foreign master, were to be readmitted to participation in government affairs; when it was understood that a national press-censorship was to be established, dominated by Holy Church; and when, in view of this, the great religio-political opponent was seen laying down her weapons and extending her arms in dubious benediction over the exhausted people, the masses yielded--and there was great rejoicing on the banks of the Tiber over the prodigal's return.

When Wenceslas Ortiz was placed in temporary control of the See of Cartagena he shrewdly urged the Church party to make at least a pretense of disbanding as a political organization. The provinces of Cundinamarca and Panamá were again in a state of ferment. Congress, sitting in Bogotá, had before it for consideration a measure vesting in the President the power to interfere in certain states or provinces whenever, in his opinion, the conservation of public order necessitated such action. That this measure would be passed, Wenceslas could not be sure. But that, once adopted, it would precipitate the unhappy country again into a sanguinary war, he thought he knew to a certainty. He had faced this same question six years before, when a similar measure was before Congress. But then, with a strong Church party, and believing the passage of the law to be certain, he had yielded to the counsel of hot-headed leaders in Cartagena, and approved the inauguration of hostilities.

The result had been a fiasco. Congress dropped the measure like a hot plate. The demands of the "revolutionists" were quickly met by the federal government. The causae belli evaporated. And Wenceslas retired in chagrin to the solitude of his study, to bite his nails and wonder dubiously if his party were strong enough to insure his appointment to the See of Cartagena in the event of the then aged occupant's demise.

It was this hasty judgment of Wenceslas and his political associates which had delayed further consideration of the objectionable measure for six years. But the interim had seen his party enormously strengthened, himself in control of the See, and his preparations completed for turning the revolt, whenever it should come, to his own great advantage. He had succeeded in holding the Church party aloof from actual participation in politics during the present crisis. And he was now keeping it in constant readiness to throw its tremendous influence to whichever side should offer the greatest inducements.

Time passed. The measure dragged. Congress dallied; and then prepared to adjourn. Wenceslas received a code message from his agent in Bogotá that the measure would be laid on the table. At the same time came a sharp prod from New York. The funds had been provided to finance the impending revolution. The concessions to be granted were satisfactory. Why the delay? Had the Church party exaggerated its influence upon Congress?

Wenceslas stormed aloud. "Santa Virgen!" he muttered, as he paced angrily back and forth in his study. "A curse upon Congress! A curse--"

He stopped still. In the midst of his imprecations an idea occurred to him. He went to his escritorio and drew out the Legate's recent report. "Ah," he mused, "that pig-headed Alcalde. And the good little Josè. They may serve. Bien, we shall see."

Then he summoned his secretary and dictated telegrams to Bogotá and New York, and a long letter to the Alcalde of Simití. These finished, he called a young acolyte in waiting.

"Take a message to the Governor," he commanded. "Say to His Excellency that I shall, call upon him at three this afternoon, to discuss matters of gravest import." Dismissing his secretary, he leaned back in his chair and dropped into a profound revery.

Shortly before the hour which he had set for conference with the Departmental Governor, Wenceslas rose and went to his escritorio, from which he took a paper-bound book.

"H'm," he commented aloud. "'Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.' Bien, I was correct in my surmise that I should some day have use for this little volume. Poor, misguided Rincón! But--Bien, I think it will do--I think it will do."

A smile played over his handsome, imperious face. Then he snapped the book shut and took up his hat. At the door he hesitated a moment, with his hand on the knob.

"If the Alcalde were not such a fool, it would be impossible," he mused. "But--the combination--the isolation of Simití--the imbecility of Don Mario--the predicament of our little Josè--Hombre! it is a rare situation, and it will work. It must work--cielo! With the pig-headed Alcalde seizing government arms to suppress the Church party as represented by the foolish Josè, and with the President sending federal troops to quell the disturbance, the anticlericals will rise in a body throughout the country. Then Congress will hastily pass the measure to support the President, the Church party will swing into line with the Government--and the revolution will be on. Simití provides the setting and the fuel; I, the torch. I will cable again to Ames when I leave the Governor." He swung the door open and went briskly out.

* * * * *

"Padre, I am crushed."

It was Rosendo who spoke. He and Josè were sitting out in the gathering dusk before the parish house on the evening of the day that Ana's babe had been christened. The old man's head was sunk upon his breast, and he rocked back and forth groaning aloud.

"We must be brave, Rosendo," returned Josè tenderly. "We have gone through much, you and I, since I came to Simití. But--we have believed it to be in a good cause. Shall we surrender now?"

"But, Padre, after it all, to have her babe come into the world blind! God above! The poor child--the poor child! Padre, it is the last thing that I can endure. My ambition is gone. I cannot return now to Guamocó. Let come what may, I am done."

"Rosendo," said Josè, drawing his chair closer to the old man, and laying a hand on his, "we have fought long and hard. But, if I mistake not, the greatest struggle is yet to come. The greatest demand upon your strength and mine is still to be made."

Rosendo raised his head. "What mean you, Padre?"

Josè spoke low and earnestly. "This: Juan returned from Bodega Central this evening. He reports that several large boxes are there, consigned to Don Mario, and bearing the government stamp. He found one of them slightly broken, and he peered within. What think you it contained? Rifles!"

Rosendo stared at the priest dumbly. Josè went on:

"I did not intend to tell you this until morning. But it is right that you should hear it now, that your courage may rise in the face of danger. What think you? The federal government is sending arms to Simití to establish a base here at the outlet of the Guamocó region, and well hidden from the Magdalena river. This town is to become a military depot, unless I mistake the signs. And danger no longer threatens, but is at our door."

"Ca-ram-ba!" Rosendo rose slowly and drew himself up to his full height. "War!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

"There is no question about it, Rosendo," replied Josè gravely. "And I have no reason to doubt the truth of Diego's prophecy, that this time it will be one to be reckoned with."

"Hombre! And Carmen?"

"Take her into the hills, Rosendo. Start to-morrow."

"But you?"

Josè's thought was dwelling on his last talk with the girl. Again he felt her soft arms about his neck, and her warm breath against his cheek. He felt her kiss, and heard again her words, the sweetest, he thought, that had ever echoed in mortal ears. And then he thought of his mother, of his office, of the thousand obstacles that loomed huge and insurmountable between him and Carmen. He passed a hand across his brow and sighed heavily.

"I remain here, Rosendo. I am weary, unutterably weary. I welcome, not only the opportunity for service which this war may bring, but likewise the hope of--death. If I could but know that she were safe--"

"Caramba! Think you she would leave you here, Padre? No!" Did Rosendo's words convey aught to the priest that he did not already know?

"But--Rosendo, I shall not go," he returned bitterly.

"Then neither do we, Padre," replied Rosendo, sitting again. "The child, Carmen--she--Padre, she loves you with a love that is not of the earth."

* * * * *

Morning found the old man's conviction still unshaken. Josè sought the quiet of his cottage to reflect. But his meditations were interrupted by Carmen.

"Padre," she began, sparkling like a mountain rill in the sunlight as she seated herself before him. "Pepito--Anita's babe--he is not blind, you know." Her head bobbed vigorously, as was her wont when she sought to give emphasis to her dramatic statements.

Josè smiled, and resigned himself to the inevitable. He had been expecting this.

"And, Padre, have you been thankful that he isn't?"

"Isn't what, child?"

"Blind. You know, Padre Diego thought he couldn't see the reality. He looked always at his bad thoughts. And so the not seeing, and the seeing of only bad things, were both--externalized, and the babe came to us without sight. That is, without what the human mind calls sight. And now," she went on excitedly, "you and I have just got to know that it isn't so! The babe sees. God's children all see. And I have thanked Him all morning that this is so, and that you and I see it. Don't we, Padre dear? Yes, we do."

"Well--I suppose so," replied Josè abstractedly, his thought still occupied with the danger that hung over the little town.

"Suppose so! You know so, Padre! There isn't any 'suppose' about it! Now look: what makes sight? The eye? No. The eye is made by the sight. The human mind just gets it twisted about. It thinks that sight depends upon the optic nerve, and upon the fleshly eye. But it isn't so. It is the sight that externalizes the 'meaty' eye. You see, the sight is within, not without. It is mental. God is all-seeing; and so, sight is eternal. Don't you see? Of course you do!"

Josè did not reply. Yes, he did see. But what he saw was the beautiful, animated girl before him. And the thought that he must some day be separated from her was eating his heart like a canker.

"Well, then," went on the girl, without waiting for his reply, "if a mortal's mental concept of sight is poor, why, he will manifest poor eyes. If the thought-concept were right, the manifestation would be right. Wouldn't it?"

Josè suddenly returned to the subject under discussion. "By that I suppose you mean, chiquita, that the babe's thought, or concept, of sight was all wrong, and so he came into the world blind."

"Not at all, Padre," she quickly replied. "The babe had nothing to do with it, except to seem to manifest the wrong thoughts of its father, or mother, or both. Or perhaps it manifests just simply bad thoughts, without the bad thoughts belonging to anybody. For, you know, we none of us really have such thoughts. And such thoughts don't really exist. They are just a part of the one big lie about God."

"Then the babe sees?"

"Surely; the real babe is a child of God, and sees."

"But the human babe doesn't see," he retorted.

"But," she replied, "what you call the human babe is only your mental concept of the babe. And you see that mental concept as a blind one. Now un-see it. Look at it in the right way. See only God's child, with perfect sight. And, Padre, after a while you will see that babe seeing things, just as we do!

"Don't you understand?" she exclaimed, as he sat looking fixedly at her. "Don't you see that if you have the right thought about the babe, and hold to it, and put out every thought that says it is blind, why, your right thought will be externalized in a mental concept of a babe that sees? Don't you know that that is exactly what Jesus did? He didn't affect the real man at all. But he did change the mental concepts which we call human beings. And we can do the same, if we only know it, and follow him, and spiritualize our thought, as he did, by putting out and keeping out every thought that we know does not come from God, and that is, therefore, only a part of the lie about Him. Here is a case where we have got to quit thinking that two and two are seven. And I have done it. It is God's business to make our concepts right. And He has done so--long since. And we will see these, right concepts if we will put out the wrong ones!"

"Well?" he queried lamely, wholly at a loss for any other answer.

"Well, Padre, I am not a bit afraid. I don't see a blind babe at all, because there just can't be any. And neither do you. The babe sees because God sees."

"In other words, you don't intend to allow yourself to be deceived by appearances?" he suggested.

"That is just it, Padre!" she exclaimed. "Blindness is only an appearance. But it doesn't appear to God, It appears only to the human mind--which isn't any mind at all! And the appearance can be made to disappear, if we know the truth and stick to it. For any appearance of a human body is a mental concept, that's all."

"A thing of thought, then?" he said.

"Yes, a thing of wrong thought. But all wrong thought is subject to God's right thought. We've proved that, haven't we, lots of times? Well, this wrong thought about a babe that is blind can be changed--made to disappear--just as any lie can be made to disappear when we know the truth. And so you and I are not going to be afraid, are we? I told Anita this morning not to worry, but to just know all the time that her babe did see, no matter what the appearance was. And she smiled at me, Padre, she smiled. And I know that she trusts, and is going to work with you and me."

Work with her! Heavens! had he done aught of late but work against her by his constant harboring of fears, of doubts, and his distrust of spiritual power?

"Padre," she resumed, "I want you to promise me that every day you will thank God that the babe really sees. And that you will turn right on every thought of blindness and know that it is a part of the lie about God, and put it right out of your mind. Will you?"

"But--child--if my mind tells me that the babe is blind, how can I--"

"I don't care what your mind tells you about the babe! You are to listen to what God tells you, not your human mind! Does God tell you that the babe is blind? Does He?" she repeated, as the man hesitated.

"Why, no, chiquita, He--"

"Listen, Padre," she interrupted again, drawing closer to him. "Is God good, or bad, or both?"

"He is good, chiquita, all good."

"Infinite good, then, no?"

"Yes."

"And we have long since proved by actual reasoning and demonstration that He is mind, and so infinite mind, no?"

"It must be conceded, Carmen."

"Well, an infinite mind has all power. And an infinite, all-powerful mind that is all good could not possibly create anything bad, or sick, or discordant--now could He?"

"Utterly impossible, little girl."

"The Bible says so. Our reasoning tells us so. But--the five physical senses tell us differently. Don't they?"

"Yes."

"And yet, we know that the five physical senses do not tell us truth! We know that when the human mind thinks it is receiving reports about things through the five physical senses it is doing nothing more than looking at its own thoughts. Now isn't that so?"

"It certainly seems so, little one."

"The thoughts of an infinite and good mind must be like that mind, all good, no? Well, then, thoughts of discord, disease, blindness, and death--do they come from the infinite, good mind? No!"

"Well, chiquita mía, that is just the sticking point. I can see all the rest. But the mighty question is, where do those thoughts come from? I am quite as ready as you to admit that discord, sin, evil, death, and all the whole list of human ills and woes come from these bad thoughts held in the human mind and so externalized. I believe that the human man really sees, feels, hears, smells, and tastes these thoughts--that the functioning of the physical senses is wholly mental--takes place in mind, in thought only. That is, that the human mind thinks it sees, feels, hears; but that the whole process is mental, and that it is but regarding its thoughts, instead of actually regarding and cognizing objects outside of itself. Do you follow me?"

"Of course," she replied with animation. "Isn't that just what I am trying to tell you?"

"But--and here is the great obstacle--we differentiate between good and bad thoughts. We agree that a fountain can not send forth sweet and bitter waters at the same time. And so, good and bad thoughts do not come from the infinite mind that we call God. But where do the others originate? Answer that, chiquita, and my problems will all be solved."

She looked at him in perplexity for some time. It seemed to her that she never would understand him. But, with a little sigh of resignation, she replied:

"Padre, you answered that question yourself, long ago. You worked it all out three or four years ago. But--you haven't stuck to it. You let the false testimony of the physical senses mesmerize you again. Instead of sticking to the thoughts that you knew to be good, and holding to them, in spite of the pelting you got from the others, you have looked first at the good, and then at the bad, and then believed them all to be real, and all to be powerful. And so you got miserably mixed up. And the result is that you don't know where you stand. Do you? Or, you think you don't; for that thought, too, is a bad one, and has no power at all, excepting the power that you seem willing--and glad--to give it."

He winced under the poignant rebuke. He knew in his heart that she was right. He had not clung to the good, despite the roars of Satan. He had not "resisted unto blood." Far from it; he had fallen, almost invariably, at the first shower of the adversary's darts. And now, was he not trying, desperately, to show her that Ana's babe was blind, hopelessly so? Was he not fighting on evil's side, and vigorously, though with shame suffusing his face, waving aloft the banner of error?

"The trouble with you, Padre," the girl resumed, after some moments of reflection, "is that you--you see everything--well, you see everything as a person, or a thing."

"You mean that I always associate thought with personality?" he suggested.

"That's it! But you have got to learn to deal with thoughts and ideas by themselves, apart from any person or thing. You have got to learn to deal with facts and their opposites entirely apart from places, or things, or people. Now if I say that Life is eternal, I have stated a mental thing. That is the fact. Its opposite, that is, the opposite of Life, is death. One opposes the other. But God is Life. Is God also death? He can't be. Life is the fact. Then death must be the illusion. That being so, Life is the reality, and death is the unreality. Very well, what makes death seem real? It is just because the false thought of death comes into the human mind, and is held there as a reality, as something that has got to happen. And that strong belief becomes externalized in what mortals call death. Don't you see? Is there a person in the whole world who doesn't think that some time he has got to die? No, not one! But now suppose every person held the belief that death was an illusion, a part of the big lie about God, just as Jesus said it was. Well, wouldn't we get rid of death in a hurry? I should think so! And is there a person in the whole world who wouldn't say that Anita's babe was blind? No, not one! They would look at the human thought of blindness, instead of God's real idea of sight, and so they would make and keep the babe blind. Don't you understand me, Padre dear? Don't you? I know you do, for you really see as God sees!"

She stopped for breath. Her eyes glistened, and her whole body seemed to radiate the light of knowledge divine. Then she went hurriedly on:

"Padre, everything is mental. You know that, for you told me so, long since. Well, that being so, we have got to face the truth that every mental fact seems to have an opposite, or a lot of opposites, also seemingly mental. The opposite of a fact is an illusion. The opposite of truth is a lie. Well, God is the great fact. Infinite mind is the infinite fact. The so-called opposite of this infinite fact is the human mind, the many so-called minds of mankind--a kind of man. But everything is still mental. Now, an illusion, or a lie, does not really exist. If I tell you that two and two are seven, that lie does not exist. Is it in what we call my mind, or yours? No. Even if you say you believe it, that doesn't make it real. Nor does it show that it has real existence in your mind. Not a bit of it! But--if you hold it, and cling to it--allow it to stay with you and influence you--why, Padre dear, everything in your whole life will be changed!

"Let me take your pencil--and a piece of paper. Look now," drawing a line down through the paper. "On one side, Padre, is the infinite mind, God, and all His thoughts and ideas, all good, perfect and eternal. On the other side is the lie about it all. That is still mental; but it is illusion, falsity. It includes all sin, all sickness, all murder, all evil, accidents, loss, failure, bad ambitions, and death. These are all parts of the big lie about God--His unreal opposite. These are the so-called thoughts that come to the human mind. Where do they come from? From nowhere. The human mind looks at them, tastes them, feels them, holds them; and then they become its beliefs. After a while the human mind looks at nothing but these beliefs. It believes them to be real. And, finally, it comes to believe that God made them and sent them to His children. Isn't it awful, Padre! And aren't you glad that you know about it? And aren't you going to learn how to keep the good on one side of that line and the illusion on the other?"

It seemed to Josè a thing incredible that these words were coming from a girl of fifteen. And yet he knew that at the same tender age he was as deeply serious as she--but with this difference: he was then tenaciously clinging to the thoughts that she was now utterly repudiating as unreal and non-existent.

"Padre dear," the girl resumed, "everything is mental. The whole universe is mental."

"Well," he replied reflectively, "at least our comprehension of it is wholly mental."

"Why--it is all inside--it is all in our thought! Padre, when Hernando plays on that old pipe of his, where is the music? Is it in the pipe? Or is it in our thoughts?"

"But, chiquita, we don't seem to have it in our thought until we seem to see him playing on the pipe, do we?"

"No, we don't," she replied. "And do you know why? It is just because the human mind believes that everything, even music, must come from matter--must have a--"

"Must have a material origin? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. And men even believe that life itself has a material origin; and so they have wasted centuries trying to find it in the body. They don't seem to want to know that God is life."

"Then, chiquita, you do not believe that matter is real?"

"There is no matter outside of us, or around us, Padre," she said in reply. "The human mind looks at its thoughts and seems to see them out around it as things made of matter. But, after all, it only sees its thoughts."

"Then I suppose that the externalization of our thought in our consciousness constitutes what we call space, does it not?"

"It must, Padre," she answered.

He studied a moment. Then:

"Chiquita, how do you know me? What do you see that you call 'me'?"

"Why, Padre, I see you as God does--at least, I try always to see you that way?" she answered earnestly. "And that is the way Jesus always saw people."

"God sees me, of course. But, does He see me as I see myself?" he mused aloud.

"You do not see yourself, Padre," was her reply. "You see only the thoughts that you call yourself. Thoughts of mind and body and all those things that go to form a human being."

"Well--yes, I must agree with you there; for, though God certainly knows me, He cannot know me as I think I know myself, sinful and discordant."

"He knows the real 'you,' Padre dear. And that is just as He is. He knows that the unreal 'you,' the 'you' that you think you know, is illusion. If He knew the human, mortal 'you' as real, He would have to know evil. And that can not be."

"No, for the Bible says He is of eyes too pure to behold evil."

"Well, Padre, why don't you try to be like Him?"

But the girl needed not that he should answer her question. She knew why he had failed, for "without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." She knew that Josè's struggle to overcome evil had been futile, because he had first made evil real. She knew that the difficulty he had experienced in keeping his thought straight was because he persisted in looking at both the good and the evil. Lot's wife, in the Bible allegory, had turned back to look at things material and had been transformed into a pillar of salt. Josè had turned again and again to his materialistic thoughts; and had been turned each time to salt tears. She knew that he gave up readily, that he yielded easily to evil's strongest tool, discouragement, and fell back into self-condemnation, whereby he only rendered still more real to himself the evil which he was striving to overcome. She knew that the only obstacle that he was wrestling with in his upward progress was the universal belief in a power other than God, good, which is so firmly fixed in the human consciousness. But she likewise knew that this hindrance was but a false conviction, and that it could and would be overcome.

"Padre," she reflected, looking up at him in great seriousness, "if a lie had an origin, it would be true, wouldn't it?"

He regarded her attentively, but without replying.

"But Jesus said that Satan was the father of lies. And Satan, since he is the father of lies, must himself be a lie. You see, Padre, we can go right back to the very first chapter in the Bible. First comes the account of the real creation. Then comes the account as the human mind looks at it. But that comes after the 'mist' had gone up from the ground, from dirt, from matter. Don't you see? That mist was error, the opposite of Good. It was evil, the opposite of God. It was the human mind and all human thought, the opposite of the infinite Mind, God, and His thought. The mist went up from matter. So every bit of evil that you can possibly think of comes from the material, physical senses. Evil is always a mist, hiding the good. Isn't it so? The physical universe, the universe of matter, is the way the human mind sees its thoughts of the spiritual universe that was created by God. The human mind is just a bundle of these false thoughts; and you yourself have said that the human consciousness was a 'thought-activity, concerned with the activity of false thought.' The human mind is the lie about the infinite mind. It is the mistake, the illusion. It is like a mistake in mathematics. It has no principle, and nothing to stand on. The minute you turn the truth upon it, why, it vanishes."

