Chapter 38…

Chapter 38

The emotion of the jungle is a direct function of human temperament. Where one sees in it naught but a "grim, green sepulcher," teeming with malignant, destructive forces, inimical to health, to tranquillity, to life, another--perhaps a member of the same party--will find in the wanton extravagance of Nature, her prodigious luxury, her infinite variety of form, of color, and sound, such stimuli to the imagination, and such invitation to further discovery and development, as to constitute a lure as insidious and unescapable as the habit which too often follows the first draft of the opium's fumes. There are those who profess to have journeyed through vast stretches of South American selva without encountering a wild animal. Others, with sight and hearing keener, and with a sense of observation not dulled by futile lamentations over the absence of the luxuries of civilized travel, will uncover a wealth of experiences which feed the memory throughout their remaining years, and mold an irresistible desire to penetrate again those vast, teeming, baffling solitudes.

It is true, the sterner aspect of the South American jungle affords little invitation to repose or restful contemplation. And the charm which its riotous prodigality exerts is in no sense idyllic. For the jungle falls upon one with the force of a blow. It grips by its massiveness, its awful grandeur. It does not entice admiration, but exacts obeisance by brute force. Its silence is a dull roar. Its rest is continuous motion, incessant activity. The garniture of its trackless wastes is that of great daubs of vivid color, laid thick upon the canvas with the knife--never modulated, never worked into delicate shading with the brush, but attracting by its riot, its audacity, its immensity, its disdain of convention, its utter disregard of the canons cherished by the puny mind that contemplates it. The forest's appeal is a reflex of its own infinite complexity. The sensations which it arouses within the one who steps from civilization into its very heart are myriad, and often terrible. The instinct of self-preservation is by it suddenly, rudely aroused and kept keenly alive. Its inhospitality is menacing. The roar of its howling monkeys strikes terror to the timid heart. The plaintive calls of its persecuted feathered denizens echo through the mysterious vastnesses like despairing voices from a spirit world. The crashing noises, the strange, weird, unaccountable sounds that hurtle through its dimly lighted corridors blanch the face and cause the hand to steal furtively toward the loosely sheathed weapon. The piercing, frenzied screams which arise with blood-curdling effect through the awful stillness of noonday or the dead of night, turn the startled thought with sickening yearning toward the soft charms of civilization, in which the sense of protection is greater, even if actual security is frequently less.

Because of Nature's utter disregard of the individual, life is everywhere. And that life is sharply armed and on the defensive. The rising heat-waves hum with insects. The bush swarms with them. Their droning murmur crowds the air. The trunks of trees, the great, pendent leaves of plants, the trailing vines, slimy with dank vegetation, afford footing and housing to countless myriads of them, keenly alert, ferociously resistive. The decaying logs fester with scorpions. The ground is cavernous with the burrows of lizards and crawling forms, with centipedes and fierce formicidae. Death and terror stalk hand in hand. But life trails them. Where one falls, countless others spring up to fill the gap. The rivers and pantanos yield their quota of variegated forms. The flat perania, the dreaded electric eel, infests the warm streams, and inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the brilliant coral and the deadly mápina. Beneath the forest leaves coils the brown adder, whose sting proves fatal within three days.

To those who see only these aspects of the jungle, a journey such as that undertaken by Rosendo and his intrepid little band would prove a terrifying experience, a constant repetition of nerve-shocks, under which the "centers" must ultimately give way. But to the two Americans, fresh from the mining camps of the West, and attuned to any pitch that Nature might strike in her marvelous symphony, the experience was one to be taken in the same spirit as all else that pertained to their romantic calling. Rosendo and his men accepted the day's stint of toil and danger with dull stolidity. Carmen threw herself upon her thought, and saw in her shifting environment only the human mind's interpretation of its mixed concept of good and evil. The insects swarmed around her as around the others. The tantalizing jejenes urged their insidious attacks upon her, as upon the rest. Her hands were dotted with tiny blood-blisters where the ravenous gnats had fed. But she uttered no complaint; nor would she discuss the matter when Harris proffered his sympathy, and showed his own red hands.

"It isn't true," she would say. "But you have no religion, and you don't understand--as yet."

"Don't understand? And it isn't true, eh? Well, you have mighty strange beliefs, young lady!"

"But not as strange and illogical as those you hold," she replied.

"Oh, I don't believe anything," he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm an agnostic, you know."

"There is just where you mistake, Mr. Harris," she returned gravely. "For, instead of not believing anything, you firmly believe in the presence and power of evil. It is just those very people who boast that they do not believe in anything who believe most thoroughly in evil and its omnipotence and omnipresence."

Yes, even the animals which she saw about her were but the human mind's concepts of God's ideas--not real. Adam had named them. In the Bible allegory, or dream, the human, mortal mind names all its own material concepts.

The days wore on with dull regularity. From the rippling Tiguicito, which they reached choking with thirst and utterly exhausted, they dropped down again to the Boque, where they established camps and began to prospect the Molino company's "near-mines," as Harris called them after the first few unsuccessful attempts to get "colors" out of the barren soil. At certain points, where there seemed a more likely prospect, they remained for days, until the men, under Rosendo's guidance, could sink pits to the underlying bedrock. Such work was done with the crudest of tools--an iron bar, wooden scrapers in lieu of shovels, and wooden bateas in which the men handed the loosened dirt up from one stage to another and out to the surface. It was slow, torturing work. The men grew restive. The food ran low, and they complained.

Then Harris one evening stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their machetes. Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with garrapatas--fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which came upon the travelers and caused them intense annoyance throughout the remainder of the journey.

Then Reed shot a deer, a delicate, big-eyed creature that had never seen a human being and was too surprised to flee. Later, Fidel Avila felled another with a large stone. And, finally, monkeys became so plentiful that the men all but refused to eat them any longer.

Two weeks were spent around the mouth of the Tiguicito and the Boque cañon. Then Reed gave the order to advance. The little party shouldered their packs and began the ascent of the ragged gorge. For days they clambered up and down the jagged walls of the cut, or skirted its densely covered margin. Twice Harris fell into the brawling stream below, and was fished out by Rosendo, his eyes popping, and his mouth choked with uncomplimentary opinion regarding mountain travel in the tropics. Once, seizing a slender vine to aid him in climbing, he gave a sudden lurch and swung out unexpectedly over the gorge, hundreds of feet deep. Again Rosendo, who by this time had learned to keep one eye on the ground and the other on the irresponsible Harris, rescued him from his perilous position.

"Why don't you watch where you are going?" queried the laughing Carmen.

"I might," sputtered Harris, "if I could keep my eyes off of you." Whereat Carmen pursed her lips and told him to reserve his compliments for those who knew how to appraise them rightly.

They camped where night overtook them, out in the open, often falling asleep without waiting to build a fire, but eating soggy corn arepa and tinned food, and drinking cold coffee left from the early morning repast. But sometimes, when the fatigue of day was less, they would gather about their little fire, chilled and dripping, and beg Carmen to sing to them while they prepared supper. Then her clear voice would ring out over the great cañon and into the vast solitudes on either hand in strange, vivid contrast to the cries and weird sounds of the jungle; and the two Americans would sit and look at her as if they half believed her a creature from another world. Sometimes Harris would draw her into conversation on topics pertaining to philosophy and religion, for he had early seen her bent and, agnostic that he was, delighted to hear her express her views, which to him were so childishly impossible. But as often he would voluntarily retire from the conflict, sometimes shaking his head dubiously, sometimes muttering his impatience with a mere child whose logic he, despite his collegiate training, could not refute. He was as full of philosophical theories as a nut with meat; but when she asked for proofs, for less human belief and more demonstration, he hoisted the white flag and retired from the field. But his admiration for the child became sincere. His respect for her waxed daily stronger. And by the time they had reached the great divide through which the Rosario fell, he was dimly aware of a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible future in which she became the central figure.

At Rosario creek they left the great cañon and turned into the rugged defile which wound its tortuous course upward into the heights of the Barra Principal. They were now in a region where, in Rosendo's belief, there was not one human being in an area of a hundred square miles. He himself was in sore doubt as to the identity of the quebrada which they were following. But it tallied with the brief description given him by Don Nicolás. And, moreover, which was even more important, as they began its ascent there came to him that sense of conviction which every true son of the jungle feels when he is following the right course. He might not say how he knew he was right; but he followed the leading without further question.