"Well, then, chiquita, why don't people turn the truth upon it everywhere?"

"Because they are mesmerized by the error, Padre. They sit looking at these false thoughts and believing them true. Padre, all disease, all evil, comes from the false thought in the human mind. It is that thought externalized in the human consciousness. And when the human mind turns from them, and puts them out, and lets the true thoughts in, why--why, then we will raise the dead!"

"But, chiquita, the human body--if it has died--"

"Padre," she interrupted, "the human body and human mind are one and the same. The body is in the mind. The body that you think you see is but your thought of a body, and is in your so-called human mind!"

"Do you really understand that, child?"

"I know it!" she exclaimed. "And so would you if you read your Bible in the right way. Why--I had never seen a Bible until you gave me yours. I didn't know what a book it was! And to think that it has been in the world for thousands of years, and yet people still kill one another, still get sick, and still die! I don't see how they can!"

"But, chiquita, people are too busy to devote time to demonstrating the truths of the Bible," he offered.

"Too busy!" she ejaculated. "Busy with what?"

"Why--busy making money--busy socially--busy having a good time--busy accumulating things that--that they must go away and leave to somebody else!"

"Yes," she said sadly. "They are like the people Jesus spoke of, too busy with things that are of no account to see the things that are--that are--"

"That are priceless, chiquita--that are the most vital of all things to sinful, suffering mankind," he supplied.

Rosendo looked in at the door. Josè motioned him away. These hours with Carmen had become doubly precious to him of late. Perhaps he felt a presentiment that the net about him and his loved ones was drawing rapidly tighter. Perhaps he saw the hour swiftly approaching, even at hand, when these moments of spiritual intercourse would be rudely terminated. And perhaps he saw the clouds lowering ever darker above them, and knew that in the blackness which was soon to fall the girl would leave him and be swept out into the great world of human thoughts and events, to meet, alone with her God, the fiercest elements, the subtlest wiles, of the carnal mind. As for himself--he was in the hands of that same God.

He turned again to the girl. "Chiquita," he said, "you do not find mistakes in the Bible? For, out in the big world where I came from, there are many, very many, who say that it is a book of inconsistencies, of gross inaccuracies, and that its statements are directly opposed to the so-called natural sciences. They say that it doesn't even relate historical events accurately. But, after all, the Bible is just the record of the unfoldment in the human consciousness of the concept of God. Why cavil at it when it contains, as we must see, a revelation of the full formula for salvation, which, as you say, is right-thinking."

"Yes, Padre. And it even tells us what to think about. Paul said, you know, that we should think about whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Well, he told us that there was no law--not even any human law--against those things. And don't you know, he wrote about bringing into captivity every thought to Christ? What did he mean by that?"

"Just what you have been telling me, I guess, chiquita: that every thought must be measured by the Christ-principle. And if it doesn't conform to that standard, it must be rejected."

"Yes. And then he said that he died daily. He did die daily to evil, to all evil thought--"

"And to the testimony of the physical senses, think you?"

"He must have! For, in proving God to be real, he had to prove the reports of the five physical senses to be only human beliefs."

"You are right, chiquita. He must have known that the corporeal senses were the only source from which evil came. He must have known that unless God testified in regard to things, any other testimony was but carnal belief. This must be so, for God, being infinite mind, is also infinite intelligence. He knows all things, and knows them aright--not as the human mind thinks it knows them, twisted and deformed, but right."

"Of course, Padre. You know now that you see it right. And can't you stick to it, and prove it?"

"Chiquita," he answered, shaking his head again, his words still voicing a lingering note of doubt, "it may be--the 'I' that I call myself may be entirely human, unreal, mortal. I make no doubt it is, for it seems filled to the brim with discordant thoughts. And it will pass away. And then--then what will be left?"

"Oh, Padre!" she cried, with a trace of exasperation. "Empty yourself of the wrong thoughts--shut the door against them--don't let them in any more! Then fill yourself with God's thoughts. Then when the mortal part fades away, why, the good will be left. And it will be the right 'you.'"

"But how shall I empty myself, and then fill myself again?"

"Padre!" cried the girl, springing from her chair and stamping her foot with each word to give it emphasis. "It is love, love, love, nothing but love! Forget yourself, and love everything and everybody, the real things and the real bodies! Love God, and good, and good thoughts! Turn from the bad and the unreal--forget it! Why--"

"Wait, chiquita," he interrupted. "A great war is threatening our country at this very minute. Shall I turn from it and let come what may?"

She hesitated not. "No! But you can know that war comes only from the human mind; that it is bad thought externalized; and that God is peace, and is infinitely greater than such bad thought; and He will take care of you--if you will let Him!"

"And how do I let Him? By sitting back and folding my hands and saying, Here am I, Lord, protect me--"

"Oh, Padre dear, you make me ashamed of your foolish thought--which isn't your thought at all, but just thought that seems to be calling itself 'you.' Jesus said, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do likewise. But that did not mean sitting back with folded hands. It meant understanding him; and knowing that there is no power apart from the Christ-principle; and using that principle, using it every moment, hard; and with it overcoming every thought that doesn't come from God, every thought of the human mind, whether it is called war, or sickness, or death!"

"Then evil can be thought away, chiquita?" He knew not why he pursued her so relentlessly.

"No, Padre," she replied with a gentle patience that smote him. "No, Padre. But it can be destroyed in the human mind. And when you have overcome the habit of thinking the wrong way, evil will disappear. That is the whole thing. That is what Jesus tried to make the people see."

But Josè knew it. Yet he had not put it to the proof. He had gone through life, worrying himself loose from one human belief, only to become enslaved to another equally insidious. He knew that the cause of whatever came to him was within his own mentality. And yet he knew, likewise, that he would have to demonstrate this--that he would be called upon to "prove" God. His faith without the works following was dead. He felt that he did not really believe in power opposed to God; and yet he did constantly yield to such belief. And such yielding was the chief of sins. The unique Son of God had said so. He knew that when the Master had said, "Behold, I give you power over all the enemy," he meant that the Christ-principle would overcome every false claim of the human mentality, whether that claim be one of physical condition or action, or a claim of environment and event. He knew that all things were possible to God, and likewise to the one who understood and faithfully applied the Christ-principle. Carmen believed that good alone was real and present. She applied this knowledge to every-day affairs. And in so doing she denied reality to evil. He must let go. He must turn upon the claims of evil to life and intelligence. His false sense of righteousness must give place to the spiritual sense of God as immanent good. He knew that Carmen's great love was an impervious armor, which turned aside the darts of the evil one, the one lie. He knew that his reasoning from the premise of mixed good and evil was false, and the results chaotic. And knowing all this, he knew that he had touched the hem of the garment of the Christ-understanding. There remained, then, the test of fire. And it had come. Would he stand?

"Padre," said Carmen, going to him and putting her arms about his neck, "you say that you think a great war is coming. But you needn't be afraid. Don't you remember what it says in the book of Isaiah? 'No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.' No weapon of evil can touch you, if you understand God. Every tongue of the human mind that rises to judge you, to sentence you, shall be condemned. You will condemn it--you must! This is your heritage, given you by God. And your righteousness, your right-thinking, must come from God. Your thoughts must be His. Then--"

"Yes, yes, chiquita," he said, drawing her to him.

"And now, Padre, you will promise me that you will know every day that Anita's babe is not blind--that it sees, because God sees?"

"Yes, chiquita, I promise."

"Padre dear," she murmured, nestling close to him, "I love you so much, so much!"

He answered not, except in the tightening of the arm that was about her.

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Chapter 31

In the weeks that followed there were days when the very air seemed pregnant with potential destruction, awaiting only the daring hand that would render it kinetic. Josè dwelt in a state of incessant, heart-shaking agitation. The sudden precipitation of the revolt six years before had caught him wholly unprepared, unaware even of the events which had led to it. In the intervening years, however, he had had some opportunity, even in his isolation, to study political conditions in that unhappy country, and to form some estimate of the mental forces at work in both Church and State which, he knew, must ultimately bring them again into conflict for supremacy. His knowledge of the workings of the human mind convinced him that Diego's dire prophecy had not been empty; that the Church, though ostensibly assuming only spiritual leadership, would nevertheless rest not until the question "Who shall be greatest?" even in the petty, sordid affairs of mortals, should be answered, and answered--though by force of arms--in her favor. And his estimate of the strength of the opposing parties had led him to believe that the impending struggle would drench the land in blood.

As to the rôle which Wenceslas would play, he could form no satisfactory estimate. He knew him to be astute, wary, and the shrewdest of politicians. He knew, likewise, that he was acting in conjunction with powerful financial interests in both North America and Europe. He knew him to be a man who would stop at no scruple, hesitate at no dictate of conscience, yield to no moral or ethical code; one who would play Rome against Wall Street, with his own unfortunate country as the stake; one who would hurl the fairest sons of Colombia at one another's throats to bulge his own coffers; and then wring from the wailing widows their poor substance for Masses to move their beloved dead through an imagined purgatory.

But he could not know that, in casting about impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simití as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simití, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment was crystallizing in the Department of Bolívar. He did not know that the Governor had been induced by the acting-Bishop's specious representations to send arms to Simití, to be followed by federal troops only when the crafty Wenceslas saw that the time was ripe. He did not even suspect that Don Mario was to be the puppet whom Wenceslas would sacrifice on the altar of rapacity when he had finished with him, and that the simple-minded Alcalde in his blind zeal to protect the Church would thereby proclaim himself an enemy of both Church and State, and afford the smiling Wenceslas the most fortuitous of opportunities to reveal the Church's unexampled magnanimity by throwing her influence in with that of the Government against their common enemy.

His own intercourse with Wenceslas during the years of his exile in Simití had been wholly formal, and not altogether disagreeable as long as the contributions of gold to the Bishop's leaking coffers continued. He had received almost monthly communications from Cartagena, relating to the Church at large, and, at infrequent intervals, to the parish of Simití. But he knew that Cartagena's interest in Simití was merely casual--nay, rather, financial--and he strove to maintain it so, lest the stimulation of a deeper interest thwart his own plans. His conflict with Diego in regard to Carmen had seemed for the moment to evoke the Bishop's interference; and the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of that priest had threatened to expose both Josè and Carmen to the full scrutiny of Wenceslas. But, fortunately, the insistence of those matters which were rapidly culminating in a political outbreak left Wenceslas little time for interference in affairs which did not pertain exclusively to the momentous questions with which he was now concerned, and Josè and Carmen were still left unmolested. It was only when, desperate lest Congress adjourn without passing the measure which he knew would precipitate the conflict, and when, well nigh panic-stricken lest his collusion with Ames and his powerful clique of Wall Street become known through the exasperation of the latter over the long delay, he had resolved to pit Don Mario against Josè in distant Simití, and, in that unknown, isolated spot, where close investigation would never be made, apply the torch to the waiting combustibles, that Josè saw the danger which had always hung over him and the girl suddenly descending upon them and threatening anew the separation which he had ever regarded as inevitable, and yet which he had hoped against hope to avoid.

With the deposition of arms in Simití, and the establishment of federal authority in Don Mario, that always pompous official rose in his own esteem and in the eyes of a few parasitical attachés to an eminence never before dreamed of by the humble denizens of this moss-encrusted town. From egotistical, Don Mario became insolent. From sluggishness and torpidity of thought and action, he rose suddenly into tremendous activity. He was more than once observed by Josè or Rosendo emerging hastily from his door and button-holing some one of the more influential citizens of the town and excitedly reading to him excerpts from letters which he had just received from Cartagena. He might be seen at any hour of the day in the little patio back of his store, busily engaged with certain of the men of the place in examining papers and documents, talking volubly and with much excited gesticulation and wild rolling of the eyes. A party seemed to be crystallizing about him. His hitherto uncertain prestige appeared to be soaring greatly. Men who before made slighting remarks about him, or opposed his administrative acts, were now often seen in earnest converse with him. His manner toward Josè and Rosendo became that of utter contempt. He often refused to notice the priest as they passed in the streets.

Josè's apprehension waxed great. It attained its climax when Rosendo came to him one day to discuss the Alcalde's conduct and the change of sentiment which seemed to be stealing rapidly over the hearts of the people of Simití.

"Padre," said the old man in perplexity, "I cannot say what it is, but Don Mario has some scheme in hand, and--and I do not think it is for our good. I cannot get anything out of those with whom he talks so continually, but Lázaro tells me that--Bien, that he learns that Don Mario suspects you of--of not belonging to the Church party."

Josè smiled. Don Mario's suspicions about him had been many and varied, especially as La Libertad mine had not been discovered. He said as much to Rosendo in reply; and as he did so, he thought the old man's face took on a queer and unwonted expression.

"But, Padre," continued Rosendo at length, "they say that Don Mario has word from the Bishop that you once wrote a book against the Holy Father--"

"Good God!" The words burst from the priest's lips like the sudden issuance of pent steam. Rosendo stared at him in bewilderment.

"Rosendo!" gasped Josè. "How know you that?"

"Caramba, Padre! it is what Lázaro tells me," replied the old man, his own suspicion verging upon conviction.

Josè's dark face became almost white, and his breath sobbed out in gasps. A vague idea of the game Wenceslas was playing now stole through his throbbing brain. That book, his Nemesis, his pursuing Fate, had tracked him to this secluded corner of the earth, and in the hands of the most unscrupulous politician of South America was being used as a tool. But, precisely to what end, his wild thought did not as yet disclose. Still, above the welter of it all, he saw clearly that there must be no further delay on his part. Before he could speak, however, Rosendo had resumed the conversation.

"Padre," he said, "had it occurred to you that you were watched, day and night?"

"No--heavens!" Josè had not suspected such a thing.

"It is so, Padre. Don Mario's men keep you in sight during the day; and at night there is always some one hovering near your house. You could not escape now even if you would."

Josè sank back in his chair limp and cold. His frenzied brain held but one thought: he had delayed until too late--and the end was at hand!

"Padre," said Rosendo earnestly, "tell me about that book. You did write it? And against the Holy Father? But--you still say the Mass. You have not brought Carmen up in the Church. But it was I who told you not to--that her heart was her church, and it must not be disturbed. But--is it true, as the people say, that you really belong to the party that would destroy the Church?"

Then Josè collected himself. While his heart burned within his breast, he opened its portals and revealed to Rosendo all that lay within. Beginning with his boyhood, he drew his career out before the wondering eyes of the old man down to the day when the culmination of carnal ambition, false thought, perverted concepts of filial devotion and sacredness of oath, of family honor and pride of race, had washed him up against the dreary shores of Simití. With no thought of concealment, he exposed his ambition in regard to Carmen--even the love for her that he knew must die of inanition--and ended by throwing himself without reserve upon Rosendo's judgment. When the tense recital was ended, Rosendo leaned over and clasped the priest's trembling hand.

"I understand, Padre," he said gently. "I am dull of wit, I know. And you have often laughed at my superstitions and old family beliefs, whether religious or otherwise. They are strange--I admit that. And I shall die in the Church, and take my chances on the future, for I have tried to live a good life. But--with a man like you--I understand. And now, Padre, we have no time to be sorrowful. We must be up and doing. We are like fish in a net. But--my life is yours. And both are Carmen's, is it not so? Thanks be to the good Virgin," he muttered, as he walked slowly away, "that Lázaro got those titles from Don Mario to-day!"

* * * * *

Nightfall brought an unexpected visitor in the person of Don Jorge, who had returned from the remoter parts of the Guamocó region.

"Bien, and what news?" he called cheerily, as he strode into the parish house, where Rosendo and Josè were in earnest conversation.

Josè embraced him as a brother, while a great sense of relief stole over him. Then he quickly made known to him the situation.

Don Jorge whistled softly. He ceased his task of scraping the caked mud from his bare limbs, and drew up a chair near Josè.

"So you wrote a book, no? And rapped the sacred priesthood? Hombre! That is good! I never did think you a real priest. But, amigo, lend me a copy, for I doubt not it is most excellent reading, and will serve to while away many a weary hour in the jungle." His eyes snapped merrily, and he slapped Josè roundly upon the back when he finished speaking.

"But," he continued more seriously, "things seem to be setting against you, friend. However, let me but canvass the town to-morrow, and by evening I can advise. Caramba! this old hole a military depot! Who would have thought it! And yet--and yet--I wonder why the Governor sends arms here. Bien, we shall see."

Don Jorge needed not a full day to correctly estimate the situation in Simití. His bluff, hearty manner and genial good-nature constituted a passport to every house, and by midday he had talked with nearly every man in the pueblo. He called Josè and Rosendo for consultation during the siesta.

"Bien," he said, when they were seated in the parish house, "Don Mario without doubt descends from the very serpent that tempted our mother Eve! He has become a person of considerable importance since the Governor and Don Wenceslas strive with each other to rest their authority and confidence in him. And, unless I mistake much, they have him slated for important work. However that may be, the man already has a large following. Moreover, he has them well poisoned against you, amigo Josè. They know more details about your book and your life before coming to Simití than do you. Bien, you must counteract the Alcalde's influence by a public statement. It must be to-night--in the church! You will have to act quickly, for the old fox has you picked for trouble! Diego's disappearance, you know; the girl, Carmen; your rather foolish course here--it is all laid up against you, friend, and you must meet it!"

Josè assented. Don Jorge went out and summoned the town to a meeting in the church that evening. Immediately Don Mario issued a mandate forbidding a public gathering at a time of such stress. The people began to assemble on the street corners and in front of their houses to discuss the situation. Their talk became loud and animated. Threats were heard. The people were becoming divided. Don Jorge was everywhere, and none could talk so volubly nor gesticulate and expectorate so vehemently as he.

At sundown the people moved toward the plaza. Then the concourse drifted slowly into the church. Don Jorge dragged Josè from the parish house and up to the altar. "You have got to divide them, Padre!" he whispered excitedly. "Your only hope now lies in the formation of your own party to oppose the Alcalde! Talk to them as you never talked before! Say all that you had stored up to say on Judgment Day!"

Again, as Josè faced his little flock and saw them, bare of feet, scantily clad in their simple cotton and calico, their faces set in deep seriousness, the ludicrous side of the whole situation flashed before him, and he almost laughed aloud at the spectacle which the ancient, decayed town at that moment presented. These primitive folk--they were but children, with all a child's simplicity of nature, its petulance, its immaturity of view, and its sudden and unreasoning acceptance of authority! He turned to the altar and took up a tall brass crucifix. He held it out before him for a moment. Then he called upon the Christ to witness to the truth of what he was about to say.

A hush fell over the assembly. Even Don Mario seemed to become calm after that dramatic spectacle. Then Josè spoke. He talked long and earnestly. He knew not that such eloquence abode within him. His declamation became more and more impassioned. He opened wide his heart and called upon all present to look fearlessly within. Yes, he had written the book in question. But its publication was unfortunate. Yes, it had expressed his views at that time. But now--ah, now!

He stopped and looked about the church. The shadows were gathering thick, and the smoking kerosene lamps battled vainly with the heavy blackness. In a far corner of the room he saw Carmen and Ana. Rosendo sat stolidly beside them. The sightless babe waved its tiny hands in mute helplessness, while Doña Maria held it closely to her bosom. Carmen's last admonition sang in his ears. He must know--really know--that the babe could see! He must know that God was omnipotent! His appeal to the people was not for himself. He cared not what became of him. But Carmen--and now Ana and the blind babe--and the calm, unimpassioned Doña Maria, the embodiment of all that was greatest in feminine character--and Rosendo, waiting to lay down his life for those he loved! And then, this people, soon, he felt, to be shattered by the shock of war--ah, God above! what could he say that might save them? If they could know, as Carmen did, if they could love and trust as she did, would the hideous spectre of war ever stalk among them? Could the world know, and love, and trust as did this fair child, would it waste itself in useless wars, sink with famine and pestilence, consume with the anguish of fear, and in the end bury its blasted hopes in the dank, reeking tomb? The thought gave wings to his voice, soul to his words. For hours the people sat spellbound.

Then he finished. He raised his hands in benediction. And, while the holy hush remained upon the people, he descended the altar steps, his frame still tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal, and went alone to his house.

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Chapter 32

Dawn had scarcely reddened in the east when a number of men assembled at Josè's door.

"You have turned the trick, amigo," said Don Jorge, rousing up from his petate on the floor beside the priest's bed. "You have won over a few of them, at least."

Josè went out to meet the early callers.

"We come to say, Padre," announced Andres Arellano, the dignified spokesman, "that we have confidence in your words of last night. We suspect Don Mario, even though he has letters from the Bishop. We are your men, and we would keep the war away from Simití."

There were five of them, strong of heart and brawny of arm. "And there will be more, Padre," added Andres, reading the priest's question in his appraising glance.

Thus was the town divided; and while many clung to the Alcalde, partly through fear of offending the higher ecclesiastical authority, and partly because of imagined benefits to be gained, others, and a goodly number, assembled at Josè's side, and looked to him to lead them in the crisis which all felt to be at hand. As the days passed, the priest's following grew more numerous, until, after the lapse of a week, the town stood fairly divided. Don Jorge announced his intention of remaining in Simití for the present.