Up over the steep talus at the base of the cañon wall they clambered, up into the narrowing arroyo, cutting every foot of the way, for the macheteros were now no longer keeping ahead of them--the common danger held the band united. Often they believed they discovered traces of ancient trails. But the jealous forest had all but obliterated them, and they could not be certain. In the higher and drier parts of the forest, where they left the creek and followed the beds of dead streams, slender ditches through which the water raced in torrents during the wet season, they were set upon by countless swarms of bees, a strange, stingless variety that covered them in a buzzing, crawling mass, struggling and fighting for the salt in the perspiration which exuded from the human bodies. Harris swore he would cease to eat, for he could not take even a mouthful of food without at the same time taking in a multitude of bees. Often, too, their machetes cut into great hornet nests. Then, with the shrill cry, "Avispas!" Rosendo would tear recklessly through the matted jungle, followed by his slapping, stumbling companions, until the maddened insects gave up the chase. Frequently they walked into huge ant nests before they realized it, sometimes the great tucanderas, so ferociously poisonous. "Ah, señores," commented Rosendo, as he once stopped to point out the marvelous roadway cut by these insects for miles straight through the jungle, "in the days of the Spaniards the cruel taskmasters would often tie the weak and sick slaves to trees in the depths of the forest and let these great ants devour them alive! Señores, you can never know the terrible crimes committed by the Spaniards!"

"And they were Christians!" murmured Harris, eying Carmen furtively.

But she knew, though she voiced it not, that the Spaniard had never known the Christ.

Night was spent on the summit of the divide. Then, without further respite, Rosendo urged the descent. Down through ravines and gullies; over monster bowlders; waist deep through streams; down the sheer sides of gorges on natural ladders formed by the hanging mora vines; skirting cliffs by the aid of tangled and interlaced roots of rank, wet vegetation; and then down again into river bottoms, where the tenacious mud challenged their every step, and the streams became an interminable morass, through which passage was possible only by jumping from root to root, where the gnarled feeders of the great trees projected above the bottomless ooze. The persecution of the jejenes became diabolical. At dawn and sunset the raucous bellow of the red-roarer monkeys made the air hideous. The flickering lights of the forest became dismally depressing. The men grew morose and sullen. Reed and Harris quarreled with each other on the slightest provocation.

Then, to increase their misery, came the rain. It fell upon them in the river bottoms in fierce, driving gusts; then in sheets that blotted out the forest and wet their very souls. The heavens split with the lightning. The mountains roared and trembled with the hideous cannonade of thunder. The jungle-matted hills ran with the flood. An unvaried pall of vapor hung over the steaming ground, through which uncanny, phantasmagoric shapes peered at the struggling little band.

Again the sun burst forth, and a fiery vapor seethed above the moist earth. The reek of their damp clothing and the acrid odor of the wet soil increased the enervation of their hard travel. Again and again the peevish Harris accused Rosendo of having lost the way. The old man patiently bore the abuse. Reed chided Harris, and at length quarreled violently with him, although his own apprehension waxed continually greater. Carmen said little. Hour after hour she toiled along, floundering through the bogs, fording the deeper streams on Rosendo's broad back, whispering softly to him at times, often seizing and pressing his great horny hand, but holding her peace. In vain at evening, when gathered about the damp, smudging firewood, Harris would bring up to her the causes of her flight. In vain he would accuse the unfortunate Alcalde, the Bishop, the soldiers. Carmen refused to lend ear to it, or to see in it anything more than a varied expression of the human mind. Personality was never for a moment considered. She saw, not persons, not things, but expressions of thought in the phenomena which had combined to urge her out of her former environment and cast her into the trackless jungle.

At length, one day, when it seemed to the exhausted travelers that human endurance could stand no more, Rosendo, who had long been straining his ears in the direction straight ahead, announced that the singing noise which floated to them as they descended a low hill and plunged into a thicket of tall lush grass, undoubtedly came from the river Tiguí. Another hour of straining and plunging through the dense growth followed; and then, with a final effort, which manifested in a sort of frenzied rush, the little band emerged suddenly upon the east bank of the crystal stream, glittering and shimmering in the bright morning sun as it sang and rippled on its solitary way through the great jungle.

The men threw off their packs and sprawled full length upon the ground. Rosendo pointed across the river.

"La Colorado," he said, indicating what the Americans at length made out to be a frame house, looming above the high grass. "And there," pointing to the north, "is Pozo Cayman, where the trail begins that leads to La Libertad."

That night, as they lay on the rough board floor of the house at La Colorado, Rosendo told them the story of the misguided Frenchmen who, years before, had penetrated this wild region, located a barren quartz vein, then floated a company and begun developments. A considerable colony settled here. The soil was fertile; the undeveloped country ceaselessly rich in every resource, the water pure and sparkling, and abounding in fish. The climate, too, was moderate and agreeable. It seemed to the foreigners a terrestrial paradise. But then came the insidious fever. It crept out of the jungle like a thief in the night. One by one the Frenchmen fell sick and died. Panic seized upon them. Those unafflicted fled--all but one. He remained to protect the company's property. But he, too, fell a victim to the plague. One day, as he lay burning upon his bed, he called feebly to his one remaining servant, the native cook, to bring him the little package of quinine. She hastened to comply; but, alas! she brought the packet of strychnine instead, and soon he, too, had joined his companions in that unknown country which awaits us all. The old woman fled in terror; and the evil spirits descended upon the place. They haunt it yet, and no man approaches it but with trembling.

Reed and Harris listened to the weird story with strange sensations. The clouds above had broken, and the late moon streamed through the night vapor, and poured through the bamboo walls of the house. The giant frogs in the nearby creek awoke, and through the long night croaked their mournful plaint in a weird minor cadence that seemed to the awed Americans to voice to the shimmering moon the countless wrongs of the primitive Indians, who, centuries before, had roamed this marvelous land in happy freedom, until the Spaniard descended like a dark cloud and, with rack and stake, fastened his blighting religion upon them.

A day's rest at La Colorado sufficed to revive the spirits of the party and prepare them for the additional eight or ten hour journey over boggy morass and steep hill to La Libertad. For this trip Rosendo would take only the Americans and Carmen. The cargadores were not to know the nature of this expedition, which, Rosendo announced, was undertaken that the Americans might explore for two days the region around the upper Tiguí. The men received this explanation with grunts of satisfaction.

Trembling with suppressed excitement, oblivious now of fatigue, hunger, or hardship, Reed and Harris followed the old man that day over the ancient, obliterated trail to the forgotten mine of Don Ignacio de Rincón. They experienced all the sensations of those who find themselves at last on the course that leads to buried treasure. To Harris, the romance attaching to the expedition obliterated all other considerations. But Reed was busy with the practical end of it, with costs, with the problems of supplies, of transportation, and trail. Carmen saw but one vision, the man in far-off Simití, whose ancestor once owned the great mine which lay just ahead of them.

When night fell, the four stood, silent and wondering, at the mouth of the crumbling tunnel, where lay a rusted shovel bearing the scarce distinguishable inscription, "I de R."

* * * * *

Two weeks later a group of natives, sitting at a feast of baked alligator tail, at the mouth of the Amacerí, near the dirty, straggling riverine town of Llano, rose in astonishment as they saw issuing from the clayey, wallowing Guamocó trail a staggering band of travelers, among them two foreigners, whose clothes were in shreds and whose beards and unkempt hair were caked with yellow mud. With them came a young girl, lightly clad and wearing torn rope alpargates on her bare feet. The heat was descending in torrents. From the neighboring town floated a brawling bedlam of human voices. It was Sunday, and the villagers were celebrating a religious fiesta.

"Compadres," said Rosendo, approaching the half-intoxicated group. "The boat--which way?"

One of the group, his mouth too full to speak, pointed in expressive pantomime up-stream. Rosendo murmured a fervent "Loado sea Dios," and sank upon the ground.

"It will be down to-morrow--to-day, perhaps," gurgled another of the rapidly recovering feasters, his eyes roving from one member to another of the weird-looking little band.

"Lord Harry!" exclaimed Harris, as he squatted upon the damp ground and mopped his muddy brow. "I'm a salamander for heat, that's certain!"

"Señor," said Rosendo, addressing Reed, "it would be well to pay the men at once, for the boat may appear at any time, and it will not wait long."

While the curious group from the village crowded about and eagerly watched the proceedings, Reed unstrapped his pack and drew out a bundle of Colombian bills, with which he began to pay the cargadores, according to the reckoning which Rosendo had kept. As the last man, with a grunt of satisfaction, received his money, Harris exclaimed: "And to think, one good American dollar is worth a bushel of that paper stuff!"

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a shrill whistle came echoing down the river. A cloud of smoke above the distant treetops heralded the approach of the steamer. The little party had escaped a wait of a month in the drenching heat of Llano by the narrow margin of an hour.

Rosendo hastened to Reed and drew him aside. He tried to speak, but words failed him. Reed took his hand. "I understand, my friend," he said gently. "Have no fear. The mine is all I had anticipated. My wife and I will care for the girl until we hear from you. And we will keep in touch with you, although it will take two months for a letter to reach us and our reply to get back again to Simití. The development company will be formed at once. Within six months you may expect to see the work started. It is your fortune--and the girl's."