From the night of the meeting in the church excitement ran continuously higher. Business was at length suspended; the fishermen forgot their nets; and the limber tongues of the town gossips steadily increased their clatter. Don Mario's store and patio assumed the functions of a departmental office. Daily he might be seen laboriously drafting letters of incredible length and wearisome prolixity to acting-Bishop Wenceslas; and nightly he was engaged in long colloquies and whispered conferences with Don Luis and others of his followers and hangers-on. The government arms had been brought up from Bodega Central and stored in an empty warehouse belonging to Don Felipe Alcozer to await further disposition.

But with the arrival of the arms, and of certain letters which Don Mario received from Cartagena, the old town lost its calm of centuries, not to recover it again for many a dreary day. By the time its peace was finally restored, it had received a blow from which it never recovered. And many a familiar face, too, had disappeared forever from its narrow streets.

Meanwhile, Josè and his followers anxiously awaited the turn of events. It came at length, and in a manner not wholly unexpected. The Alcalde in his voluminous correspondence with Wenceslas had not failed to bring against Josè every charge which his unduly stimulated brain could imagine. But in particular did he dwell upon the priest's malign influence upon Carmen, whose physical beauty and powers of mind were the marvel of Simití. He hammered upon this with an insistence that could not but at length again attract the thought of the acting-Bishop, who wrote finally to Don Mario, expressing the mildly couched opinion that, now that his attention had been called again to the matter, Carmen should have the benefits of the education and liberal training which a convent would afford.

Don Mario's egotism soared to the sky. The great Bishop was actually being advised by him! Hombre! Where would it not end! He would yet remove to a larger town, perhaps Mompox, and, with the support of the great ecclesiastic, stand for election to Congress! He would show the Bishop what mettle he had in him. Hombre! And first he would show His Grace how a loyal servant could anticipate his master's wishes. He summoned Fernando, and imperiously bade him bring the girl Carmen at once.

But Fernando returned, saying that Rosendo refused to give up the child. Don Mario then ordered Rosendo's arrest. But Fernando found it impossible to execute the commission. Josè and Don Jorge stood with Rosendo, and threatened to deal harshly with the constable should he attempt to take Carmen by force. Fernando then sought to impress upon the Alcalde the danger of arousing public opinion again over the girl.

Don Mario's wrath burst forth like an exploding bomb. He seized his straw hat and his cane, the emblem of his office, and strode to the house of Rosendo. His face grew more deeply purple as he went. At the door of the house he encountered Josè and Don Jorge.

"Don Mario," began Josè, before the Alcalde could get his words shaped, "it is useless. Carmen remains with us. We will defend her with our lives. Be advised, Don Mario, for the consequences of thoughtless action may be incalculable!"

"Caramba!" bellowed the irate official, "but, cow-face! do you know that His Grace supports me? That I but execute his orders? Dios arriba! if you do not at once deliver to me your paramour--"

He got no further. Rosendo, who had been standing just within the door, suddenly pushed Josè and Don Jorge aside and, stalking out, a tower of flesh, confronted the raging Alcalde. For a moment he gazed down into the pig-eyes of the man. Then, with a quick thrust of his thick arm, he projected his huge fist squarely into Don Mario's bloated face. The Alcalde went down like a shot.

Neither Josè nor Don Jorge, as they rushed in between Rosendo and his fallen adversary, had any adequate idea of the consequences of the old man's precipitate action. As they assisted the prostrate official to his unsteady feet they knew not that to Rosendo, simple, peace-loving, and great of heart, had fallen the lot to inaugurate hostilities in the terrible anticlerical war which now for four dismal years was to tear Colombia from end to end, and leave her prostrate and exhausted at last, her sons decimated, her farms and industries ruined, and her neck beneath the heavy heel of a military despot at Bogotá, whose pliant hand would still be guided by the astute brain of Rome.

By the time the startled Alcalde had been set again upon his feet a considerable concourse had gathered at the scene. Many stood in wide-eyed horror at what had just occurred. Others broke into loud and wild talk. The crowd rapidly grew, and in a few minutes the plaza was full. Supporters of both sides declaimed and gesticulated vehemently. In the heat of the arguments a blow was struck. Then another. The Alcalde, when he found his tongue, shrilly demanded the arrest of Rosendo and his family, including the priest and Don Jorge. A dozen of his party rushed forward to execute the order. Rosendo had slipped between Josè and Don Jorge and into his house. In a trice he emerged with a great machete. The people about him fell back. His eyes blazed like live coals, and his breath seemed to issue from his dilating nostrils like clouds of steam. To approach him meant instant death. Don Jorge crept behind him and, gaining the house, collected the terrified women and held them in readiness for flight. Juan, Lázaro, and a number of others surrounded Josè and faced the angry multitude.

The strain was broken by the frenzied Alcalde, who rushed toward Rosendo. The old man swung his enormous machete with a swirl that, had it met the official, would have clean decapitated him. But, fortunately, one of the priest's supporters threw out his foot, and the corpulent Alcalde fell heavily over it and bit the dust. Josè threw himself upon Rosendo. The old man staggered with the shock and gave way. The priest turned to the excited crowd. Holding up both hands high above his head, he sent out his voice clear and loud.

"Children! In the name of the Church! In the name of the Christ! The blessed Virgin--"

"What know you of the blessed Virgin, priest of Satan?" shouted a rough follower of the Alcalde.

"Aye!" yelled another. "Writer of foul books! Seducer of young girls!"

Julio Gomez stooped and took up a large piece of shale. He threw it with all his force, just as the priest again strove to make his voice heard above the din. It struck Josè full on the forehead. The jagged stone cut deeply, and the red blood spurted. Josè fell into the arms of Lázaro and was dragged into the house.

Then Rosendo, with a mad yell, plunged wildly into the crowd. A dozen arms sought to hold him, but in vain. Julio saw the terrifying apparition hurtling down upon him. He turned and fled, but not before the great knife had caught him on its point as it swung down and ripped a deep gash the full length of his naked back.

Then the last vestige of reason fled from the mob, and chaos took the reins. Back and forth through the plaza, in front of the church where hung the image of the Prince of Peace, the maddened people surged, fighting like demons, raining blows with clubs, fists, and machetes, stabbing with their long, wicked knives, hurling sharp stones, gouging, ripping, yelling, shrieking, calling upon Saints and Virgin to curse their enemies and bless their blows. Over the heads of them all towered the mighty frame of Rosendo. Back before his murderous machete fell the terrified combatants. His course among them was that of a cannon ball. Dozens hung upon his arms, his shoulders, or flung themselves about his great legs. His huge body, slippery and reeking, was galvanized into energy incarnate. Sparks seemed to flash from his eyes. His breath turned to livid flame. Behind him, following in the swath which he cut, his supporters crowded, fought and yelled. Don Mario's forces gave way. They cursed, broke, and fled. Then Don Jorge, a man whose mortal strength was more than common, threw himself upon the steaming, frenzied Rosendo and stopped his mad progress.

"Rosendo--amigo! Caramba! Listen! They are fleeing to the bodega to get the rifles and ammunition! Come--Dios arriba! Come!"

Cut, bruised, and dripping blood from a dozen wounds, Rosendo stood for a moment blinking in confusion. A score lay on the ground about him. Whether dead or wounded, he knew not, nor cared. The sight of Don Mario's supporters in full flight fascinated him. He broke into a chuckle. It sounded like the gloating of an imp of Satan. Then the force of Don Jorge's words smote him.

"Caramba! They will return with the rifles!" he panted. "What shall we do?"

"Come! We must lose no time!" cried Don Jorge, pulling him toward the house. Those of the priest's other followers who were still whole scattered wildly to their homes and barred their doors. There they searched for knives, machetes, razors, any tool or instrument that might be pressed into service as a weapon, and stood guard. One frenzied fellow, the sole possessor of an antiquated shotgun, projected the rusty arm from a hole in the wall of his mud hut and blazed away down the deserted street indiscriminately and without aim.

Within the house Juan and Lázaro were supporting the dazed Josè, while Doña Maria bathed and bound his wound. Carmen stood gazing upon the scene in bewilderment. The precipitousness of the affair had taken her breath away and driven all thought in mad rout from her mind.

"Amigos!" panted Don Jorge, "the church--it is the only place now that is even fairly safe! Doña Maria, do you collect all the food in the house! We know not how long we may be prisoners--"

"But--Don Jorge," interrupted Josè feebly, "they will attack us even there! Let us flee--"

"Where, amigo? To the Guamocó trail? Caramba! they would shoot us down in cold blood! Hombre! There is no place but the church! That will hold some of them back, at any rate! And none of them, if they get crazed with anisado! But it is the only place now! Come!"

"Hombre!" cried Rosendo, starting for the door, "but do you, Juan and Lázaro, follow me with your machetes, and we will drive the cowards from the bodega and get the rifles ourselves!"

"No, amigo! Impossible! By this time they have broken open the boxes and loaded the guns. A shot--and it would be all over with you! But in the church--you have a chance there!"

Don Jorge seized his arm and dragged him out of the house and across the deserted plaza. Juan and Lázaro helped Doña Maria gather what food and water remained in the house; and together they hurried out and over to the church. Swinging open the heavy wooden doors, they entered and made them fast again. Then they sank upon the benches and strove to realize their situation.

But Don Jorge suddenly sprang to his feet. "The windows!" he cried.

Juan and Lázaro hurried to them and swung the wooden shutters.

"There is no way of holding them!" cried Juan in dismay.

"Caramba!" muttered Rosendo, seizing a bench and with one blow of his machete splitting it clean through, "these will make props to hold them!"

It was the work of but a few minutes to place benches across the thick shutters and secure them with others placed diagonally against them and let into the hard dirt floor. The same was done with the doors. Then the little group huddled together and waited. Josè heard a sob beside him, and a hand clutched his in the gloom. It was Carmen. In the excitement of the hour he had all but forgotten her. Through his present confusion of thought a great fact loomed: as the girl clung to him she was weeping!

A low rumble drifted to them; a confusion of voices, growing louder; and then a sharp report.

"They are coming, Padre," muttered Rosendo. "And some one has tried his rifle!"

A moment later the ruck poured into the plaza and made for Rosendo's house. Don Mario, holding his cane aloft like a sword, was at their head. Raging with disappointment at not finding the fugitives in the house, they threw the furniture and kitchen utensils madly about, punched great holes through the walls, and then rushed pellmell to the parish house next door. A groan escaped Josè as he watched them through a chink in the shutters. His books and papers! His notes and writings!

But as the howling mob streamed toward the parish house a wrinkled old crone shrilled at them from across the way and pointed toward the church.

"In there, amigos!" she screamed. "I saw them enter! Shoot them--they have hurt my Pedro!"

Back like a huge wave the crowd flowed, and up against the church doors. Don Mario, at the head of his valiant followers, held up his hand for silence. Then, planting himself before the main doors of the church, he loudly voiced his authority.

"In the name of the Government at Bogotá!" he cried pompously, tapping the doors with his light cane. Then he turned quickly. "Fernando," he called, "run to my house and fetch the drum!"

Despite the seriousness of their situation, Josè smiled at the puppet-show being enacted without.

The Alcalde reiterated his demands with truculent vanity. "Open! In the name of the Government! I am the law!"

Don Jorge groaned aloud. "Caramba! if I but had him in here alone!"

Don Mario waited a few moments. Then, as no response came from within, his anger began to soar. "Caramba!" he cried, "but you defy the law?"

Angry mutterings rose from the crowd. Some one suggested burning the building. Another advised battering in the doors. A third intimated that shooting them full of holes were better. This idea, once voiced, spread like an infection. The childish people were eager to try the rifles.

"Shoot the doors down! Shoot them down, Don Mario!" yelled the mob.

The Alcalde threw himself heavily up against the doors. "Caramba!" he shrilled. "Fools! Demons! Open!--or it will be the worse for you!"

Josè decided that their silence should no longer exasperate the angry man. He put his mouth to the crevice between the doors.

"Don Mario," he cried, "this is sacred ground! The Host is exposed on the altar. Take your mob away. Disperse, and we will come out. We may settle this trouble amicably, if you will but listen to reason."

The Alcalde jumped up and down in his towering wrath. "Puppy-face!" he screamed, "but I am the law--I am the Government! A curse upon you, priest of Satan! Will you unbar these doors?"

"No!" replied Josè. "And if you attack us you attack the Church!"

"A curse on the Church! Amigos! Muchachos!" he bawled, turning to the mob, "we will batter down the doors!"

The crowd surged forward again. But the props held firm. Again and again the mob hurled itself upon the thick doors. They bent, they sagged, but they held. Don Mario became apoplectic. A torrent of anathemas streamed from his thick lips.

"The side door!" some one shouted, recovering a portion of his scant wit.

"Aye--and the door of the sacristía!"

"Try the windows!"

Round the building streamed the crazed mob, without head, without reason, lusting only for the lives of the frightened little band huddled together in the gloom within. Josè kept an arm about Carmen. Ana bent sobbing over her tiny babe. Don Jorge and Rosendo remained mute and grim. Josè knew that those two would cast a long reckoning before they died. Juan and Lázaro went from door to window, steadying the props and making sure that they were holding. The tough, hard, tropical wood, though pierced in places by comjejen ants, was resisting.

The sun was already high, and the plaza had become a furnace. The patience of the mob quickly evaporated in the ardent heat. Don Mario's wits had gone completely. Revenge, mingled with insensate zeal to manifest the authority which he believed his intercourse with Wenceslas had greatly augmented, had driven all rationality from his motives. Flaming anger had unseated his reason. Descending from the platform on which stood the church, he blindly drew up his armed followers and bade them fire upon the church doors.

If Wenceslas, acting-Bishop by the grace of political machination, could have witnessed the stirring drama then in progress in ancient Simití, he would have laughed aloud at the complete fulfillment of his carefully wrought plans. The cunning of the shrewd, experienced politician had never been more clearly manifested than in the carrying out of the little program which he had set for the unwise Alcalde of this almost unknown little town, whereby the hand of Congress should be forced and the inevitable revolt inaugurated. Don Mario had seized the government arms, the deposition of which in Simití in his care had constituted him more than ever the representative of federal authority. But, in his wild zeal, he had fallen into the trap which Wenceslas had carefully arranged for him, and now was engaged in a mad attack upon the Church itself, upon ecclesiastical authority as vested in the priest Josè. How could Wenceslas interpret this but as an anticlerical uprising? There remained but the final scene. And while the soft-headed dupes and maniacal supporters of Don Mario were hurling bullets into the thick doors of the old church in Simití, Wenceslas sat musing in his comfortable study in the cathedral of Cartagena, waiting with what patience he could command for further reports from Don Mario, whose last letter had informed him that the arrest of the priest Josè and his unfortunate victim, Carmen, was only a few hours off.

When the first shots rang out, and the bullets ploughed into the hard wood of the heavy doors, Josè's heart sank, and he gave himself up as lost. Lázaro and Juan cowered upon the floor. Carmen crept close to Josè, as he sat limply upon a bench, and put her arms about him.

"Padre dear," she whispered, "it isn't true--it isn't true! They don't really want to kill us! They don't--really! Their thoughts have only the minus sign!"

The priest clasped her to his breast. The recriminating thought flashed over him that he alone was the cause of this. He had sacrificed them all--none but he was to blame. Ah, God above! if he could only offer himself to satiate the mob's lust, and save these innocent ones! Lurid, condemnatory thoughts burned through his brain like molten iron. He rose hastily and rushed to the door. Rosendo and Don Jorge seized him as he was about to lift a prop.

"What do you mean, Padre?" they exclaimed.

"I am going out, friends--I shall give myself to them for you all. It is the only way. I am the one they seek. Let them have me, if they will spare you!"

But the firing had ceased, and Don Mario was approaching the door. Josè bent down and called to him. "Myself for the others, Don Mario!" he cried. "But promise to spare them--but give me your word--and I will yield myself to arrest!"

"Caramba, fool priest!" shouted the Alcalde in derision. "It is not you that the good Bishop wants, but the girl! I have his letters demanding that I send her to him! If you will come out, you shall not be hurt. Only, Rosendo must stand trial for the harm he did in the fight this morning; and the girl must go to Cartagena. As for the rest of you, you will be free. Are the terms not reasonable? Give me your answer in five minutes."

Josè turned to the little band. There was awful determination in his voice. "Juan and Lázaro," he said, "we will open a window quickly in the rear of the church and let you out. It is not right that you should die with us. And Don Jorge, too--"

"Stop there, amigo!" interrupted the latter in a voice as cold as steel. "My life has not the value of a white heron. Can I do better than give it for a cause that I know to be right? Nay, man, I remain with you. Let the lads go, if they will--"

Lázaro forced himself between Don Jorge and the priest. "Padre," he said quietly, "to you I owe what I am. I remain here."

Josè looked through the gloom at Juan. The boy's eyes were fixed on Carmen. He turned and gazed for a moment at a window, as if hesitating between two decisions. Then he shook his head slowly. "Padre," he said, though his voice trembled, "I, too, remain."

The Alcalde received his answer with a burst of inarticulate rage. He rushed back to his followers with his arms waving wildly. "Shoot!" he screamed. "Shoot! Pierce the doors! Batter them down! Compadres, get the poles and burst in the shutters. Caramba! it is the Government they are defying!"

A volley from the rifles followed his words. The thick doors shook under the blast. A bullet pierced the wall and whizzed past Carmen. Josè seized the girl and drew her down under a bench. The startled bats among the roof beams fluttered wildly about through the heavy gloom. Frightened rats scurried around the altar. The rusty bell in the tower cried out as if in protest against the sacrilege. Juan burst into tears and crept beneath a bench.

"Padre," said Rosendo, "it is only a question of time when the doors will fall. See--that bullet went clean through! Bien, let us place the women back of the altar, while we men stand here at one side of the doors, so that when they fall we may dash out and cut our way through the crowd. If we throw ourselves suddenly upon them, we may snatch away a rifle or two. Then Don Jorge and I, with the lads here, may drive them back--perhaps beat them! But my first blow shall be for Don Mario! I vow here that, if I escape this place, he shall not live another hour!"

"Better so, Rosendo, than that they should take us alive. But--Carmen? Do we leave her to fall into Don Mario's hands?"

Rosendo's voice, low and cold, froze the marrow in the priest's bones. "Padre, she will not fall into the Alcalde's hands."

"God above! Rosendo, do you--"

A piercing cry checked him. "Santa Virgen! Padre--!" Lázaro had collapsed upon the floor. Rosendo and Josè hurried to him.

"Padre!" The man's breath came in gasps. "Padre--I confess--pray for me. It struck me--here!" He struggled to lay a hand upon his bleeding breast.

"To the altar, amigos!" cried Don Jorge, ducking his head as a bullet sang close to it.

Seizing the expiring Lázaro, they hurriedly dragged him down the aisle and took refuge back of the brick altar. The bullets, now piercing the walls of the church with ease, whizzed about them. One struck the pendant figure of the Christ, and it fell crashing to the floor. Rosendo stood in horror, as if he expected a miracle to follow this act of sacrilege.

"Oh, God!" prayed Josè, "only Thy hand can save us!"

"He will save us, Padre--He will!" cried Carmen, creeping closer to him through the darkness. "God is everywhere, and right here!"

"Padre," said Don Jorge hurriedly, "the Host--is it on the altar?"

"Yes--why?" replied the priest.

"Then, when the doors fall, do you stand in front of the altar, holding it aloft and calling on the people to stand back, lest the hand of God strike them!"

Josè hesitated not. "It is a chance--yes, a bare chance. They will stop before it--or they will kill me! But I will do it!"

"Padre! You shall not--Padre! Then I shall stand with you!" Carmen's voice broke clear and piercing through the din. Josè struggled to free himself from her.

"Na, Padre," interposed Rosendo, "it may be better so! Let her stand with you! But--Caramba! Make haste!"

The clamor without increased. Heavy poles and billets of wood had been fetched, and blow after blow now fell upon every shutter and door. The sharp spitting of the rifles tore the air, and bullets crashed through the walls and windows. In the heavy shadows back of the altar Rosendo and Don Jorge crouched over the sobbing women. Lázaro lay very still. Josè knew as he stretched out a hand through the darkness and touched the cold face that the faithful spirit had fled. How soon his own would follow he knew not, nor cared. Keeping close to the floor, he crept out and around to the front of the altar. Reaching up, he grasped the Sacred Host, and then stood upright, holding it out before him. Carmen rose by his side and took his hand. Together in the gloom they waited.

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Chapter 33

"Padre! Padre! are you alive?"

Rosendo's hoarse whisper drifted across the silence like a wraith. He crept out and along the floor, scarce daring to look up. Through the darkness his straining eyes caught the outlines of the two figures standing like statues before the altar.

"Loado sea Dios!" he cried, and his voice broke with a sob. "But, Padre, they have stopped--what has happened?"

"I know not, amigo. Be patient. We are in the hands of God--"

"Padre--listen!" Carmen darted from the altar and ran to the door. "Padre!" she called back. "Come! Some one is speaking English!"

Josè and Rosendo hurried to the door. All was quiet without, but for an animated conversation between Don Mario and some strangers who had evidently just arrived upon the scene. One of the latter was speaking with the Alcalde in excellent Spanish. Another, evidently unacquainted with the language, made frequent interruptions in the English tongue. Josè's heart beat wildly.

"Say, Reed," said the voice in English, "tell the parchment-faced old buzzard that we appreciate the little comedy he has staged for us. Tell him it is bully-bueno, but he must not overdo it. We are plum done up, and want a few days of rest."