Carmen drew close to Rosendo. "Padre, I am coming back to you--yes?"

"Cierto, chiquita!" The old man would not permit himself to say more. The girl had known for some time that he was not to accompany her to the States, and that she should not see Ana in Cartagena. To this she had at length accustomed herself.

In a few minutes the lumbering boat had swung around and thrown out its gang plank. A hurried embrace; a struggle with rushing tears; another shriek from the boat whistle; and the Americans, with Carmen standing mute and motionless between them, looked back at the fading group on shore, where Rosendo's tall figure stood silhouetted against the green background of the forest. For a moment he held his arm extended toward them. Carmen knew, as she looked at the great-hearted man for the last time, that his benediction was following her--following her into that new world into which he might not enter.

* * * * *

Reed lifted the silent, wondering, big-eyed girl from the dinkey train which pulled into Cartagena from Calamar ten days later, and took her to the Hotel Mariana, where his anxious, fretting wife awaited. Their boat had hung on a hidden bar in the Cauca river for four interminable, torturing days.

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Chapter 39

On the day that Carmen arrived in Cartagena, Rosendo staggered down the Guamocó trail into Simití. On that same momentous day the flames of war again flared up throughout the country. The Simití episode, in which the President had interfered, brought Congress to the necessity of action. A few days of fiery debate followed; then the noxious measure was taken from the table and hastily enacted into a law.

But news travels slowly in Latin America, and some time was required for this act of Congress to become generally known. The delay saw Carmen through the jungle and down to the coast. There Reed lost no time in transacting what business still remained for him in Cartagena, and securing transportation for his party to New York.

Josè, the shadow of his former self, clung pitiably to Rosendo's hand, imploring the constant repetition of the old man's narrative. Then came Juan, flying to the door. He had seen and talked with the returned cargadores. The girl had not come back with them. He demanded to know why. He became wild. Neither Josè nor Rosendo could calm him. At length it seemed wise to them both to tell him that she had gone to the States with the Americans, and would return to Simití no more.

The blow almost crushed the lad. He rushed about the town half dazed. He gathered groups of companions about him and talked to them excitedly. He threatened Rosendo and Josè. Then, evidently acting on the advice of some cooler head, he rushed to his canoe and put off across the lake toward the caño. He did not return for several days. But when he did, the town knew that he had been to Bodega Central, and that the country was aflame with war.

* * * * *

Reed's wife had not received Carmen in an amiable frame of mind. "For heaven's sake, Charles," she had cried, turning from his embrace to look at the wondering girl who stood behind him, "what have you here?"

"Oh, that," he laughingly replied, "is only a little Indian I lassoed back in the jungle." And, leaving the girl to the not very tender graces of his wife, he hurried out to arrange for the return voyage.

At noon, when Harris appeared at Reed's room, Carmen rushed to him and begged to be taken for a stroll through the town. Yielding to her husband's insistence, Mrs. Reed had outfitted the girl, so that she presented a more civilized appearance. At first Carmen had been delighted with her new clothes. They were such, cheap as they were, as she had never seen in Simití. But the shoes--"Ah, señora," she pleaded, "do not make me wear them, they are so tight! I have never worn shoes before." She was beginning her education in the conventions and trammels of civilization.

As Carmen and Harris stood that afternoon in the public square, while the girl gazed enraptured at an equestrian statue of Simón Bolívar, a ragged little urchin approached and begged them to buy an afternoon paper. Harris humored him and bade Carmen ask him his name.

"Rincón," the lad answered, drawing himself up proudly.

The girl started. "Rincón!" she repeated. "Why--where do you live?"

"In the Calle Lozano," he replied, wondering why these people seemed interested in him.

Carmen translated the conversation to Harris. "Ask him who his father is," suggested the latter.

"I do not know," replied the little fellow, shaking his head. "I never saw him. He lives far away, up the great river, so Tia Catalina says. And she says he is a priest."

The color suddenly left Carmen's cheeks. "Come with me to your home," she said, taking his hand.

The boy led them willingly through the winding streets to the little upper room where, years before, he had first seen the light.

"Tia Catalina," he cried to the shabby woman who rose in amazement as the visitors entered, "see, some strangers!"

Carmen lost no time, but went at once to the heart of her question.

"The little fellow's father--he is a Rincón? And--he lives up the great river?"

The woman eyed her suspiciously for some moments without replying. But the boy answered for her. "Yes, señorita," he said eagerly, "in Simití. And his name--I am named for him--it is Josè. And I am going to visit him some day. Tia Catalina said I should, no, Tia?"

Harris fumbled in his pocket and drew out some money, which he handed to the woman. Her eyes lighted, and a cavernous smile spread over her wrinkled face.

"Ah, gracias, señor," she murmured, bending over his hand; "we need it. The boy's father has sent us but little of late."

Carmen's heart was fluttering wildly. "Tell me," she said in a cold voice, "the boy's father is Padre Josè de Rincón, of Simití? You need not fear to speak. We have just come from Simití, and have seen him. We are leaving to-morrow for the States."

"Yes, señorita," replied the woman in a thin, cracking voice, now completely disarmed of her suspicion. "The little fellow was born here some seven years ago. Ah, well I remember the day! And his mother, poor little lamb! She died the same night. But the good Padre has sent us money ever since to care for him, until of late. Señorita, why is it, think you, that he sends us so little now?"

"I--do--not--know," murmured Carmen abstractedly, scarce hearing the woman. Then she turned to the boy. She bent over him and looked long and wistfully into his eyes. He was a bright, handsome little fellow; and though her heart was crushed, she took him into it. Swallowing the lump which had come into her throat, she drew him to the window and sat down, holding him before her.

"Your father--I know him--well. He is a--a good man. But--I did not know--I never knew that he had a son." She stopped, choking.

"Tia Catalina says he is a fine man," proudly answered the boy. "And she wants me to be a priest, too. But I am going to be a bull-fighter."

"It is true, señorita," interposed the woman. "We cannot keep him from the arena now. He hangs about it all day, and about the slaughter-house. We can hardly drag him back to his meals. What can we do, señorita? But," with a touch of pride as she looked at him, "if he becomes a bull-fighter, he will be the best of them all!"

Carmen turned again to the woman. Her question carried an appeal which came from the depths of her soul. "Señora, is there no doubt--no doubt that Padre Rincón is the father of the boy?"

"We think not, señorita. The lad's mother died in the good Padre's arms. She would not say positively who was the boy's father. We thought at first--it was some one else. Marcelena insisted on it to her dying day. But now--now we know that it was Padre Josè. And he was sent to Simití for it. But--ah, señorita, the little mother was so beautiful, and so good! She--but, señorita, you are not leaving so soon?"

Carmen had risen. "Yes, my good señora," she said wearily. "We must now return to the hotel. But--here is more money for the boy. And, señora, when I reach the States I will send you money every month for him."

She took Harris's hand. "Come," she said simply, "I have seen enough of the city."

* * * * *

At noon the next day a message from Bodega Central was put into the hand of the acting-Bishop of Cartagena, as he sat in his study, wrapped in the contemplation of certain papers before him. Hostilities had begun along the Magdalena river the day before. The gates of Cartagena were to be barricaded that day, for a boatload of rebels was about to leave Barranquilla to storm the city and seize, if possible, the customs. When he had read the message he uttered an exclamation. Had not the Sister Superior of the Convent of Our Lady reported the arrival of the daughter of Rosendo Ariza some days before? He seized his hat and left the room.

Hastening to the Department of Police, he had a short interview with the chief. Then that official despatched policemen to the office of the steamship company, and to the dock. Their orders were to arrest two Americans who were abducting a young girl. They returned a half hour later with sheepish faces. "Your Excellency," they announced to their chief, "the vessel sailed from the port an hour ago, with the Americans and the girl aboard."

The announcement aroused in Wenceslas the fury of a tiger. Exacerbation succeeded surprise; and that in turn gave way to a maddening thirst for sanguinary vengeance. He hastened out and despatched a telegraphic message to Bogotá. Then he returned to his study to await its effect.

Two days later a river steamer, impressed by the federal authorities, stopped at the mouth of the Boque, and a squad of soldiers marched over the unfrequented trail to Simití, where they arrived as night fell. Their orders were to take into custody the priest, Josè de Rincón, who was accused of complicity in the recent plot to overthrow the existing government.

At the same time, on a vessel plowing its way into the North, a young girl, awkwardly wearing her ill-fitting garments, hung over the rail and gazed wistfully back at the Southern Cross. The tourists who saw her heterogeneous attire laughed. But when they looked into her beautiful, sad face their mirth died, and a tender pity stirred their hearts.

CARMEN ARIZA

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Book 3

And while within myself I trace The greatness of some future race, Aloof with hermit-eye I scan The present works of present man,-- A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

--Coleridge.