"What says the señor, amigo?" asked Don Mario, with his utmost suavity and unction of manner.

"He says," returned the other in Spanish, "that he is delighted with the firmness which you display in the administration of your office, and that he trusts the bandits within the church may be speedily executed."

"Bandits!" ejaculated Don Mario. "Just so, amigo! They are those who defy the Government as represented by myself!" He straightened up and threw out his chest with such an exhibition of importance that the strangers with difficulty kept their faces straight.

Carmen and Josè looked at each other in amazement during this colloquy.

"Padre!" exclaimed the girl. "Do all who speak English tell such lies?"

"Ah!" murmured the one addressed as Reed, directing himself to the Alcalde, "how dared they! But, señor, my friend and I have come to your beautiful city on business of the utmost importance, in which you doubtless will share largely. I would suggest," looking with amusement at the array of armed men about him, "that your prisoners are in no immediate likelihood of escaping, and you might leave them under close guard while we discuss our business. A--a--we hear reports, señor, that there is likely to be trouble in the country, and we are desirous of getting out as soon as possible."

"Cierto! Cierto, señores!" exclaimed Don Mario, bowing low. "It shall be as you say." Turning to the gaping people, he selected several to do guard duty, dismissed the others, and then bade the strangers follow him to his house, which, he declared vehemently, was theirs as long as they might honor him with their distinguished presence.

The sudden turn of events left the little group within the church in a maze of bewilderment. They drew together in the center of the room and talked in low whispers until the sun dropped behind the hills and night drifted through the quiet streets. Late that evening came a tapping at the rear door of the church, and a voice called softly to the priest. Josè roused out of his gloomy revery and hastened to answer it.

"It is Fernando, Padre. I am on guard; but no one must know that I talk with you. But--Padre, if you open the door and escape, I will not see you. I am sorry, Padre, but it could not be helped. Don Mario has us all frightened, for the Bishop--"

"True, amigo," returned Josè; "but the strangers who arrived this afternoon--who are they, and whence?"

"Two Americanos, Padre, and miners."

Josè studied a moment. "Fernando--you would aid me? Bien, get word to the stranger who speaks both English and Spanish. Bring him here, secretly, and stand guard yourself while I talk with him."

"Gladly, Padre," returned the penitent fellow, as he hastened quietly away.

An hour later Josè was again roused by Fernando tapping on the door.

"Open, Padre. Fear not; only the Americano will enter. Don Mario does not know."

Josè lifted the prop and swung the door open. Rosendo stood with uplifted machete. A man entered from the blackness without. Josè quickly closed the door, and then addressed him in English.

"Great Scott!" exclaimed the stranger in a mellow voice. "I had no idea I should find any one in this God-forsaken town who could speak real United States!"

Josè drew him into the sacristía. Neither man could see the other in the dense blackness.

"Tell me, friend," began Josè, "who you are, and where you come from."

"Reed--Charles Reed--New York--mining engineer--down here to examine the so-called mines of the Molino Company, now gasping its last while awaiting our report. Arrived this afternoon from Badillo with my partner, fellow named Harris. But--great heavens, man! you certainly were in a stew when we appeared! And why don't you escape now?"

"Escape, friend? Where? Even if we passed the guard, where would we go? There are two women, a girl, and a babe with us. We have little food and no money. Should we gain the Boque or Guamocó trail, we would be pursued and shot down. There is a chance here--none in flight!

"But now, Mr. Reed," continued Josè earnestly, "will you get word from me to the Bishop in Cartagena that our church has been attacked--that its priest is besieged by the Alcalde, and his life in jeopardy?"

"Assuredly--but how?"

"You have money?" said Josè, speaking rapidly. "Good. Your bogas have not returned to Badillo?"

"No, they are staying here for the big show. Execution of the traitors, you know."

"Then, friend, send them at dawn to Bodega Central. Let them take a message to be sent by the telegraph from that place. Tell the Bishop--"

"Sure!" interrupted the other. "Leave it to me. I'll fix up a message that will bring him by return boat! I've been talking with the Honorable Alcalde and I've got his exact number. Say, he certainly is the biggest damn--beg pardon; I mean, the biggest numbskull I have ever run across--and that's saying considerable for a mining man!"

"Go, friend!" said Josè, making no other reply to the man's words. "Go quickly--and use what influence you have with the Alcalde to save us. We have women here--and a young girl!" He found the American's hand and led him out into the night.

* * * * *

Wenceslas Ortiz stood before the Departmental Governor. His face was deeply serious, and his demeanor expressed the utmost gravity. In his hand he held a despatch. The Governor sat at his desk, nervously fumbling a pen.

"Bien, Señor," said Wenceslas quietly, "do you act--or shall I take it to His Excellency, the President?"

The Governor moved uneasily in his chair. "Caramba!" he blurted out. "The report is too meager! And yet, I cannot see but that the Alcalde acted wholly within his rights!"

"Your Excellency, he seizes government arms--he attacks the church--he attempts to destroy the life of its priest. Nominally acting for the Government; at heart, anticlerical. Is it not evident? Will the Government clear itself now of the suspicion which this has aroused?"

"But the priest--did you not say only last week that he himself had published a book violently anticlerical in tone?"

"Señor, we will not discuss the matter further," said Wenceslas, moving toward the door. "Your final decision--you will send troops to Simití, or no?"

"Certainly not! The evidence warrants no interference from me!"

Wenceslas courteously bowed himself out. Once beyond the door, he breathed a great sigh of relief. "Santa Virgen!" he muttered, "but I took a chance! Had he yielded and sent troops, all would have been spoiled. Now for Bogotá!"

He entered his carriage and was driven hurriedly to his sanctum. There he despatched a long message to the President of the Republic. At noon he had a reply. He mused over it for the space of an hour. Then he framed another despatch. "Your Excellency," it read, "the Church supports the Administration."

Late that evening a second message from Bogotá was put into his hand. He tore it open and read, "The Hercules ordered to Simití."

"Ah," he sighed, sinking into his chair. "At last! The President interferes! And now a wire to Ames. And--Caramba, yes! A message to the captain of the Hercules to bring me that girl!"

* * * * *

"Well, old man, I've done all I could to stave off the blundering idiot; but I guess you are in for it! The jig is up, I'm thinking!"

It was Reed talking. Simití again slept, while the American and Josè in the sacristía talked long and earnestly. Fernando kept guard at the door. The other prisoners lay wrapped in slumber.

"Your message went down the river two days ago," continued Reed. "And, believe me! since then I've racked my dusty brain for topics to keep the Alcalde occupied and forgetful of you. But I'm dryer than a desert now; and he vows that to-morrow you and your friends will be dragged out of this old shack by your necks, and then shot."

The two days had been filled with exquisite torture for Josè. Only the presence of Carmen restrained him from rushing out and ending it all. Her faith had been his constant marvel. Every hour, every moment, she knew only the immanence of her God; whereas he, obedient to the undulating Rincón character-curve, expressed the mutability of his faith in hourly alternations of optimism and black despair. After periods of exalted hope, stimulated by the girl's sublime confidence, there would come the inevitable backward rush of all the chilling fear, despondency, and false thought which he had just expelled in vain, and he would be left again floundering helplessly in the dismal labyrinth of terrifying doubts.

The quiet which enwrapped them during these days of imprisonment; the gloom-shrouded church; the awed hush that lay upon them in the presence of the dead Lázaro, stimulated the feeble and sensitive spirit of the priest to an unwonted degree of introspection, and he sat for hours gazing blankly into the ghastly emptiness of his past.

He saw how at the first, when Carmen entered his life with the stimulus of her buoyant faith, there had seemed to follow an emptying of self, a quick clearing of his mentality, and a replacement of much of the morbid thought, which clung limpet-like to his mentality, by new and wonderfully illuminating ideas. For a while he had seemed to be on the road to salvation; he felt that he had touched the robe of the Christ, and heavenly virtue had entered into his being.

But then the shadows began to gather once more. He did not cling to the new truths and spiritual ideas tenaciously enough to work them out in demonstration. He had proved shallow soil, whereon the seed had fallen, only to be choked by the weeds which grew apace therein. The troubles which clustered thick about him after his first few months in Simití had seemed to hamper his freer limbs, and check his upward progress. Constant conflict with Diego, with Don Mario, and Wenceslas; the pressure from his mother and his uncle, had kept him looking, now at evil, now at good, giving life and power to each in turn, and wrestling incessantly with the false concepts which his own mentality kept ever alive. Worrying himself free from one set of human beliefs, he fell again into the meshes of others. Though he thought he knew the truth--though he saw it lived and demonstrated by Carmen--he had yet been afraid to throw himself unreservedly upon his convictions. And so he daily paid the dire penalty which error failed not to exact.

But Carmen, the object of by far the greater part of all his anxious thought, had moved as if in response to a beckoning hand that remained invisible to him. Each day she had grown more beautiful. And each day, too, she had seemed to draw farther away from him, as she rose steadily out of the limited encompassment in which they dwelt. Not by conscious design did she appear to separate from him, but inevitably, because of his own narrow capacity for true spiritual intercourse with such a soul as hers. He shared her ideals; he had sought in his way to attain them; he had striven, too, to comprehend her spirit, which in his heart he knew to be a bright reflection of the infinite Spirit which is God. But as the years passed he had found his efforts to be like her more and more clumsy and blundering, and his responses to her spiritual demands less and less vigorous. At times he seemed to catch glimpses of her soul that awed him. At others he would feel himself half inclined to share the people's belief that she was possessed of powers occult. And then he would sink into despair of ever understanding the girl--for he knew that to do so he must be like her, even as to understand God we must become like Him.

After her fourteenth birthday Josè found himself rapidly ceasing to regard Carmen as a mere child. Not that she did not still often seem delightfully immature, when her spirits would flow wildly, and she would draw him into the frolics which had yielded her such extravagant joy in former days; but that the growth of knowledge and the rapid development of her thought had seemed to bring to her a deepening sense of responsibility, a growing impression of maturity, and an increasing regard for the meaning of life and her part in it. She had ceased to insist that she would never leave Simití. And Josè often thought of late, as he watched her, that he detected signs of irksomeness at the limitations which her environment imposed upon her. But, if so, these were never openly expressed; nor did her manner ever change toward her foster-parents, or toward the simple and uncomprehending folk of her native town.

From the first, Josè had constituted himself her teacher, guide, and protector. And she had joyously accepted him. His soured and rebellious nature had been no barrier to her great love, which had twined about his heart like ivy around a crumbling tower. And his love for the child had swelled like a torrent, fed hourly by countless uncharted streams. He had watched over her like a father; he had rejoiced to see her bloom into a beauty as rich and luxuriant as the tropical foliage; he had gazed for hours into the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes and read there, in ecstasy, a wondrous response to his love; and when, but a few short days ago, she had again intimated a future union, a union upon which, even as a child, she had insisted, yet one which he knew--had always known--utterly, extravagantly impossible--he had, nevertheless, seized upon the thought with a joy that was passionate, desperate--and had then flung it from him with a cry of agony. It was not the disparity of ages; it was not the girl's present immaturity. In less than a year she would have attained the marriageable age of these Latin countries. But he could wait two, three, aye, ten years for such a divine gift! No; the shadow which lay upon his life was cast by the huge presence of the master whose chains he wore, the iron links of which, galling his soul, he knew to be unbreakable. And, as he sat in the gloom of the decayed old church where he was now a prisoner, the thought that his situation but symbolized an imprisonment in bonds eternal roused him to a half-frenzied resolve to destroy himself.

"Padre dear," the girl had whispered to him that night, just before the American came again with his disquieting report, "Love will open the door--Love will set us free. We are not afraid. Remember, Paul thanked God for freedom even while he sat in chains. And I am just as thankful as he."

Josè knew as he kissed her tenderly and bade her go to her place of rest on the bench beside Doña Maria that death stood between her and the stained hand of Wenceslas Ortiz.

As morning reddened in the eastern sky Don Mario, surrounded by an armed guard and preceded by his secretary, who beat lustily upon a small drum, marched pompously down the main street and across the plaza to the church. Holding his cane aloft he ascended the steps of the platform and again loudly demanded the surrender of the prisoners within.

"On what terms, Don Mario?" asked Josè.

"The same," reiterated the Alcalde vigorously.

Josè sighed. "Then we will die, Don Mario," he replied sadly, moving away from the door and leading his little band of harried followers to the rear of the altar.

The Alcalde quickly descended the steps and shouted numerous orders. Several of his men hurried off in various directions, while those remaining at once opened fire upon the church. In a few moments the firing was increased, and the entire attack was concentrated upon the front doors.

The din without became horrible. Shouts and curses filled the morning air. But it was evident to Josè that his besiegers were meeting with no opposition from his own supporters in the fight of two days before. The sight of the deadly rifles in the hands of Don Mario's party had quickly quenched their loyalty to Josè, and led them basely to abandon him and his companions to their fate.

After a few minutes of vigorous assault the attack abruptly ceased, and Josè was called again to the door.

"It's Reed," came the American's voice. He spoke in English. "I've persuaded the old carrion to let me have a moment's pow-wow with you. Say, give the old buzzard what he wants. Otherwise it's sure death for you all. I've argued myself sick with him, but he's as set as concrete. I'll do what I can for you if you come out; but he's going to have the girl, whether or no. Seems that the Bishop of Cartagena wants her; and the old crow here is playing politics with him."

"Yes, old man," chimed in another voice, which Josè knew to be that of Harris. "You know these fellows are hell on politics."

"Shut up, Harris!" growled Reed. Then to Josè, "What'll I tell the old duffer?"

"Lord Harry!" ejaculated Harris, "if I had a couple of Mausers I could put these ancient Springfields on the bum in a hurry!"

"Tell him, friend, that we are prepared to die," replied Josè drearily, as he turned back into the gloom and took Carmen's hand.

The final assault began, and Josè knew that it was only a question of minutes when the trembling doors would fall. He crouched with his companions behind the altar, awaiting the inevitable. Carmen held his hand tightly.

"Love will save us, Padre," she whispered. "Love them! Love them, Padre! They don't know what is using them--and it has no power! God is here--is everywhere! Love will save us!"

Rosendo bent over and whispered to Don Jorge, "When the doors fall and the men rush in, stand you here with me! When they reach the altar we will throw ourselves upon them, I first, you following, while Juan will bring Carmen and try to protect her. With our machetes we will cut our way out. If we find that it is hopeless--then give me Carmen!"

A moment later, as with a loud wail, the two front doors burst asunder and fell crashing to the floor. A flood of golden sunlight poured into the dark room. In its yellow wake rushed the mob, with exultant yells. Rosendo rose quickly and placed himself at the head of his little band.

But, ere the first of the frenzied besiegers had crossed the threshold of the church, a loud cry arose in the plaza.

"The soldiers! Dios arriba! The soldiers!"

Down the main thoroughfare came a volley of shots. Don Mario, half way through the church door, froze in his tracks. Those of his followers who had entered, turned quickly and made pellmell for the exit. Their startled gaze met a company of federal troops rushing down the street, firing as they came. Don Mario strained after his flying wits.

"Close the doors!" he yelled. But the doors were prone upon the floor, and could not be replaced. Then he and his men scrambled out and rushed around to one side of the building. As the soldiers came running up, the Alcalde's followers fired point blank into their faces, then dropped their guns and fled precipitately.

It was all over in a trice. Within an hour staid old Simití lay in the grip of martial law, with its once overweening Alcalde, now a meek and frightened prisoner, arraigned before Captain Morales, holding court in the shabby town hall.

But the court-martial was wholly perfunctory. Though none there but himself knew it, the captain had come with the disposal of the unfortunate Don Mario prearranged. A perfunctory hearing of witnesses, which but increased his approval of his orders, and he pronounced sentence upon the former Alcalde, and closed the case.

"Attack upon the church--Assassination of the man Lázaro--Firing upon federal soldiers--To be shot at sunset, señor," he concluded solemnly.

Don Mario sank to the floor in terror. "Caramba! caramba!" he howled. "But I had letters from the Bishop! I was ordered by him to do it!"

"Bien, señor," replied the captain, whose heart was not wholly devoid of pity, "produce your letters."

"Dios arriba! I burned them! He said I should! I obeyed him! Caramba! I am lost--lost!"

"Señor Capitán," interposed Josè, "may I plead for the man? He is--"

"There, Padre," returned the captain, holding up a hand, "it is useless. Doubtless this has been brought about by motives which you do not understand. It is unfortunate--but inevitable. You have a cárcel here? Bien," addressing his lieutenant, "remove the prisoner to it, and at sunset let the sentence be carried out."

Don Mario, screaming with fear, was dragged from the room.

"And now, señores," continued the captain calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, "I appoint Don Fernando, former secretary, as temporary Alcalde, until such time as the Governor may fill the office permanently. And," he continued, looking about the room with a heavy scowl, while the timid people shrank against the wall, "as for those misguided ones who took part with Don Mario in this anticlerical uprising--his fate will serve, I think, as a warning!"

A hush of horror lay upon the stunned people as they filed slowly out of the room.

"Bien," added the captain, addressing Fernando, "quarters for my men, and rations. We return to the Hercules at daybreak. And let all arms and ammunition be collected. Every house must be searched. And we shall want peones to carry it to the river."

Josè turned away, sick with the horror of it all. A soldier approached him with a message from Don Mario. The condemned man was asking for the last rites. Faint and trembling, the priest accompanied the messenger to the jail.

"Padre! Dios arriba!" wailed the terrified and bewildered Don Mario. "It was a mistake! Don Wenceslas--"

"Yes, I understand, Don Mario," interrupted Josè, tenderly taking the man's hand. "He told you to do it."

"Yes, Padre," sobbed the unfortunate victim. "He said that I would be rich--that I would be elected to Congress--ah, the traitor! And, Padre--I burned his letters because it was his wish! Ah, Santa Virgen!" He put his head on the priest's shoulder and wept violently.

Josè's heart was wrung; but he was powerless to aid the man. And yet, as he dwelt momentarily on his own sorrows, he almost envied the fate which had overtaken the misguided Don Mario.

The lieutenant entered. "Señor Padre," he said, "the sun is low. In a quarter of an hour--"

Don Mario sank to the ground and clasped the priest's knees. Josè held up his hand, and the lieutenant, bowing courteously, withdrew. The priest knelt beside the cowering prisoner.

"Don Mario," he said gently, holding the man's hand, "confess all to me. It may be the means of saving other lives--and then you will have expiated your own crimes."

"Padre," moaned the stricken man, rocking back and forth, his head buried in his hands and tears streaming through his fingers, "Padre, you will forgive--?"

"Aye, Don Mario, everything. And the Christ forgives. Your sins are remitted. But remove now the last burden from your soul--the guilty knowledge of the part Don Wenceslas has had in the disaster which has come upon Simití. Tell it all, friend, for you may save many precious lives thereby."

The fallen Alcalde roused himself by a mighty effort. Forgetting for the moment his own dire predicament, he opened his heart. Josè sat before him in wide-mouthed astonishment. Don Mario's confession brought a revelation that left him cold. The lieutenant entered again.

"One moment," said Josè. Then, to Don Mario: "And Carmen?"

Don Mario leaned close to the priest and whispered low. "No, she is not Diego's child! And, Padre, take her away, at once! But out of the country! There is not an inch of ground in all Colombia now where she would be safe from Don Wenceslas!"

Josè's head sank upon his breast. Then he again took Don Mario's hand.

"Friend," he said gravely, "rest assured, what you have told me saves at least one life, and removes the sin with which your own was stained. And now," rising and turning to the waiting lieutenant, "we are ready."

Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis! Santa Virgen, San Salvador, ora pro nobis!

A few minutes later a sharp report echoed through the Simití valley and startled the herons that were seeking their night's rest on the wooded isle. Then Josè de Rincón, alone, and with a heart of lead, moved slowly down through the dreary village and crossed the deserted plaza to his lowly abode.

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Chapter 34

The low-hung moon, shrouded in heavy vapor, threw an eldritch shimmer upon the little group that silently bore the body of the martyred Lázaro from the old church late that night to the dreary cemetery on the hill. Josè took but a reluctant part in the proceedings. He would even have avoided this last service to his faithful friend if he could. It seemed to him as he stumbled along the stony road behind the body which Rosendo and Don Jorge carried that his human endurance had been strained so far beyond the elastic limit that there could now be no rebound. Every thought that touched his sore mind made it bleed anew, for every thought that he accepted was acrid, rasping, oppressive. The sheer weight of foreboding, of wild apprehension, of paralyzing fear, crushed him, until his shoulders bent low as he walked. How, lest he perform a miracle, could he hope to extricate himself and his loved ones from the meshes of the net, far-cast, but with unerring aim, which had fallen upon them?

As he passed the town hall he saw through the open door the captain's cot, and a guard standing motionless beside it. The captain had elected to remain there for the night, while his men found a prickly hospitality among the cowering townsfolk. Josè knew now that the hand which Don Mario had dealt himself in the game inaugurated by Wenceslas had been from a stacked deck. He knew that the President of the Republic had ordered Morales to this inoffensive little town to quell an alleged anticlerical uprising, and that the execution of the misguided Alcalde had been determined long before the Hercules had got under way. He could see that it was necessary for the Government to sacrifice its agent in the person of the Alcalde, in order to prove its own loyalty to the Church. And in return therefor he knew it would expect, not without reason, the coöperation of the Church in case the President's interference in the province of Bolívar should precipitate a general revolt.

But what had been determined upon as his own fate? He had not the semblance of an idea. From the confession of the ruined Alcalde he now knew that Don Mario had been poisoned against him from the beginning; that even the letters of introduction which Wenceslas had given him to the Alcalde contained the charge of his having accomplished the ruin of the girl Maria in Cartagena, and of his previous incarceration in the monastery of Palazzola. And Don Mario had confessed in his last moments that Wenceslas had sought to work through him and Josè in the hope that the location of the famous mine, La Libertad, might be revealed. Don Mario had been instructed to get what he could out of this scion of Rincón; and only his own greed and cupidity had caused him to play fast and loose with both sides until, falling before the allurements which Wenceslas held out, he had rushed madly into his own destruction. Josè realized that so far he himself had proved extremely useful to Wenceslas--but had his usefulness ended? At these thoughts his soul momentarily suffused with the pride of the old and hectoring Rincón stock and rose, instinct with revolt--but only to sink again in helpless resignation, while the shadow of despair rolled in and quenched his feeble determination.

Rosendo and Don Jorge placed the body in one of the vacant vaults and filled the entrance with some loose bricks. Then they stood back expectantly. It was now the priest's turn. He had a part to perform, out there on the bleak hilltop in the ghostly light. But Josè remained motionless and silent, his head sunk upon his breast.

Then Rosendo, waxing troubled, spoke in gentle admonition. "He would expect it, you know, Padre."

Josè turned away from the lonely vault. Bitter tears coursed down his cheeks, and his voice broke. He laid his head on Rosendo's stalwart shoulder and wept aloud.

The sickly, greenish cast of the moonlight silhouetted the figures of the three men in grotesque shapes against the cemetery wall and the crumbling tombs. The morose call of a toucan floated weirdly upon the heavy air. The faint wail of the frogs in the shallow waters below rose like the despairing sighs of lost souls.

Rosendo wound his long arm about the sorrowing priest. Don Jorge's muscles knotted, and a muttered imprecation rose from his tight lips. Strangely had the shift and coil of the human mind thrown together these three men, so different in character, yet standing now in united protest against the misery which men heap upon their fellow-men in the name of Christ. Josè, the apostate agent of Holy Church, his hands bound, and his heart bursting with yearning toward his fellow-men; Rosendo, simple-minded and faithful, chained to the Church by heredity and association, yet ashamed of its abuses and lusts; Don Jorge, fierce in his denunciation of the political and religious sham and hypocrisy which he saw masking behind the cloak of imperial religion.

"I have nothing to say, friends," moaned Josè, raising his head; "nothing that would not still further reveal my own miserable weakness and the despicable falsity of the Church. If the Church had followed the Christ, it would have taught me to do likewise; and I should now call to Lázaro and bid him come forth, instead of shamefully confessing my impotency and utter lack of spirituality, even while I pose as an Alter Christus."

"You--you will leave a blessing with him before we go, Padre?" queried the anxious Rosendo, clinging still to the frayed edge of his fathers' faith.

"My blessing, Rosendo," replied Josè sadly, "would do no good. He lies there because we have utterly forgotten what the Master came to teach. He lies there because of our false, undemonstrable, mortal beliefs. Oh, that the Church, instead of wasting time murmuring futile prayers over dead bodies, had striven to learn to do the deeds which the Christ said we should all do if we but kept his commandments!"

"But, Padre, you will say Masses for him?" pursued Rosendo.

"Masses? No, I can not--now. I would not take his or your money to give to the Church to get his soul out of an imagined purgatory which the Church long ago invented for the purpose of enriching herself materially--for, alas! after spiritual riches she has had little hankering."

"To pay God to get His own children out of the flames, eh?" suggested Don Jorge. "It is what I have always said, the religion of the Church is a religion de dinero. If there ever was a God, either He is still laughing Himself sick at our follies--or else He has wept Himself to death over them! Jesus Christ taught no such stuff!"

"Friend," said Josè solemnly, turning to Don Jorge, "I long since learned what the whole world must learn some time, that the Church stands to-day, not as the bride of the Christ, but as the incarnation of the human mind, as error opposed to Truth. It is the embodiment of 'Who shall be greatest?' It is one of the various phenomena of the human mentality; and its adherents are the victims of authoritative falsehood. Its Mass and countless other ceremonies differ in no essential respect from ancient pagan worship. Of spirituality it has none. And so it can do none of the works of the Master. Its corrupting faith is foully materialistic. It has been weighed and found wanting. And as the human mind expands, the incoming light must drive out the black beliefs and deeds of Holy Church, else the oncoming centuries will have no place for it."

"I believe you!" ejaculated Don Jorge. "But why do you still remain a priest? Hombre! I knew when I saw you on the river boat that you were none. But," his voice dropping to a whisper, "there is a soldier in the road below. It would be well to leave. He might think we were here to plot."

When the soldier had passed, they quietly left the gloomy cemetery and made their way quickly back through the straggling moonlight to Rosendo's house. Doña Maria, with characteristic quietude, was preparing for the duties of the approaching day. Carmen lay asleep. Josè went to her bedside and bent over her, wondering. What were the events of the past few days in her sight? How did she interpret them? Was her faith still unshaken? What did Lázaro's death and the execution of Don Mario mean to her? Did she, as he had done, look upon them as real events in a real world, created and governed by a good God? Or did she still hold such things to be the unreal phenomena of the human mentality?--unreal, because opposed to God, and without the infinite principle. As for himself, how had the current of his life been diverted by this rare child! What had she not sought to teach him by her simple faith, her unshaken trust in the immanence of good! True, as a pure reflection of good she had seemed to be the means of stirring up tremendous evil. But had he not seen the evil eventually consume itself, leaving her unscathed? And yet, would this continue? He himself had always conceded to the forces of evil as great power as to those of good--nay, even greater. And even now as he stood looking at her, wrapped in peaceful slumber, his strained sight caught no gleam of hope, no light flashing through the heavy clouds of misfortune that lowered above her. He turned away with an anxious sigh.

"Padre," said the gentle Doña Maria, "the two Americanos--"

"Ah, yes," interrupted Josè, suddenly remembering that he had sent word to them to use his house while they remained in the town. "They had escaped my thought. Bien, they are--?"

"They brought their baggage to your house an hour ago and set up their beds in your living room. They will be asleep by now."

"Good," he replied, a wistful sense of gratitude stealing over him at the reassuring thought of their presence. "Bien, we will not disturb them."

Summoning Rosendo and Don Jorge, the three men sought the lake's edge. There, seated on the loose shales, they wrestled with their problem until dawn spread her filmy veil over the shimmering stars.

* * * * *

Long before sun-up the soldiers and the peones, whom Captain Morales had impressed, were busy gathering the commandeered rifles and carrying them down to the gunboat Hercules, waiting at the mouth of the Boque river, some six or eight miles distant, and over a wild trail. The townsfolk, thoroughly frightened, hugged the shelter of their homes, and left the streets to the troops. Though they detested the soldiers, yet none would lightly risk a blow from the heavy hand of Morales, whose authority on a punitive expedition of this sort was unlimited. The summary execution of the Alcalde had stricken them with horror, and left an impression which never would be erased from their memories.

Immediately after the early desayuno the captain appeared at Rosendo's door. He had come to say farewell to the priest. All of the soldiers had disappeared down the trail, with the exception of the two who formed the captain's small personal escort.

"Conque, adios, Señor Padre" he called cheerily, as he approached. Josè was sitting at table with Rosendo's family and Don Jorge. Instinctively he rose hastily, and seizing Carmen, thrust her into the adjoining bedroom and closed the door. Then he went out to face the captain.

"Much excitement for your little pueblo, no?" exclaimed the captain with a bluff laugh as he grasped Josè's hand. "But a lesson like this will last a century. I rejoice that I found it unnecessary to burn the town."

Josè trembled as he replied. "Señor Capitán, I, too, rejoice. But--the state of the country--what may we expect?"

The captain laughed again. "Caramba, Padre mío! who can say? There is much talk, many angry looks, much gesturing and waving of hands. Congress still sits. The President sees fit to send me here, without order from the Departmental Governor. Hombre! what will follow? Quien sabe?" He shrugged his shoulders with that expressive Latin gesture which indicates complete irresponsibility for and indifference to results.

Josè's heart began to beat more regularly. He again took the captain's hand. He was eager to see him depart. "Bueno pues, Señor Capitán," he said hurriedly. "I wish you every felicitation on your return trip. Ah--ah--your orders contained no reference to--to me?" he added hesitatingly.

"None whatever, Señor Padre," replied the captain genially. He turned to go, and Josè stifled a great sigh of relief. But suddenly the captain stopped; then turned again.

"Caramba!" he ejaculated, "I nearly forgot! Hombre! what would His Grace have said?"

He fumbled in an inner pocket and drew forth a telegraphic document.

"And you will seize the person of one Rosendo Ariza's daughter and immediately send her with proper conveyance to the Sister Superior of the convent of Our Lady in Cartagena," he read aloud.

Josè froze to the spot. From within Rosendo's house came a soft, scurrying sound. Then he heard a movement in his own. Morales returned the folded message to his pocket and started to enter the house. Josè could offer no resistance. He was rendered suddenly inert, although vividly conscious of a drama about to be enacted in which he and his loved ones would play leading rôles. As in a dream he heard the captain address Rosendo and gruffly demand that he produce his daughter. He heard a deep curse from Rosendo; and his blood congealed more thickly as he dwelt momentarily on the old man's possible conduct in the face of the federal demand. He heard Morales hunting impatiently through the shabby rooms. Then he saw him emerge in a towering rage--but empty-handed.

"Caramba, Padre!" cried the angry captain, "but what is this? Have they not had one good lesson, that I must inflict another? I demand to know, has this Rosendo Ariza a daughter?"

He stood waiting for the answer that Josè knew he must make. The priest's hollow voice sounded like an echo from another world.

"Yes."

"Bien, then I have discovered one honest man in yourself, Padre. You will now assist me in finding her."

"I--I know not--where--where she is, Señor Capitán," murmured Josè with feebly fluttering lips.

They were alone, this little party of actors, although many an eye peered out timidly at them from behind closed shutters and barred doors around the plaza. Don Jorge and Rosendo came out of the house and stood behind Josè. The captain confronted them, bristling with wrath at the insolence that dared oppose his supreme authority. The heat had already begun to pour down in torrents. The morning air was light, but not a sound traversed it. The principals in this tense drama might have been painted against that vivid tropical background.

Then Harris, moved by his piquant Yankee curiosity, appeared at the door of the parish house, his great eyes protruding and his head craned forth like a monster heron. Morales saw him. "Ha!" he exclaimed. "Perhaps the Americano hides the daughter of Ariza!"

He started for the priest's door. But ere he reached it Reed suddenly appeared from behind Harris. In his hand he grasped a large American flag. Holding this high above his head, he blocked the entrance.

"Hold! Señor Capitán!" he cried in his perfect Spanish. "We are American citizens, and this house is under the protection of the American Government!"

Morales fell back and stood with mouth agape in astonishment. The audacity of this foreign adventurer fairly robbed him of his breath. He glanced dubiously from him to the priest. Then, to save the situation, he broke into an embarrassed laugh.

"Bien, my good friend," he finally said, addressing Reed in his courtliest manner, "all respect to your excellent Government. And, if you will accept it, I shall be pleased to secure you a commission in the Colombian army. But, my orders--you understand, do you not? The sun is already high, and I can not lose more time. Therefore, you will kindly stand aside and permit me to search that house." He motioned to his men and moved forward.

Still holding aloft the flag, Reed drew a long revolver. Harris quickly produced one of equal size and wicked appearance. Morales stopped abruptly and looked at them in hesitation. He knew what he might expect. He had heard much of American bravery. His chief delight when not in the field was the perusal of a battered history of the American Civil War; and his exclamations of admiration for the hardihood of those who participated in it were always loud and frequent. But he, too, had a reputation to sustain. The Americans stood grimly silent before him. Harris's finger twitched nervously along the trigger, and a smile played over his thin lips. The man was aching for a scrimmage.

Then, his face flaming with shame and chagrin, Morales turned to his escort and commanded them to advance.

Up went the two revolvers. A moment more, and--

A cry came from Rosendo's house. Ana, her face swollen with weeping, clasping her sightless babe to her bosom, had emerged and faced the captain.

"Señor," she said in a voice strained to a whisper, "I am the daughter of Rosendo Ariza."

A half-suppressed exclamation burst from the lips of Rosendo. A desperate, suffocating joy surged over the riven soul of the priest. Don Jorge's mouth opened, but no sound came forth. This precipitate dénoûement held them rigid with astonishment.

A heavy silence descended upon them all. In the eyes of Josè Ana's tense figure, standing grim and rigid before the captain, took on a dignity that was majestic, a worth that transcended all human computation. A Magdalen, yes, standing with her sin-conceived child clasped in her trembling arms. But this act--God above! this sacrificial act broke the alabaster box and spread the precious nard over the feet of the pitying Christ.

Morales turned questioningly to Josè. "Is this true, Padre?" he asked.

"It is," murmured the dazed priest, scarce hearing his own words.

"But--I have no orders respecting a child--"

"They cannot be separated," half whispered Josè, not daring to meet the vacant gaze of the babe.

The captain hesitated a moment longer. Then, with an upward glance at the sun, he gave a sharp command to his men. Placing the woman between them, the two soldiers faced about and moved quickly away. With a low bow and a final "Adios, Señores," the captain hurriedly joined them. Ere the little group before Rosendo's house had collected their wits, the soldiers and their frail charge had mounted the hill beyond the old church and disappeared into the matted trail that led from it to the distant river.

Rosendo was the first to break the mesmeric silence. "Dios arriba!" he cried. His knees gave way beneath him and he buried his face in his hands. "Anita--!"

Then he rose hastily, and made as if to pursue the soldiers. Josè and Don Jorge restrained him.

"Hombre!" cried Don Jorge, "but it is the hand of Providence! It is better so! Listen, friend Rosendo, it but gives us time to act! Perhaps many days! When the mistake is discovered they will return, and they will bring her back unharmed--though they may not learn until she reaches Cartagena! Bien, we can not waste time in mourning now! Courage, man! Think--think hard!"

Rosendo strove to unravel his tangled wits. Josè went to him and clasped his big hand.

"Rosendo--friend--would you have it different? I--I alone am to blame that they took Anita! But--it was to save--to save--Ah, God! if I did wrong, take the American's revolver and shoot me!" He tore open his cassock and stood rigid before the dazed man. Anguish and soul-torture had warped his features.

"Caramba! Enough of such talk!" cried Don Jorge impatiently. "We shall find plenty of others more deserving of shooting, I think! The girl--where is she?"

Reed turned back into the parish house, and emerged a moment later with Carmen and Doña Maria, who knew not as yet of Ana's departure. "I hid them in your bedroom, Padre," Reed explained.

Josè threw him a look of gratitude. "Doña Maria," he cried, "do you take Carmen into your house and await our decision! And you, men, go into my study! It is as Don Jorge says, we must act quickly! Leave your flag hanging, Mr. Reed! It may serve to protect us further against the angry people of Simití!"

The five men quickly gathered in Josè's living room in a strained, excited group. The priest was the first to speak. Rapidly he related in detail Don Mario's last confession. When he had closed, Reed made reply.

"Old man," he said, familiarly addressing Josè, "having seen the girl, I do not at all wonder that blood has been shed over her. But to keep her another hour in Simití is to sacrifice her. Get her away--and at once! If not, the people will drive you out. I talked with Fernando last night. With the soldiers gone, the people will rise up against you all."

"But, friend, where shall we go?" cried Josè in desperation. "There is no place in Colombia now where she would be safe!"

"Then leave the country," suggested Reed.

"It can not be done," interposed Don Jorge. "It would be impossible for him to escape down the river with the girl, even if he had funds to carry her away from Colombia, which he has not. At any port he would be seized. To take the trail would only postpone for a short time their certain capture. And then--well, we will not predict! To flee into the jungle--or to hide among the peones along the trails--that might be done--yes."

"What's the gibberish about now, pal?" put in Harris, whose knowledge of the Spanish tongue was nil.

Reed explained to him at some length.

"Well, that's easy," returned Harris. "Tell 'em you'll take the girl out yourself. She's white enough to pass as your daughter, you know."

Rosendo, stunned by the sudden departure of Ana, had sat in a state of stupefaction during this conversation. But now he roused up and turned to Reed. "What says he, señor?" he inquired thickly.

The latter translated his friend's suggestion, laughing as he commented on its gross absurdity.

Rosendo dropped his head again upon his chest and lapsed into silence. Then he rose unsteadily and passed a hand slowly across his brow. A strange light had come into his eyes. For a moment he stood looking fixedly at Reed. Finally he began to speak.

"Señores," he said, rolling his syllables sonorously, "the time has come at last! For years I have waited, waited, knowing that some day the great gift which the good God put into my hands for the little Carmen would be needed. Señores, my parents were slaves. The cruel Spaniards drove them to and from their heavy labors with the lash; and when the great war ended, they sank exhausted into their graves. My parents--I have not told you this, Padre--were the slaves of Don Ignacio de Rincón!"

An exclamation burst from the astonished priest's lips. What, then, had this man been concealing all these years? Little wonder that he had hesitated when he learned that a Rincón had come to the parish of Simití!

The old man quickly resumed. As he continued, his recital became dramatic. As they listened, his auditors sat spellbound.

"Don Ignacio de Rincón himself was kind of heart. But his overseers--ah, Dios arriba! they were cruel! cruel! Many a time the great lash wound itself about my poor father's shrinking body, and hurled him shrieking to the ground--and why? Because his blistered hands could not hold the batea with which he washed gold for your grandfather, Padre, your grandfather!"

Josè's head sank upon his breast. A groan escaped him, and tears trickled slowly down his sunken cheeks.

"I bear you no malice, Padre," continued Rosendo. "It was hard those first days to accept you here. But when, during your fever, I learned from your own lips what you had suffered, I knew that you needed a friend, and I took you to my bosom. And now I am glad--ah, very glad, that I did so. But, though my confidence in you increased day by day, I could never bring myself to tell you my great secret--the secret that now I reveal for the sake of the little Carmen. Padre--señores--I--I am the owner of the great mine, La Libertad!"

Had the heavens collapsed the astonishment of Don Jorge and the priest could not have been greater. The coming of the soldiers, the terrific strain of the past few days, culminating in the loss of Ana--all was for the moment obliterated.

Josè started up and tried to speak. But the words would not come. Rosendo paused a moment for the effect which he knew his revelation would produce, and then went on rapidly:

"Padre, the mine belonged to your grandfather. It produced untold wealth. The gold taken from it was brought down the Guamocó trail to Simití, and from here shipped to Cartagena, where he lived in great elegance. I make no doubt the gold which you and the little Carmen discovered in the old church that day came from this same wonderful mine. But the ore was quartz, and arrastras were required to grind it, and much skill was needed, too. He had men from old Spain, deeply versed in such knowledge. Ah, the tales my poor father told of that mine!

"Bien, the war broke out. The Guamocó region became depopulated, and sank back into the jungle. The location of the mine had been recorded in Cartagena; but, as you know, when Don Ignacio fled from this country he destroyed the record. He did the same with the records in Simití, on that last flying trip here, when he hid the gold in the altar of the old church. And then the jungle grew up around the mine during those thirteen long years of warfare--the people who knew of it died off--and the mine was lost, utterly lost!"

He stopped for breath. The little group sat enthralled before him. All but Harris, who was vainly beseeching Reed to translate to him the dramatic story.

"Padre," continued Rosendo at length, "from what my father had told me I had a vague idea of the location of that mine. And many a weary day I spent hunting for it! Then--then I found it! Ah, Caramba! I wept aloud for joy! It was while I was on the Tiguí, washing gold. I was working near what we used to call Pozo Cayman, opposite La Colorado, where the Frenchmen died. I camped on the lonely bank there, with only the birds and the wondering animals to keep me company. One dark night, as I lay on the ground, I had a dream. I believe in dreams, Padre. I dreamt that the Virgin, all in white, came to me where I lay--that she whispered to me and told me to rise quickly and drive away the devil.

"I awoke suddenly. It was still dark, but a pair of fiery eyes were gleaming at me from the bush. I seized my machete and started after them. It was a jaguar, Padre, and he fled up the hill from me. Why I followed, I know not, unless I thought, still half asleep as I was, that I was obeying the Virgin.

"At the top of the hill I lost the animal--and myself, as well. I am a good woodsman, señores, and not easily lost. But this time my poor head went badly astray. I started to cut through the bush. At last I came to the edge of a steep ravine. I clambered down the sides into the gully below. I thought it looked like an old trail, and I followed it. So narrow was it at times that the walls almost touched. But I went on. Then it widened, and I knew that at last I was in a trail, long since abandoned--and how old, only the good God himself knew!