CARMEN ARIZA

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Chapter 1

The blanket of wet fog which had hung over the harbor with such exasperating tenacity lifted suddenly, late in the raw fall afternoon, and revealed to the wondering eyes of the girl who stood alone at the rail of the Joachim a confusion of mountainous shadows, studded with myriad points of light which glittered and shimmered beneath the gray pall. Across the heaving waters came the dull, ominous breathing of the metropolis. Clouds of heavy, black smoke wreathed about the bay. Through it shrieking water craft darted and wriggled in endless confusion. For two days the port of New York had been a bedlam of raw sound, as the great sirens of the motionless vessels roared their raucous warnings through the impenetrable veil which enveloped them. Their noise had become acute torture to the impatient tourists, and added bewilderment to the girl.

The transition from the primitive simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little Simití had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as she now stood at the portal of a new world, she seemed to be wandering through the mazes of an intricate dream. During the ocean voyage she had kept aloof from the other passengers, partly because of embarrassment, partly because of the dull pain at her heart as she gazed, day after day, at the two visions which floated always before her: one, the haggard face of the priest, when she tore herself from his arms in far-off Simití; the other, that of the dark-faced, white-haired old man who stood on the clayey river bank at wretched Llano and watched her, with eager, straining eyes, until the winding stream hid her from his earthly sight--forever. She wondered dully now why she had left them, why she had so easily yielded to the influences which had caused the separation. They might have fled to the jungle and lived there in safety and seclusion. The malign influences which beset them all in Simití never could have reached them in the trackless forest. And yet, she knew that had not Rosendo and Josè held out to her, almost to the last moment, assurances of a speedy reunion, she would not have yielded to the pressure which they had exerted, and to the allurements of life in the wonderful country to which they had sent her. Her embarrassment on the boat was due largely to a sense of awkwardness in the presence of women who, to her provincial sight, seemed visions of beauty. To be sure, the priest had often shown her pictures of the women of the outside world, and she had some idea of their dress. But that such a vast difference existed between the illustrations and the actualities, she had never for a moment imagined. Their gowns, their jewels, their coiffures held her in open-mouthed marvel, until Mrs. Reed, herself annoyed and embarrassed, remanded her to her cabin and bade her learn the impropriety of such manners.

Nor had the conduct of this lady throughout the voyage conduced to Carmen's happiness. Mrs. Reed showed plainly that the girl was an awkward embarrassment to her; that she was tolerated because of reasons which pertained solely to her husband's business; and she took pains to impress upon her fellow-travelers that, in view of the perplexing servant problem, this unmannered creature was being taken to the States to be trained as a maid, though, heaven knew! the training would be arduous, and the result uncertain.

Reed, though measurably kind, gave Carmen scant attention. Harris alone saved the girl from almost complete neglect. He walked the deck with her, regardless of the smiles of the other passengers. He taught her to play shuffle-board, checkers, and simple card games. He conducted her over the boat and explained the intricate machinery and the numberless wonders of the great craft. He sat with her out on the deck at night and told her marvelous stories of his experiences in frontier camps. And at the table he insisted that she occupy the seat next to him, despite the protestations of the chief steward, who would have placed her apart with the servants.

Carmen said little, but she clung to the man with an appeal which, though mute, he nevertheless understood. At Kingston he took her on a drive through the town, and bought post cards for her to send back to Josè and Rosendo. It consoled her immeasurably when he glowingly recounted the pleasure her loved ones would experience on receiving these cards; and thereafter the girl daily devoted hours to the preparation of additional ones to be posted in New York.

The lifting of the fog was the signal for a race among the stalled craft to gain the harbor entrance. The enforced retention of the vessels in the bay had resulted in much confusion in docking, and the Joachim was assigned to a pier not her own. The captain grumbled, but had no choice. At the pier opposite there docked a huge liner from Havre; and the two boats poured their swarming human freight into the same shed. When the gang plank dropped, Harris took charge of Carmen, while Reed and his wife preceded them ashore, the latter giving a little scream of delight as she spied her sister and some friends with a profusion of flowers awaiting her on the pier. She rushed joyfully into their arms, while Reed hastened to his equipage with a customs officer.

But as Harris and the bewildered Carmen pushed into the great crowd in the shed, the absent-minded man suddenly remembered that he had left a bundle of Panamá hats underneath his bunk. Dropping the girl's hand, the impetuous fellow tore back up the gang plank and dived into the boat.