"But my story grows as long as the trail! On and on I went, crossing stream after stream, scaring snakes from my path, frightening the birds above, who doubtless have never seen men in that region, all the time thinking I was going toward the Tiguí, until at last the old sunken trail led me up a tremendous hill. At the top, buried in a dense matting of brush, I fell over a circle of stones. They were the remains of an ancient arrastra. Further on I found another; and still another. Then, near them, the stone foundations of houses, long since gone to decay. From these the trail took me into a gully, where but little water flowed. It was lined with quartz bowlders. I struck off a piece from one of the largest. It showed specks of gold! My eyes danced! I forgot that I was lost! I went on up the stream, striking off piece after piece from the great rocks. Every one showed specks of free gold. Caramba! I reached the top of the hill. Hombre! how can I tell it! Tunnel after tunnel yawned at me from the hillside. Some of these were still open, where they had been driven through the hard rock. Others had caved. I had my wallet, in which I always carry matches and a bit of candle. I entered one of the open tunnels. Dios arriba! far within I crossed a quartz vein--I scraped it with my machete. Caramba! it could not have been less than six feet in width--and all speckled with gold! Above it, far into the blackness, where bats were scurrying madly, the ore had been taken out long, long ago. In the darkness below I stumbled over old, rusted tools. Every one bore the inscription, 'I de R.' Your grandfather, Padre, put his stamp on everything belonging to him. Then, as I sat trying to place myself, my father's oft-told story of the location of the mine flashed into my brain. My memory is good, Padre. And I knew then where I was. I was at the headwaters of the Borrachera. And I had discovered La Libertad!"

Reed's eager ears had drunk in every word of the old man's dramatic story. His practical mind had revolved its possibilities. When Rosendo paused again, he quickly asked:

"The title, señor?"

Rosendo drew forth a paper from his bosom. It bore the government stamp. He handed it to Reed.

"You will recall, Padre," he said, addressing the dully wondering Josè, "that I once asked you to give me a name for a mine--a rare name? And you told me to call it the--the--what is it?"

"The Chicago mine, Rosendo?" replied Josè, recalling the incident.

"Yes," exclaimed the old man excitedly, "that is it! Bien, I told no one of my discovery of years before. I had never had money enough to get the title to it. Besides, I was afraid. But when it seemed that I might soon have use for it I sold my finca for funds and had Lázaro apply through Don Mario for title to a mine called--called--"

"The Chicago mine," said Josè, again coming to the rescue.

"Just so! Bien, Lázaro got the title, which I never could have done, for at that time Don Mario would not have put through any papers for me. I then had the unsuspecting Lázaro transfer the title to me, and--Bien, I am the sole owner of La Libertad!"

Reed examined the paper at some length, and then handed it back to Rosendo. "Can we not talk business, señor?" he said, speaking with some agitation. "I am so situated that I can float an American company to operate this mine, and allow you a large percentage of the returns. Great heavens!" he exclaimed, unable longer to contain himself, "it is your fortune!"

"Señor," replied Rosendo, slowly shaking his head, "I want no share in any of your American companies. But--your friend--he has suggested just what has been running through my mind ever since you came to Simití."

Josè's heart suddenly stopped. The wild, terrifying idea tore through his fraught brain. He turned quickly to Reed and addressed him in English. "No--no--it is impossible! The old man wanders! You can not take the girl--!"

"Certainly not!" ejaculated Reed with some warmth. "Such a thing is quite out of the question!"

"Stuff!" exclaimed Harris. "Now look here, Mr. Priest, Reed's wife is in Cartagena, waiting for him. Came down from New York that far for the trip. Kind of sickly, you know. What's to prevent her from taking the girl to the States and placing her in a boarding school there until such time as you can either follow, or this stew down here has settled sufficiently to permit of her returning to you?"

Reed threw up a deprecatory hand. "Impossible!" he cried.

"But," interposed Harris exasperatedly, "would you leave the ravishing little beauty here to fall into the hands of the cannibals who are trailing her? Lord Harry! if it weren't for the looks of the thing I'd take her myself. But you've got a wife, so it'd be easy." He leaned over to Reed and concluded in a whisper, "The old man's going to make a proposition--listen!"

"But," remonstrated the latter, "the expense of keeping her in New York indefinitely! For, unless I mistake much, none of these people will ever see the States after she leaves. And then I have an adopted daughter on my hands! And, heaven knows! now that my ambitious wife is determined to break into New York society with her adorable sister, I have no money to waste on adopted children!"

Rosendo, who had been studying the Americans attentively during their conversation, now laid a hand on Reed's. "Señor," he said in a quiet tone, "if you will take the little Carmen with you, and keep her safe from harm until Padre Josè can come to you, or she can be returned to us here, I will transfer to you a half interest in this mine."

Josè sprang to his feet. His face was blanched with fear. "Rosendo!" he cried wildly, "do not do that! Dios arriba, no! You do not know this man! Ah, señor," turning to Reed, "I beg you will forgive--but Rosendo is mad to suggest such a thing! We cannot permit it--we--I--oh, God above!" He sank again into his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Don Jorge gave vent to a long, low whistle. Rosendo, his voice husky and his lips trembling, went on:

"I know, Padre--I know. But it must be done! I will give the mine to the American--and to Carmen. He has a powerful government back of him, and he is able to defend the title and save her interest as well as his own. As for me, I--Bien, I shall want nothing when Carmen goes--nothing."

"For heaven's sake!" burst in Harris, seizing Reed's arm. "If you don't tell me what all this is about now I shall shoot--and not straight up, either!"

"Señores," said Reed in a controlled voice, "let me talk this matter over with my friend here. I will come to you in an hour."

Rosendo and Don Jorge bowed and silently withdrew from the parish house. The former went at once to apprise the wondering Doña Maria of the events which had crowded the morning's early hours and to answer her apprehensive questionings regarding Ana. Carmen was to know only that Ana--but what could he tell her? That the woman had sacrificed herself for the girl? No; but that they had seized this opportunity to send her, under the protection of Captain Morales, to the Sisters of the Convent of Our Lady. The old man knew that the girl would see only God's hand in the event.

Josè as in a dream sought Carmen. It seemed to him that once his arms closed about her no power under the skies could tear them asunder. He found her sitting in the doorway at the rear of Rosendo's house, looking dreamily out over the placid lake. Cucumbra, now old and feeble, slept at her feet. As the man approached he heard her murmur repeatedly, "It is not true--it is not true--it is not true!"

"Carmen!" cried Josè, seizing her hand. "Come with me!"

She rose quickly. "Gladly, Padre--but where?"

"God only knows--to the end of the world!" cried the frenzied man.

"Well, Padre dear," she softly replied, as she smiled up into his drawn face, "we will start out. But I think we had better rest when we reach the shales, don't you?"

Then she put her hand in his.

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Chapter 35

"No, Padre dear," with an energetic shake of her head, "no. Not even after all that has seemed to happen to us do I believe it true. No, I do not believe it real. Evil is not power. It does not exist, excepting in the human mind. And that, as you yourself know, can not be real, for it is all that God is not."

They were seated beneath the slowly withering algarroba tree out on the burning shales. Josè still held the girl's hand tightly in his. Again he was struggling with self, struggling to pass the borderline from, self-consciousness to God-consciousness; striving, under the spiritual influence of this girl, to break the mesmeric hold of his own mortal beliefs, and swing freely out into his true orbit about the central Sun, infinite Mind.

The young girl, burgeoning into a marvelous womanhood, sat before him like an embodied spirit. Her beauty of soul shone out in gorgeous luxuriance, and seemed to him to envelop her in a sheen of radiance. The brilliant sunshine glanced sparkling from her glossy hair into a nimbus of light about her head. Her rich complexion was but faintly suggestive to him of a Latin origin. Her oval face and regular features might have indicated any of the ruddier branches of the so-called Aryan stock. But his thought was not dwelling on these things now. It was brooding over the events of the past few weeks, and their probable consequences. And this he had just voiced to her.

"Padre dear," she had said, when his tremulous voice ceased, "how much longer will you believe that two and two are seven? And how much longer will you try to make me believe it? Oh, Padre, at first you did seem to see so clearly, and you talked so beautifully to me! And then, when things seemed to go wrong, you went right back to your old thoughts and opened the door and let them all in again. And so things couldn't help getting worse for you. You told me yourself, long ago, that you would have to empty your mind of its old beliefs. But I guess you didn't get them all out. If you had cleaned house and got your mind ready for the good thoughts, they would have come in. You know, you have to get ready for the good, before it can come. You have to be receptive. But you go right on getting ready for evil. If you loved God--really loved Him--why, you would not be worried and anxious to-day, and you would not be believing still that two and two are seven. You told me, oh, so long ago! that this human life was just a sense of life, a series of states of consciousness, and that consciousness was only mental activity, the activity of thought. Well, I remembered that, and put it into practice--but you didn't. A true consciousness is the activity of true thought, you said. A false consciousness is the activity of false thought. True thought comes from God, who is mind. False thought is the opposite of true thought, and doesn't come from any mind at all, but is just supposition. A supposition is never really created, because it is never real--never truth. True thought becomes externalized to us in good, in harmony, in happiness. False thought becomes externalized to us in unhappiness, sickness, loss, in wrong-doing, and in death. It is unreal, and yet awfully real to those who believe it to be real. Why don't you act your knowledge, as you at first said you were going to do? I have all along tried to do this. Whenever thoughts come to me I always look carefully at them to see whether they are based on any real principle, on God. If so, I let them in. If not, I drive them away. Sometimes it has been hard to tell just which were true and which false. And sometimes I got caught, and had to pay the penalty. But every day I do better; and the time will come at last when I shall be able to tell at once which thoughts are true and which untrue. When that time comes, nothing but good thoughts will enter, and nothing but good will be externalized to me in consciousness. I shall be in heaven--all the heaven there is. It is the heaven which Jesus talked so much about, and which he said was within us all. It is so simple, Padre dear, so simple!"

The man sat humbly before her like a rebuked child. He knew that she spoke truth. Indeed, these were the very things that he had taught her himself. Why, then, had he failed to demonstrate them? Only because he had attempted to mix error with truth--had clung to the reality and immanence of evil, even while striving to believe good omnipotent and infinite. He had worked out these theories, and they had appeared beautiful to him. But, while Carmen had eagerly grasped and assimilated them, even to the consistent shaping of her daily life to accord with them, he had gone on putting the stamp of genuineness and reality upon every sort of thought and upon every human event as it had been enacted in his conscious experience. His difficulty was that, having proclaimed the allness of spirit, God, he had proceeded to bow the knee to evil. Carmen had seemed to know that the mortal, material concepts of humanity would dissolve in the light of truth. He, on the other hand, had clung to them, even though they seared the mind that held them, and became externalized in utter wretchedness.

"When you let God's thoughts in, Padre, and drive out their opposites, then sickness and unhappiness will disappear, just as the mist disappears over the lake when the sun rises and the light goes through it. If you really expected to some day see the now 'unseen things' of God, you would get ready for them, and you would 'rejoice always,' even though you did seem to see the wickedness of Padre Diego, the coming of the soldiers, the death of Lázaro and Don Mario, and lots of unhappiness about yourself and me. Those men are not dead--except to your thought. You ought to know that all these things are the unreal thoughts externalized in your consciousness. And, knowing them for what they really are, the opposites of God's thoughts, you ought to know that they can have no more power over you than anything else that you know to be supposition. We can suppose that two and two are seven, but we can't make it true. The supposition does not have any effect upon us. We know that it isn't so. But as regards just thought--and you yourself said that everything reduces to thought--why, people seem to think it is different. But it isn't. Don't you understand what the good man Jesus meant when he told the Pharisees to first cleanse the cup and platter within, that the outside might also be clean? Why, that was a clear case of externalization, if there ever was one! Cleanse your thought, and everything outside of you will then become clean, for your clean thought will become externalized. You once said that you believed in the theory that 'like attracts like.' I do, too. I believe that good thoughts attract good ones, and evil thoughts attract thoughts like themselves. I have proved it. And you ought to know that your life shows it, too. You hold fear-thoughts and worry-thoughts, and then, just as soon as these become externalized to you as misfortune and unhappiness, you say that evil is real and powerful, and that God permits it to exist. Yes, God does permit all the existence there is to a supposition--which is none. You pity yourself and all the world for being unhappy, when all you need is to do as Jesus told you, and know God to be infinite Mind, and evil to be only the suppositional opposite, without reality, without life, without power--unless you give it these things in your own consciousness. You don't have to take thought for your life. You don't have to be covetous, or envious, or fearful, or anxious. You couldn't do anything if you were. These things don't help you. Jesus said that of himself he could do nothing. But--as soon as he recognized God as the infinite principle of all, and acted that knowledge--why, then he raised the dead! And at last, when his understanding was greater, he dissolved the mental concept which people called his human body. Don't you see it, Padre--don't you? I know you do!"

Yes, he saw it. He always did when she pleaded thus. And yet:

"But, Carmen, padre Rosendo would send you out of the country with these Americans!"

"Yes, so you have said. And you have said that you have always feared you would lose me. Is that fear being externalized now? I have not feared that I would lose you. But, Padre dear--"

The ghastly look on the man's face threw wide the flood-gates of her sympathy. "Padre--all things work together for good, you know. Good is always working. It never stops. Listen--" She clung more closely to him.

"Padre, it may be best, after all. You do not want me to stay always in Simití. And if I go, you will go with me, or soon follow. Oh, Padre dear, you have told me that up in that great country above us the people do not know God as you and I are learning to know Him. Padre--I want to go and tell them about Him! I've wanted to for a long, long time."

The girl's eyes shone with a holy light. Her wistful face glowed with a love divine.

"Padre dear, you have so often said that I had a message for the world. Do not the people up north need that message? Would you keep me here then? The people of Simití are too dull to hear the message now. But up there--Oh, Padre, it may be right that I should go! And, if it is right, nothing can prevent it, for the right will be externalized! Right will prevail!"

True, there was the girl's future. Such a spirit as hers could not long be confined within the narrow verges of Simití. He must not oppose his egoism to her interests. And, besides, he might follow soon. Perhaps go with her! Who knew? it might be the opening of the way to the consummation of that heart-longing for--

Ah, the desperate joy that surged through his yearning soul at the thought! The girl was fifteen. A year, two, three, and he would still be a young man! She loved him--never had man had such proofs as he of an affection so divine! And he worshiped her! Why hesitate longer? Surely the way was unfolding!

"Carmen," he said tenderly, drawing her closer to him, "you may be right. Yes--we will both go with the Americans. Once out of this environment and free from ecclesiastical chains, I shall do better."

The girl looked up at him with brimming eyes. "Padre dear," she whispered, "I want to go--away from Simití. Juan--he asks me almost every day to marry him. And he becomes angry when I refuse. Even in the church, when Don Mario was trying to get us, Juan said he would save me if I would promise to marry him. He said he would go to Cartagena and kill the Bishop. He follows me like a shadow. He--Padre, he is a good boy. I love him. But--I do not--want to marry him."

They sat silent for some moments. Josè knew how insistent Juan had become. The lad adored the girl. He tormented the priest about her.

"Padre, you--you are not always going to be a priest--are you? And--I--I--oh, Padre dear, I love you so!" She turned impulsively and threw both arms about his neck. "I want to see you work out your problem. I will help you. You can go with me--and I can always live with you--and some day--some day--" She buried her face in his shoulder. The artless girl had never seemed to think it unmaidenly to declare her love for him, to show him unmistakably that she hoped to become his wife.

The man's heart gave a mighty leap. The beautiful child in his arms was human! Young in years, and yet a woman by the conventions of these tropic lands. He bent his head and kissed her. Why, she had long insisted that she would wait for him! And why should he now oppose the externalization of that sweet thought?

"Ah, chiquita," he murmured, "I will indeed go with you now! I will send my resignation to the Bishop at once. No, I will wait and send it from the States. I will renounce my oath, abjure my promise--"

The girl sat suddenly upright and looked earnestly into his eyes. "What do you mean, Padre?" she queried dubiously. "What did you promise?"

"Ah, I have never told you. But--I promised my mother, dearest one, that I would always remain a priest--unless, indeed, the Church herself should eject me from the priesthood. But, it was foolish--"

"And your mother--she expects you to keep your word?"

"Yes, chiquita."

The girl sat in pensive silence for a moment. "But, Padre," she resumed, "honesty--it is the very first thing that God requires of us. We have to be--we must be honest, for He is Truth. He cannot see or recognize error, you know. And so He cannot see you and help you if you are dishonest."

"I know, child. And I tried to be honest, even when circumstances and my own poor resistive force combined to direct me into the priesthood. But--since that day I have lived a life of hypocrisy, not knowing how to shape my course. Then, at length, I met you. It was--too late!"

"But, Padre, the Church has not put you out? You are still a priest?"

"Yes," sadly; "and no."

"But, if you went to the States--with me--would you be put out of the Church?"

"Possibly, chiquita."

"And what would that mean, Padre?"

"The disgrace that always attaches to an apostate priest, child."

"And, Padre--your mother--what would she say?"

Josè hung his head. "It would kill her," he replied slowly.

Carmen reflected long, while Josè, with ebbing hope, waited. "Padre dear," she finally said, "then you have not yet worked out your problem--have you?"

No, he knew that. And he was now attempting to solve it by flight.

"I mean, Padre, you have not worked it out in God's way. For if you had, no one would be hurt, and there could not be any disgrace, or unhappiness--could there?"

"But, chiquita," he cried in despair, "nothing but excommunication can release me! And I long ago ceased to look for that. You do not understand--you are young! What can I do?" His tortured soul pleaded in agony.

"Why, Padre dear, you can work it out, all out, in God's way."

"But--must I remain here--can I let you go alone with the Americans--?"

"Yes, you can, if it is right," she answered gently.

"Carmen!" he cried, straining her in his arms. "If you go with the Americans, I shall, I must, go too!"

"Not unless it is right, Padre," she insisted. "If it is right, nothing can keep you from going. But, unless it is God's way--well, you can not solve your problem by running away from it."

"But--child--to remain here means--God above! you don't realize what it may mean to us both!"

The girl relapsed into silence. Josè began to feel that they were drifting hopelessly, abysmally apart. Desperation seized him.

"Carmen!" he cried miserably. "I have been cheated and thwarted all my wretched life! I can endure it no longer! I can not, would not, hold you here, if the way opens for you to go! But--I can not remain here without you--and live!"

"That is not true, Padre," replied the girl, slowly shaking her head. "No human being is necessary to any one's happiness. And progress always comes first. You are trying to 'acquire that mind which was in Christ.' If you are really progressing, why, you will surely be happy. But you must work it all out God's way."

"His way!" he retorted bitterly. "And that--"

"You must be honest, Padre, honest with Him and with everybody. If you can no longer be a priest--if you are not one, and never have been one--you must be honest with the Church and with yourself. You must see and reflect only Truth. Why do you not write to the Bishop and tell him all about it? You say you have been protecting me. But leave me to God. You must--Padre, you must--be honest! Write to your mother--write to the Bishop. Tell them both how you feel. Then leave it all with God. Do not run away. Throw yourself upon Him. But--oh, Padre dear, you must trust Him, and you must--you must--know that He is good, that He is infinite, and that there is no evil! Otherwise, the good can not be externalized. If you did that, your problem would be quickly solved."

She rose and took his hand. "Padre dear," she continued, "God is life--there is no death. God is eternal--there is no age. God is all good--there is no poverty, no lack, no loss. God is infinite, and He is mind--there is no inability to see the right and to do it. God is my mind, my spirit, my soul, my all. I have nothing to fear. Human mental concepts are not real. You, yourself, say so. I am not afraid of them. I look at God constantly, and strive always to see only Him. But He is just as much to you as He is to me. You can not outline how things will work out; but you can know that they can only work out in the right way. You must work as God directs. Only by so doing can you solve your problem. I try always to work that way. And I have always worked for you that way. I have always thought the time would come when you and I would live and work together--always. But I have not insisted on it. I have not said that it had to be. If it works out that way, I know I would be very happy. But, even if it does not, I shall know that I can not be deprived of any good, for the good God is everywhere, and He is love, and He has given me all happiness. And now we must leave everything to Him, while we work, work, work to see Him only everywhere."

She would talk no more. Suffering himself to be led by her, they crossed the shales to the dust-laden road and made their way silently through the burning heat into the village.

At the door of the parish house stood Rosendo. His face was grave, but his manner calm. "Padre," he announced, "it is arranged."

Josè's knees shook under him as he followed the old man into the house. Reed, Harris, and Don Jorge sat about the table, on which were strewn papers covered with figures and sketches. The priest sat down dumbly and drew Carmen to him. Harris fell to devouring the girl with his bulging eyes. Reed at once plunged into the topic under consideration.

"I have been saying," he began, addressing the priest, "that I can accept the proposal made by Don Rosendo, but with some amendments. Mr. Harris and I are under contract with the Molino Company to report upon their properties along the Boque river. I am informed by Don Rosendo that he is acquainted with these alleged mines, and knows them to be worthless. Be that as it may, I am obliged to examine them. But I will agree to take this girl to New York, under the protection of my wife, upon the consideration that when I reach my home city I be allowed to form a company to take over this mine, returning to the girl a fifty-one per cent interest in the stock, one half of which she agrees in writing to deliver to me immediately upon its issuance. Being under contract, I can not accept it now. The balance of the stock must be sold for development purposes. I further agree to place the girl in a boarding school of the first quality in the States, and to bear all expenses of her maintenance until such time as she is either self-supporting, or one or several of you may come to her, or effect her return to Colombia. Now, according to Ariza's sketches, we may proceed up the Boque river to its headwaters--how far did you say, friend?"

"Some hundred and fifty miles from Simití, señor," replied Rosendo.

"And then," resumed Reed, "we can cut across country from the sources of the Boque, following what is known as Rosario creek, down to the river Tiguí, striking the latter somewhere near the ancient point known as La Colorado."

"But, señor," interposed Rosendo, "remember that the headwaters of the Boque are practically unknown to-day. Many years ago, when I was a small lad, some liberated slaves worked along Rosario creek, which was then one day's journey on foot with packs from La Colorado. But that old trail has long since disappeared. Probably no one has been over it since."

"Very well," returned the practical Reed, "then we shall have to make our own trail across the divide to the Tiguí. But once at La Colorado, you tell me there is an ancient trail that leads down to Llano, on the Nechí river?"

"Yes, to the mouth of the Amacerí. Llano was something of a town long ago. But river steamers that go up the Nechí as far as Zaragoza once a month, or less frequently, still touch there, I am told. And so you can get down the Cauca to Maganguey, where you can change to a Magdalena river boat for Calamar. Then by rail to Cartagena. The trail to Llano can not be more than fifty miles in length, and fairly open."

Harris, who had been studying the sketches, whistled softly. "Lord Harry!" he muttered, "nearly two hundred miles, and all by foot, over unspeakable jungle trails!"

Reed paid no attention to him. "Very well, then," he continued, "we had best set out as soon as possible. To you, friend Rosendo, I leave all arrangements regarding supplies and cargadores. I will furnish funds for the entire expedition, expecting to be reimbursed by La Libertad."

Carmen listened, with dilated eyes. As for Josè, his head swam. Starting hurriedly after Rosendo, who rose immediately to inaugurate preparations, he drew him into the latter's house. "Hombre!" he cried, his whole frame tremulous with agitation, "do you know what you are doing? Do you--"

"Na, Padre," replied Rosendo gently, as he held up a restraining hand, "it is best. I want the Americanos to take Carmen. She is not safe another day here. The soldiers left but yesterday. They may return any hour. At any moment an order might come for your arrest or mine. We must get her away at once. We can do no more for her here. The struggle has been long, and I weary of it." He sat down in exhaustion and mopped his damp brow. "I weary of life, Padre. I would be through with it. I am old. This world can hold little more for me. If I can but know that she is safe--Bien, that is all. From what we have learned, this country will soon be plunged again into war. I do not wish to live through another revolution. I have seen many. I seem to have fought all my life. And for what? What is La Libertad to me? Nothing--less than nothing. I have not the funds to work it. I doubt if I could even hold it, were it known here that I had the title to such a famous mine. But the Americano can hold it. And he is honest, Padre. He will save Carmen's interest, and deal fairly with her. Bien, let him place her in a school in the States. If you weather the oncoming revolution, then you may be able to send for her. Quien sabe?"

Josè controlled himself. "Rosendo," he said, "I will go with her."

The old man looked at him quizzically. "Do you mean, Padre, that you will leave the Church?"

Josè kept silent for some time. Then he spoke bitterly.

"Can I remain longer in Simití, where the people have become divided--where they look upon me askance, as the cause of the trouble that has befallen them? Is not my usefulness here ended? War is at our door. What, think you, will it mean to Simití? To us? And Wenceslas, what has he further in store for you and me? What he has for Carmen, we well know. And we seek by flight to save her. But the disappearance of Diego has not been explained. The trick which Anita played upon Morales to save Carmen must bring down increased wrath upon our heads, especially yours and mine. No, Rosendo, you and I must go, and go at once!"

"And Anita--?"

"We will pick her up in Cartagena. Don Jorge will accompany us. I have certain information to give him that will enlist his services--information which, I think, will serve to introduce him to His Grace, and somewhat abruptly. But, come, Rosendo, do you and Doña Maria prepare for flight!"

"Maria and I? The States! Na, Padre, it is impossible! I will go with the Americanos up the Boque and to La Libertad. Then I will return to Simití--or to the hacienda of Don Nicolás, if Maria wishes to remain there while I am in the hills. But--do you go, Padre--go and look after the girl. There is nothing further for you here. Yes, Padre, go--go!"

"But--ah, Rosendo, you will reconsider? The Americans will take us all for that mine!"

"I? No, Padre," said the old man firmly, but in a voice heavy with sadness. "Maria and I remain in Simití. My work is done when I have seen the girl safely out of this unhappy country. I could not live in the States. And my days are few now, anyway. Let me end them here. How, I care not."

Carmen came bounding in and flew into Rosendo's arms. "Padre Rosendo!" she cried, aglow with animation, "we are all going to the States up north! I am going to take them my message! And I am going to school there! Oh, padre, isn't it beautiful!"

"Ah, chiquita," said Rosendo cheerily, straining her to him, "I guess we have decided to send you on ahead--a little ahead of us. Your old padre has some business he must attend to here before he leaves." His eyes grew moist. Josè knew what his effort at cheerfulness was costing him.

"But, padre Rosendo, you will come--later? You promise? You must!" She looked into his eyes, pleading wistfully.

"Yes, little one, yes--of course. For where you are, there your old padre will always be--always--always!"

"And Padre Josè?" panted the girl under Rosendo's tight grasp as she turned her head toward the priest.

"He goes with us," assured Rosendo--"I think--at least as far as the coast. He will see Anita--and--" His voice broke, and he turned abruptly away.

"And she will go to the States with us! Oh, padre!" cried the girl, bounding up and down with joy.

Josè turned and went quickly into his own house. With grim determination he drew the battered haircloth trunk from beneath his bed and began to throw his few effects into it.

But he had scarce begun when Juan, now bearing the proud title of official courier between Simití and Bodega Central, entered with a letter. Josè recognized the writing, and tore it open at once. It was from his mother.

"My beloved son, at last, after these many years of most rigid economy, even of privation, I have saved enough from my meager income, together with what little you have been able to send me from time to time, and a recent generous contribution from your dear uncle, to enable me to visit you. I shall sail for Colombia just as soon as you send me detailed instructions regarding the journey. And, oh, my son, to see you offering the Mass in your own church, and to realize that your long delayed preferment is even at hand, for so your good uncle informs me daily, will again warm the blood in a heart long chilled by poignant suffering. Till we meet, the Blessed Virgin shield you, my beloved son."

The letter slipped from the priest's fingers and drifted to the floor. With a moan he sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

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Chapter 36

What had kept Josè de Rincón chained all these years to an institution to which in thought, feeling, and sympathy he was so utterly alien, we have repeatedly pointed out--a warped sense of filial devotion, a devotion that would not willingly bring sorrow upon his proud, sensitive mother, and yet the kind that so often accomplishes just that which it strives to avoid. But yet he had somehow failed to note the nice distinction which he was always making between the promises he had given to her and the oath which he had taken at his ordination. He had permitted himself to be held to the Church by his mother's fond desires, despite the fact that his nominal observance of these had wrecked his own life and all but brought her in sorrow to the grave. The abundance of his misery might be traced to forgetfulness of the sapient words of Jesus: "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."

Then had come Carmen. And he had sacrificed his new-found life to the child. He had exhausted every expedient to keep himself in Simití, that he might transfer his own great learning to this girl, and at the same time yield himself to her beneficent influence. Yet, despite his vague hopes, he had always dimly seen the day when she would leave him; but he had likewise tried to feel that when it arrived his own status would be such that the ecclesiastical ties which bound him would be loosened, and he would be free to follow her. Alas! the lapse of years had brought little change in that respect.

But now he saw the girl entering upon that very hour of departure which all his life in Simití had hung like a menacing cloud above him. And the shock had been such that he had thrown every other consideration to the winds, and, regardless of consequences, was madly preparing to accompany her. Then, like a voice from the tomb, had come his mother's letter.

He slept not that night. Indeed, for the past two nights sleep had avoided his haggard eyes. In the feeble glow of his candle he sat in his little bedroom by his rough, bare table, far into the hours of morning, struggling, resolving, hoping, despairing--and, at last, yielding. If he had been born anew that fateful day, seven years before, when Rosendo first told him the girl's story, he had this night again died. When the gray hours of dawn stole silently across the distant hills he rose. His eyes were bleared and dull. His cheeks sunken. He staggered as he passed out through the living room where lay the sleeping Americans. Rosendo met him in front of the house.

"Padre!" exclaimed the old man as he noted the priest's appearance.

Josè held up a warning hand. "Do not speak of it, Rosendo. I am not well. But not a word to Carmen!"

Rosendo nodded understandingly. "It has been hard on you, Padre. But you will soon be off now. And in the States with her--"

"For God's sake, friend, never speak of that again!" cried Josè sharply. "Listen! How long will it take to complete your preparations?"

"Bien," returned the amazed Rosendo when he recovered his breath, "we can get away to-morrow."

"Can you not go this evening?"

"No, Padre. There is much to do. But you--"

"Hear me, friend. Everything must be conducted in the greatest secrecy. It must be given out that the Americans go to explore the Boque; that you accompany them as guide; that Carmen goes as--as cook, why not?"

"Cierto, she cooks as well as Maria."

"Very well. Juan must be kept in complete ignorance of the real nature of your trip. He must not go with you. He is the courier--I will see that Fernando sends him again to Bodega Central to-morrow, and keeps him there for several days. You say it is some two hundred miles to Llano. How long will it take to go that distance?"

"Why--Quien sabe, Padre?" returned Rosendo thoughtfully. "With a fair trail, and allowing the Americanos some time to prospect on the Boque--where they will find nothing--and several days to look over La Libertad, we ought to reach Llano in six weeks."

"And Cartagena?"

"A week later, if you do not have to wait a month on the river bank for the boat."

"Then, all going well, within two months Carmen should be out of the country."

"Surely. You and she--"

"Enough, friend. I do not go with her."

"What? Caramba!"

"Go now and bid Carmen come to me immediately after the desayuno. Tell Doña Maria that I will eat nothing this morning. I am going up to the old church on the hill."

Rosendo stared stupidly at the priest. But Josè turned abruptly and started away, leaving the old man in a maze of bewilderment.

In the gloom of the old church Josè threw himself upon a bench near the door, and waited torpidly. A few moments later came a voice, and then the soft patter of bare feet in the thick dust without. Carmen was talking as she approached. Josè rose in curiosity; but the girl was alone. In her hand she held a scrubby flower that had drawn a desperate nourishment from the barren soil at the roadside. She glanced up at Josè and smiled.

"It is easy to understand their language, isn't it, Padre? They don't speak as we do, but they reflect. And that is better than speaking. They reflect God. They stand for His ideas in the human mind. And so do you. And I. Aren't they wonderful, these flowers! But you know, they are only the way we interpret certain of God's wonderful ideas. Only, because we mortals believe in death, we see these beautiful things at last reflecting our thought of death--don't we? We see only our thoughts, after all. Everything we see about us is reflected thought. First we see our thoughts of life and beauty and good. And then our thoughts of decay and death.

"But God--He never sees anything but the good," she went on. "He sees the real, not the supposition. And when we learn to see only as He does, why, then we will never again see death. We will see ourselves as we really are, immortal. God sees Himself that way. Jesus learned to see that way, didn't he? His thought was finally so pure that he saw nothing but good. And that gave him such power that he did those things that the poor, ignorant, wrong-thinking people called miracles. But they were only the things that you and I and everybody else ought to be doing to-day--and would be doing, if we thought as he did, instead of thinking of evil.

"But," she panted, as she sat down beside him, "I've talked a lot, haven't I? And you sent for me because you wanted to talk. But, remember," holding up an admonitory finger, "I shall not listen if you talk anything but good. Oh, Padre dear," looking up wistfully into his drawn face, "you are still thinking that two and two are seven! Will you never again think right? How can you ever expect to see good if you look only at evil? If I looked only at wilted flowers I would never know there were any others."

"Carmen," he said in a hollow voice, "I love you."

"Why, of course you do," returned the artless girl. "You can't help it. You have just got to love me and everything and everybody. That's reflecting God."

He had not meant to say that. But it had been floating like foam on his tossing mind. He took her hand.

"You are going away from me," he continued, almost in a whisper.

"Why, no, Padre," she replied quickly; "you are going too! Padre Rosendo said we could start to-morrow at sunrise."

"I do not go," he said in a quavering voice. "I remain, in Simití."

She looked up at him wonderingly. What meant this change which had come over him so suddenly? She drew closer.

"Why, Padre?" she whispered.

His mother's face hovered before him in the dim light. Behind her a mitered head, symbolizing the Church, nodded and beckoned significantly. Back of them, as they stood between him and the girl, he saw the glorified vision of Carmen. It was his problem. He turned wearily from it to the gentle presence at his side.

"Why, Padre dear?" came again the soft question.

"I stay--to work out--my problem," was his scarcely audible reply.

The girl did not speak. But her breath came more quickly, and her hand closed more tightly about his.

"Dearest one," he murmured, bending over the brown curls, "it is God's way, I guess. Perhaps in the years which I have spent here with you I have had the time and the opportunity to work out my salvation. I am sure that I have. But, though I strove in my way, I could not quickly acquire your spirituality. I could not at once shake loose those poisonous thoughts of a lifetime, which have at last become externalized in separation from all that I hold dearest in this life, you, my beloved girl, you." He buried his face in her luxuriant hair and strove to hold back the rush of scalding tears.

"It but shows how poisonous thoughts separate us from all that is good--even from God," he continued in a choked voice. "Oh, my sweet girl, I love you as it seems to me no human being could love another! It has been so from that first day when, a mere babe, your wonderful eyes held me until I could read in them a depth of love for mankind that was divine." It did not seem to him that a mature man was speaking to a mere girl. She seemed, as always, ages beyond him in wisdom and experience.

Carmen reached up and wound her arms about his neck. He bent low and kissed her brow. Then he drew himself up quickly and resumed his broken talk.

"I believed at first that my salvation lay in you. And so it did, for from your clear thought I gleaned my first satisfying knowledge of the great principle, God. But alas! I could not seem to realize that between recognizing righteousness as 'right-thinking' and daily practicing it so as to 'prove' God there was a great difference. And so I rested easy in my first gleams of truth, expecting that they would so warm my soul that it would expand of itself out of all error."

She made as if to reply, but he checked her.

"I learned enough, I repeat, those first few months here to have enabled me to work out my salvation, even though with fear and trembling. But I procrastinated; I vacillated; I still clung to effete beliefs and forms of thought which I knew were bound to manifest in unhappiness later. I was afraid to boldly throw myself upon my thought. I was mesmerized. Yes, the great Paul was at times under the same mesmeric spell of human belief, even after he had seen the vision of the Christ. But he worked his way steadily out. And now I see that I must do likewise, for salvation is an individual experience. No vicarious effort, even of the Christ himself, can save a man. The principle is already given us. We must apply it to our problems ourselves. My unfinished task--scarcely even begun!--lies still before me. My environment is what I have made it by my own thought. I believe you, that I can enter another only as I externalize it through righteousness, right-thinking, and 'proving' God."

He paused and bent over the silent little figure nestling so quietly at his side. His throat filled. But he caught his breath and went on.

"You, Carmen, though but a child in years, have risen beyond me, and beyond this lowly encompassment. Why, when you were a mere babe, you should have grasped your padre Rosendo's casual statement that 'God is everywhere,' and shaped your life to accord with it, I do not know. Nor do you. That must remain one of the hidden mysteries of God. But the fact stands that you did grasp it, and that with it as a light unto your feet you groped your way out of this environment, avoiding all pitfalls and evil snares, until to-day you stand at the threshold of another and higher one. So progress must ever be, I now realize. Up we must rise from one plane of human mentality to another, sifting and sorting the thoughts that come to us, clinging to these, discarding those, until, even as you have said, we learn at last instantly to accept those that mirror forth God, infinite, divine mind, and to reject those that bear the stamp of supposition."

"Padre," the girl said, lifting her beautiful face to his, "I have told you so often--when a thought comes to me that I think is not from God, or does not reflect Him, I turn right on it and kill it. You could do the same, if you would."

"Assuredly, child--if I would!" he replied in bitterness of heart. "So could all mankind. And then the millennium would be with us, and the kingdom of heaven revealed. The mesmeric belief in evil as an entity and a power opposed to good alone prevents that. Destroy this belief, and the curtain will instantly rise on eternity."

His eyes struggled with hers, as he gazed long and wistfully into them. Lost in his impassioned speech, he had for the moment seemed to be translated. Then a surge of fear-thoughts swept him, and left him dwelling on the hazardous journey that awaited her. He wildly clutched her again to his side.

"Carmen--child--how can I let you go! So young, so tender! And that awful journey--two hundred miles of unknown jungle, to the far-off Nechí! And then the burning river, to Cartagena, where--where he is! And the States--God, what awaits you there!"

"Padre," she answered softly, "I shall not go unless it is right. If it is right, then God will take care of me--and of you."

Again she saw only the "right-best" thought, while he sat trembling before its opposite. And the opposite was as yet a supposition!

"Padre dear, there is no separation, you know. God is everywhere, and so there is no separation from good--is there?"

"Not in your thought, dearest child," he murmured huskily.

"Well, Padre dear, I am still with you, am I not? Can't you live one day at a time? That is what Jesus taught us. You are borrowing from to-morrow, and you have no right to do it. That's stealing. God says, 'Thou shalt not steal,' even from to-morrow."

Yes, she was still at his side. Perhaps she would not go, after all. He was borrowing, and borrowing supposition. The thought seemed to lighten his load momentarily.

"Padre dear."

"Yes, chiquita."

"You have been thinking so many bad thoughts of late--I don't suppose you have had any good thoughts at all about Anita's little babe?"

"The babe?" in a tone of astonishment.

"Yes. You know, it is not blind. You promised me that every day you would just know that."

The rebuke smote him sore. Aye, his crowning sin was revealed again in all its ugly nakedness. Egoism! His thought was always of his own troubles, his own longings, his own fears. Self-centeredness had left no room for thoughts of Ana's blind babe. And why was he now straining this beautiful girl to himself? Was it fear for her, or for himself? Yet she gave but little heed to her own needs. Always her concern was for others, others who stumbled and drooped because of the human mind's false, unreal, undemonstrable beliefs and ignorance of the allness of God.

"Ah, child," he exclaimed penitently, "such love! How could I dare to hope ever to claim it! How can you say that you love me?"

"Why, Padre, I love the real 'you,' the 'you' that is going to be brought out, and that will become more and more clear, until at last it stands as the perfect reflection of God. Haven't I told you that, time and time again?"

"Yes, child. You love the ideal. But--to live with me--to be my--"

"Well, Padre, if we were not still human we would not be thinking that we were on earth. We have got to work out of this human way of thinking and living. And it has seemed to me that you and I could work out of it so much better together, you helping me, manifesting God's protection and care, and I helping you, as you say I can and do. And how can we live together and work together unless we marry? Ages make no difference! And time is only a human concept."

He would not try to explain her reasoning, her contempt for convention. It would be gratuitous. As for him, women had never constituted a temptation. He knew that he loved this simple, ingenuous girl with a tenderness of passion that was wholly free from the dross of mesmerism. With that he remained content.

"Padre, if you think you must stay here for a little while, to work out your problem, why, I shall just know that evil can not separate us. I don't like to even seem to go away without you. But--it will be only seeming, after all, won't it? God's children can not really be separated--never!"

She was still paying faithful tribute to her vision of the spiritual universe. And how her words comforted him! How like a benison they flowed over his drooping spirits!

"And now, Padre dear," she said, rising from the bench,--"we have done all we could--left everything with God--haven't we? I must go now, for madre Maria told me to come back soon. She needs me."

"Don't--no, not yet! Wait--Carmen! Sing for me--just once more! Sing again the sweet melody that I heard when I awoke from the fever that day long ago!"

He drew her unresisting to his side. Nestling close against him, her head resting on his shoulder and her hand in his, she sang again the song that had seemed to lift him that distant day far, far above the pitiful longings and strivings of poor humanity, even unto the gates of the city of eternal harmony.

She finished, and the last clear, sweet note echoed through the musty room and died among the black rafters overhead. A holy silence fell upon them as they sat, hand in hand, facing the future. Hot tears were streaming down the man's cheeks. They fell sparkling like drops of dew upon her brown curls. But he made no complaint. The girl, obedient to the vision, was reaping her reward. He, timid, wavering, doubting, was left, still pecking at the shell of his dreary environment. It was but the working of the infinite law of cause and effect. But did he imagine that out in the world she would not still find tribulation, even as the Saviour had said? Aye, she would, in abundance! But she leaned on her sustaining God. Her Christ had overcome the world. And so should she. She had already passed through such fiery trials that he knew no contrary belief in evil now could weaken or counterbalance her supreme confidence in immanent good.

"Padre dear."

"Chiquita."

"If I have to go and leave you, will you promise me that you will act your knowledge of the Christ-principle and work out your problem, so that you may come to me soon?"

The tug at his heartstrings brought a moan to his lips. He smothered it. "Yes, chiquita."

"And--you will keep your promise about Anita's babe?"

"Yes."

She rose and, still holding his hand, led him down the hill and to Rosendo's house.

Throughout the remainder of that feverishly busy day the priest clung to the girl like a shadow. They talked together but little, for she was in constant demand to help her foster-mother in the preparations for the long journey. But Josè was ever at her side. Again and again he would seize her hand and press it to his burning lips. Again and again he would stroke her soft hair, or stretch out his hand to touch her dress as she passed him. Always when she glanced up at him the same sweet, compassionate smile glowed on her face. When she left the house, he followed. When she bent over the ash-strewn fireplace, or washed the few plain dishes, he sought to share her employment; and, when gently, lovingly repulsed, sat dully, with his yearning eyes riveted upon her. Rosendo saw him, and forgot his own sorrow in pity for the suffering priest.

The preparations carried the toilers far into the night. But at length the last bundle was strapped to its siete, the last plan discussed and agreed upon, and the two Americans had thrown themselves upon their cots for a brief rest before dawn. Rosendo took Josè aside, while Doña Maria and Carmen sought their beds.

"Fernando sends Juan to Bodega Central at daybreak," the old man said. "All has been kept secret. No one suspects our plans. Maria remains here with you until I return. Then we may go to the hacienda of Don Nicolás, on the Boque. I shall tell him to have it in readiness on my return. I shall probably not get back to Simití for two months. If, as you say, you still think best not to go with the Americans and the girl, what will you do here? The people are much divided. Some say they intend to ask the Bishop to remove you. Bien, will you not decide to go?"

Josè could not make audible reply. He shook his head, and waved Rosendo away. Then, taking a chair, he went into the sleeping room and sat down at the bedside of the slumbering girl. Reaching over, he took her hand.

What was it that she had said to him that day, long gone, when Diego claimed her as his child? Ah, yes:

"Don't feel badly, Padre dear. His thoughts have only the minus sign--and that means nothing, you know."

And later, many weeks later:

"Padre, you can not think wrong and right thoughts together, you know. You can not be happy and unhappy at the same time. You can not be sick and well together." In other words, the wise little maid was trying to show him that Paul spoke directly to such as he when he wrote: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are--?

"You can not have both good and evil, Padre," she had so often insisted. "You must want good--want it more than anything else. And then you must prepare for it by thinking right thoughts and unthinking wrong ones. And as you prepare for good, you must know that it is coming. But you must not say how it shall come, nor what it shall look like. You must not say that it shall be just as you may think you would like to have it. Leave the--the externalization to God. Then it will meet all your needs.

"You see, Padre dear"--oh, how the memory of her words smote him now!--"you see, the good Jesus told the people to clean their window-panes and let in the light--good thoughts--for then these would be externalized in health, happiness, and all good, instead of the old, bad thoughts being externalized longer in sickness and evil. Don't you see?"

Aye, he saw. He saw that the Christ-idea found expression and reflection in the pure mentality of this girl. He saw that that mentality was unsullied, uneducated in the lore of human belief, and untrained to fear. He saw that the resurrection of the Christ, for which a yearning world waits, was but the rising of the Christ-idea in the human mentality. And he saw, too, that ere the radiant resurrection morn can arrive there must be the crucifixion, a world-wide crucifixion of human, carnal thought. Follow Christ! Aye, follow him! But will ye not learn that following him means thinking as he did? And his thoughts were God's.

But Josè had tried to think aright during those years in Simití. True, but the efforts had been spasmodic. From childhood he had passed through doubt, fear, scepticism, and final agnosticism. Then he had started anew and aright. And then had come the "day of judgment," the recurrent hours of sore trial--and he had not stood. Called upon to prove God, to prove the validity of his splendid deductions, he had vacillated between the opposing claims of good and evil, and had floundered helplessly. And now he stood confronting his still unsolved problem, realizing as never before that in the solving of it he must unlearn the intellectual habits of a lifetime.

There were other problems which lay still unsolved before him as he sat there that night. The sable veil of mystery which hung about Carmen's birth had never been penetrated, even slightly. What woman's face was that which looked out so sadly from the little locket? "Dolores"--sorrowful, indeed! What tragedy had those great, mournful eyes witnessed? No, Carmen did not greatly resemble her. He used to think so, but not of late. Did she, he wondered, resemble the man? And had the mother's kisses and hot tears blurred the portrait beneath which he had so often read the single inscription, "Guillermo"? If so, could not the portrait be cleaned? But Josè himself had not dared attempt it. Perhaps some day that could be done by one skilled in such art.

And did Carmen inherit any of her unique traits from either of her parents? Her voice, her religious instinct, her keen mentality--whence came they? "From God," the girl would always answer whenever he voiced the query in her presence. And he could not gainsay it.

Seven years had passed. And Josè found himself sitting beside the sleeping girl and dumbly yielding to the separation which now had come. Was his work finished? His course run? And, if he must live and solve his problem, could he stand after she had left? He bent closer to her, and listened to the gentle breathing. He seemed again to see her, as he was wont in the years past, flitting about her diminutive rose garden and calling to him to come and share her boundless joy. "Come!" he heard her call. "Come, Padre dear, and see my beautiful thoughts!" And then, so often, "Oh, Padre!" bounding into his arms, "here is a beautiful thought that came to me to-day, and I caught it and wouldn't let it go!" Lonely, isolated child, having nothing in common with the children of her native heath, yet dwelling ever in a world peopled with immaculate concepts!

Josè shook his head slowly. He thought of the day when he had approached Rosendo with his great question. "Rosendo," he had said in deep earnestness, "where, oh, where did Carmen get these ideas? Did you teach them to her?"

"No, Padre," Rosendo had replied gravely. "When she was a little thing, just learning to talk, she often asked about God. And one day I told her that God was everywhere--what else could I say? Bien, a strange light came into her eyes. And after that, Padre, she talked continually about Him, and to Him. And she seemed to know Him well--so well that she saw Him in every thing and every place. Padre, it is very strange--very strange!"

No, it was not strange, Josè had thought, but beautifully natural. And later, when he came to teach her, his constant endeavor had been to impart his secular knowledge to the girl without endangering her marvelous faith in her immanent God. In that he had succeeded, for in that there had been no obstructing thoughts of self to overcome.

And now--

"For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee--"

The night shadows fled. Day dawned. Josè still sat at the girl's bedside, dumb and motionless. Carmen awoke, and threw her arms about him. But Rosendo appeared and hurried her out to the light morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o'clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from Simití. Reed and Harris were bustling about, assembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men's backs. Doña Maria's eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. Josè wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced his determination not to accompany Rosendo and his party, but to go back and consult with Don Carlos Norosí in regard to the future. An hour later he left Simití.

At last Rosendo's voice rang out in a great shout:

"Ya está! Vámonos!"

"Bully-bueno!" responded Harris, waving his long arms.

The cargadores moved forward in the direction of the Boque trail. The Americans, with a final adios to Doña Maria and the priest, swung into line behind them. Rosendo again tenderly embraced his weeping spouse, and then, turned to Josè.

"The Virgin watch over you and Maria, Padre! I leave her in your care. If the war comes, flee with her to the Boque."

He threw an arm about the priest and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, calling to Carmen, he turned and started after the others.

The girl rushed into Josè's arms. Her tears flowed freely.

"Padre," she murmured, clinging to him and showering him with kisses, "I love you, love you, love you! I will wait for you up there. You will come--or I will come back to you. And I will work for you every day. I will know that you are God's child, and that you will solve your problem!"

Rosendo, half way down the road, turned and called sharply to her. The girl hurried after him. But again she stopped, turned around, and flew back to Josè, as he knelt in the dust and, with tongue cleaving to his mouth, held out his trembling arms.

"Padre, dearest, dearest Padre," she sobbed, "I love you, I love you! And--I had forgotten--this--it is for you to read every day--every day!" She thrust a folded paper into his hand. Again she tore herself away and ran after the impatient Rosendo. In a moment they were out of sight.

A groan of anguish escaped the stricken priest. He rose from his knees and followed stumbling after the girl. As he reached the shales he saw her far in the distance at the mouth of the trail. She turned, and waved her hand to him. Then the dark trail swallowed her, and he saw her no more.

For a moment he stood like a statue, striving with futile gaze to penetrate that black opening in the dense bush that had engulfed his very soul. His bloodshot eyes were wild. His lips fluttered. His hand closed convulsively over the paper which the girl had left with him. Mechanically he opened it and read:

"Dearest, dearest Padre, these four little Bible verses I leave with you; and you will promise your little girl that you will always live by them. Then your problem will be solved.

"1. Thou shall have no other gods before me.

"2. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

"3. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

"4. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

"And, Padre, my dearest, dearest Padre, God is everywhere."

His hand fell. His brain reeled, and he swayed like a drunken man. He turned about, muttering incoherently. Doña Maria stood behind him. Tenderly taking his arm, she led him back to the forlorn little house. Its ghastly emptiness smote him until his reason tottered. He sank into a chair and gazed with dull, stony eyes out over the placid lake, where the white beams of the rising sun were breaking into myriad colors against the brume.

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Chapter 37

The two hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged cañons, rushing waters, and dank, virginal forest. Only the old man, as he trudged along the worn trail between Simití and the Inanea river, where canoes waited to transport the travelers to the little village of Boque, had any adequate conception of what the journey meant. Even the cargadores were unfamiliar with the region which they were to penetrate. Some of them had been over the Guamocó trail as far as Culata; a few had ascended the Boque river to its farthest navigable point. But none had penetrated the inmost reaches of the great cañon through which the headwaters tumbled and roared, and none had ever dreamed of making the passage over the great divide, the Barra Principal, to the Tiguí beyond.

To the Americans, fresh from the luxury and convention of city life, and imbued with the indomitable Yankee spirit of adventure, the prospect was absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had constituted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some six-feet-two of height, went stumbling and tripping along the way, swaying against every tree and bush that edged the path, and constantly giving noisy vent to his opinions regarding trails in general, and those of the tropics in particular. His only accouterment was a Winchester rifle of tremendous bore, which he insisted on carrying in constant readiness to meet either beasts of prey or savage Indians, but which, in his absent-mindedness and dreamy preoccupation, he either dragged, muzzle up, or carried at such dangerous angles that the natives were finally obliged, in self-protection, to insist that he hand the weapon over to Rosendo. To Carmen, as the days passed and she gradually recognized his sterling qualities, he became a source of delight. Hour after hour she trotted along after him, chatting merrily in her beloved English tongue, poking fun at his awkwardness, and laughing boisterously over his quaint slang and naïve Yankee expressions. She had never heard such things from Josè; nor had the priest, despite his profound knowledge, ever told her such exciting tales as did Harris, when he drew from his store of frontier memories and colored his narratives with the rich tints furnished by his easy imagination.

The first day out had been one of mental struggle for the girl. She had turned into the trail, after waving a last farewell to Josè, with a feeling that she had never experienced before. For hours she trudged along, oblivious of her environment, murmuring, "It isn't true--it isn't true!" until Harris, his curiosity aroused by the constant repetition which floated now and then to his ears, demanded to know what it was that was so radically false.

"It isn't true that we can be separated," she answered, looking at him with moist eyes.

"We?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, God's children--people--people--who--love each other," she replied. Then she dropped her eyes in evident embarrassment, and refused to discuss the topic further.

"Lord Harry!" ejaculated Harris, pondering the cryptical remark, "you surely are a queer little dud!"

But the girl turned from him to Rosendo. He understood her. Nor would she permit the old man to leave her until, late that night, exhausted by the excitement of the day, she dropped asleep in the house of Don Nicolás, on the muddy margin of the river Boque, still clinging to Rosendo's hand.

Despite the protestations of Don Nicolás and the pleading of the cargadores, Rosendo stolidly refused to spend a day at Boque. Apprehension lashed him furiously on. They were still within reach of the federal authorities. He dared not rest until the jungle had swallowed them.

"Ah, compadre," said Don Nicolás, in disappointment, "I would like much for you to enjoy my house while it is still clean. For the ants have visited me. Hombre! they swarmed down upon us but a day ago. They came out of the bush in millions, straight for the house. We fled. Caramba! had we remained, we should have been eaten alive. But they swept the house--Hombre! no human hands could have done so well. Every spider, every rat, beetle, flea, every plague, was instantly eaten, and within a half hour they had disappeared again, and we moved back into a thoroughly cleaned house!"

Harris stood with mouth agape in mute astonishment when Carmen, whom he had constituted his interpreter, translated to him the story.

That evening, after they had eaten out in the open before the house, and the Americans had tickled the palates of the villagers with some tinned beef of uncertain quality, Don Nicolás approached Reed. "Señor," he said, "my mother, now very aged, is sick, and we think she can not recover. But you Americanos are wonderfully skilled, and your medicines powerful. Have you not some remedy in your pack that will alleviate the good woman's sufferings? They are severe, señor."

Reed knew how great was the faith of these simple people in the wisdom of the American, and he had reason to wish to preserve it. But he had come into that country illy prepared to cope with disease, and his medical equipment contained nothing but quinine. He reflected a moment, then turned to Harris.

"Did you smuggle any of your beloved root-beer extract into the equipment?" he inquired, his eyes twinkling.

Harris looked sheepish, but returned a sullen affirmative.

"Well," continued Reed, "dig out a bottle and we'll fix up a dose of pain-killer for our worthy host's mother."

Then he turned to Don Nicolás. "Cierto, señor," he said with an air of confidence. "I have a remedy which I know to be unfailing for any disease."

He disappeared into the house, from which he emerged again in a few moments with an empty cola bottle. Washing this clean in the river, he partly filled it with water. Then he poured in the small bottle of root-beer extract which Harris handed him, and added a few grains of quinine. Shaking the mixture thoroughly, he carried it to Don Nicolás.

"Be very careful, señor," he admonished, giving him the bottle. "It is a medicine extremely powerful and immediate in its action. Give the señora a small teaspoonful every hour. By morning you will notice a marked change."

Don Nicolás's eyes lighted with joy, and his gratitude poured forth in extravagant expressions.

With the first indications of approaching day Rosendo was abroad, rounding up his cargadores, who were already bickering as to their respective duties, and arranging the luggage in the canoes for the river trip. Additional boats and men had been secured; and Don Nicolás himself expressed his intention of accompanying them as far as his hacienda, Maria Rosa, a day's journey up-stream.

"It was there that I hid during the last revolution," he said, "when the soldiers burned the village and cut off the ears and fingers of our women for their rings. Ah, señores, you can not know how we suffered! All my goods stolen or burned--my family scattered--my finca destroyed! We lived two years at Maria Rosa, not daring to come down the river again. We wore the skins of animals for clothing. Caramba!" His eyes burned fiercely as he spoke, and his hands opened and closed convulsively. He was a representative of that large class of rurales upon whom the heaviest burdens, the greatest suffering, and the most poignant sorrow attending a political revolution always fall.

"But, señor!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning to Reed, "I had all but forgotten! My mother, she sends for you. She would see the kind American whose remedies are so wonderful. For, señor, she rose from her bed this morning restored! And you must leave us another bottle of the remedy--at whatever price, señor!"

Reed gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, until at length the truth dawned upon him. His root-beer remedy had done its work! Then a broad grin mantled his face; but he quickly suppressed it and went with Don Nicolás to receive in person his patient's effusive thanks. When he returned and took his place in the waiting boat, he shook his head. "It's past all understanding," he muttered to Harris, "what faith will do! I can believe now that it will remove mountains."

Throughout the long, interminably long, hot day the perspiring men poled and paddled, urged and teased, waded and pushed against the increasing current, until, as the shadows began to close around them, they sighted the scarcely visible opening in the bush which marked the trail to the hacienda of Maria Rosa. It was a desperately lonely clearing on the verge of the jungle; but there were two thatch-covered sheds, and to the exhausted travelers it gave assurance of rest and protection. Before they made the landing Rosendo's sharp eyes had spied a large ant-eater and her cub, moving sluggishly through the bush; and Reed's quick shots had brought them both down. The men's eyes dilated when the animals were dragged into the canoes. It meant fresh meat instead of salt bagre for at least two days.

Early next morning the travelers bade farewell to Don Nicolás and set their course again up-stream. They would now see no human being other than the members of their own little party until they reached Llano, on the distant Nechí.

"Remember," called Don Nicolás, as the canoes drifted out into the stream, "the quebrada of Caracolí is the third on the right. An old trail used to lead from there across to the Tiguicito--but I doubt if you find even a trace of it now. There is no water between that point and the Tiguicito. Conque, adios, señores, adios!"

The hallooing of farewells echoed along the river and died away in the dark forest on either hand. Harris and Reed settled back in their canoe and yielded to the fascination of the slowly shifting scene. Carmen chose to occupy the same canoe with them, and perforce Rosendo acted as patron. They therefore took the lead. Between his knees Reed held the rifle upright, in readiness for any animal whose curiosity might bring it to the water's edge to view the rare pageant passing through that unbroken solitude.

The river was now narrowing, and there were often rapids whose ascent necessitated disembarking from the canoes, while the bogas strained and teased the lumbering dugouts up over them. In places the stream was choked by fallen trees and tangled driftwood, until only a narrow, tortuous opening was left, through which the waters raced like a mill-course, making a heavy draft on the intuitive skill of the bogas. Often slender islets rose from the river; and then heated, chattering, often acrimonious discussions ensued among the men as to the proper channel to take. Always on either side rose the matted, tangled, impenetrable forest wall of dense bush and giant trees, from which innumerable trailers and bejuco vines dropped into the waters beneath. From the surface of the river to the tops of the great trees, often two hundred feet above, hung a drapery of creeping plants, of parasitical growths, and diversified foliage, of the most vivid shades of green, inextricably laced and interwoven, and dotted here and there with orchideous flowers and strange blossoms, while in the tempered sunlight which sifted through it sported gorgeous insects and butterflies of enormous size and exquisite shades, striped and spotted in orange, blue, and vivid red. Scarcely a hand's breadth of the jungle wall but contained some strange, eerie animal or vegetable form that brought expressions of wonder and astonishment from the enraptured Americans. At times, too, there were grim tragedies being enacted before them. In one spot a huge, hairy spider, whose delicate, lace-like web hung to the water's edge, was viciously wrapping its silken thread about a tiny bird that had become entangled. Again, a shriek from beyond the river's margin told of some careless monkey or small animal that had fallen prey to a hungry jaguar. Above the travelers all the day swung the ubiquitous buzzards, with their watchful, speculative eyes ever on the slowly moving cavalcade.

Carmen sat enthralled. If her thought reverted at all to the priest, she gave no hint of it. But once, leaning back and gazing off into the opalescent sky overhead, she murmured: "And to think, it is only the way the human mind translates God's ideas! How wonderful must they be! And some day I shall see those ideas, instead of the mortal mind's interpretations of them!"

Harris heard her, and asked her to repeat her comments in English. But she refused. "You would not understand," she said simply. And no badinage on his part could further influence her.

Rosendo, inscrutable and silent, showed plainly the weight of responsibility which he felt. Only twice that day did he emerge from the deep reserve into which he had retired; once when, in the far distance, his keen eye espied a small deer, drinking at the water's edge, but which, scenting the travelers, fled into cover ere Reed could bring the rifle to his shoulders; and again, when they were upon a jaguar almost before either they or the astonished animal realized it.

In the tempered rays of the late afternoon sun the flower-bespangled walls of the forest became alive with gaily painted birds and insects. Troops of chattering monkeys awoke from their midday siesta and scampered noisily through the treetops over the aerial highways formed by the liana vines, whose great bush-ropes, often a foot and more in thickness, stretched their winding length long distances through the forest, and bound the vegetation together in an intricate, impenetrable network. Yellow and purple blossoms, in a riot of ineffable splendor, bedecked the lofty trees and tangled parasitical creepers that wrapped around them, constituting veritable hanging gardens. Great palms, fattened by the almost incessant rains in this hot-house of Nature, rose in the spaces unoccupied by the buttressed roots of the forest giants. Splendidly tailored kingfishers swooped over the water, scarce a foot above its surface. Quarreling parrots and nagging macaws screamed their inarticulate message to the travelers. Tiny forest gems, the infinitely variegated colibrí, whirred across the stream and followed its margins until attracted by the gorgeous pendent flowers. On the playas in the hazy distance ahead the travelers could often distinguish tall, solemn cranes, dancing their grotesque measures, or standing on one leg and dreaming away their little hour of life in this terrestrial fairy-land.

Darkness fell, almost with the swiftness of a snuffed candle. For an hour Rosendo had been straining his eyes toward the right bank of the river, and as he gazed his apprehension increased. But, as night closed in, a soft murmur floated down to the cramped, toil-worn travelers, and the old man, with a glad light in his eyes, announced that they were approaching the quebrada of Caracolí. A half hour later, by the weird, flickering light of the candles which Reed and Harris held out on either side, Rosendo turned the canoe into a brawling stream, and ran its nose into the deep alluvial soil. Plunging fearlessly through the fringe of delicate ferns which lined the margin of the creek, he cut a wide swath with his great machete and uncovered a dim trail, which led to a ramshackle, thatch-covered hut a few yards beyond. It was the tumbled vestige of a shelter which Don Nicolás had erected years before while hunting wild pigs through this trackless region. An hour later the little group lay asleep on the damp ground, wrapped in the solitude of the great forest.

The silvery haze of dawn was dimming the stars and deepening into ruddier hues that tinged the fronds of the mighty trees as with streaks of blood when Rosendo, like an implacable Nemesis, prodded his little party into activity. Their first day's march through the wilderness was to begin, and the old man moved with the nervous, restless energy of a hunted jaguar. The light breakfast of coffee and cold arepa over, he dismissed the bogas, who were to return to Boque with the canoes, and set about arranging the cargo in suitable packs for the cargadores who were to accompany him over the long reaches of jungle that stretched between them and Llano. Two macheteros were sent on ahead of the main party to locate and open a trail. The rest followed an hour later. Before the shimmering, opalescent rays which overspread the eastern sky had begun to turn downward, the little cavalcade, led by Rosendo, had taken the narrow, newly-cut trail and plunged into the shadows of the forest--

"the great, dim, mysterious forest, where uncertainty wavers to an interrogation point."

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