For a moment Carmen, stood in confusion, bracing herself against the swarming multitude, and clinging tenaciously to the small, paper-wrapped bundle which she carried. Her first impulse was to follow Harris. But the eager, belated crowd almost swept her off her feet, and she turned again, drifting slowly with it toward the distant exit. As she moved uncertainly, struggling the while to prevent being crushed against the wall, she felt some one grasp her hand.

"Oh, here you are!" sounded a gentle voice close to her ear. "Well, how fortunate! We thought we had lost you! Come, they are waiting for us up ahead."

Carmen looked up at the speaker. It was a woman, comely of feature, and strikingly well dressed. The girl thought her beautiful. The anxious fears of a moment before vanished. "Is he up there--Mr. Reed?" she asked quickly.

"He? Oh, yes--Mr. Reed and the others are waiting for us. They sent me back to find you. The automobiles came for you all; but I presume the others have gone by this time. However, you and I will follow in mine. I am Auntie."

"His aunt?" the girl asked eagerly, as the woman forced a way for them through the mass of humanity.

"Yes, dear. And I am so glad to see you. I have heard all about you."

"Did he write to you--from Simití?"

"Yes, long letters. And he told all about his little girl. He said your name was--"

"Carmen," interrupted the girl, with a great surge of gladness, for here was one woman who did not avoid her.

"Yes, Carmen. It is a sweet name."

"But--Mr. Harris!" cried Carmen, suddenly stopping as she remembered.

"Oh, did he wait? Well, he will come. He knows where to find the automobiles. I will leave word with the pier-master to tell him."

By this time they had wormed their way clear of the crowd and gained the street. The woman, still retaining Carmen's hand, went directly to a waiting automobile and pushed the unresisting girl through the open door. Carmen had never seen a conveyance like this, and her thought was instantly absorbed. She looked wonderingly for the horses. And then, sinking into the luxurious cushions, she fell to speculating as to how the thing was moved.

As the chauffeur reached back to close the door a policeman, who had been eying the party since they came out of the shed, stepped up and laid a hand on the car.

"Er--little girl," he said, looking in and addressing Carmen, "you--you know this lady, do you?"

"Yes," replied Carmen, looking up confidently into the woman's smiling face. "She is Auntie, Mr. Reed's aunt." She thought his blue uniform and shining buttons and star gorgeously beautiful.

The officer stood hesitant a moment. Suspicion lurked in his eyes as he looked at the woman and then back again at the girl.

"She is a little girl who came up from the South with my nephew, Mr. Reed," the woman explained easily. "But I don't wonder you asked. I will give you my card, if you wish."

Her air was supremely confident. The chauffeur, too, as he got out and leisurely examined his engine, served further to disarm suspicion. The officer raised up and removed his hand from the machine. The chauffeur slowly mounted the box and threw on his lever. As the car moved gently into the night the officer glanced at its number. "Hell!" he muttered, turning away. "What's the use? The number would be changed anyway. What's a fellow going to do in a case like this, I'd like to know--go with 'em?"

Some minutes later, Harris, wild and disheveled, followed by Reed and his party, emerged hurriedly into the street.

"What you looking for?" asked the officer, planting himself in front of Harris, and becoming vaguely apprehensive.

"Girl!" sputtered Harris, his eyes protruding and his long arms pawing the air. "Girl--so high--funny dress--big straw hat! Seen her?"

The officer gasped. "She's gone! Aunt took her just now in an auto!"

"Aunt!" yelled Harris. "She's got no aunt! She's from the jungle!"

For a moment they all stood silent, big-eyed and gaping.

"Look here, Mr. Officer," said Reed, interposing. "My name's Reed. The girl came up from South America with me. Describe the woman--"

"Reed!" cried the policeman excitedly, his eyes lighting. "That's it! Said she was your aunt!"

"Lord Harry! You great, blundering boob!" cried the distracted Harris, menacing the confused officer. "And you let her nab the kid?"

Night had fallen, and a curious crowd was gathering around the excited, noisy group. Reed quickly signaled a taxicab and hustled the bewildered officer into it. "You, Harris, get the women folks home, and wait for me! I'll go to central with this officer and report the case!"

"Not I!" exclaimed Harris wildly. "I'm going to visit every dance hall and dive in this bloomin' town before I go home! I'm going to find that girl! And you, you blithering idiot," shaking a fist at the officer, "you're going to lose your star for this!"

Meantime, the car, in which Carmen lay deep in the soft cushions, sped through the dusk like a fell spirit. A confused jumble of shadows flew past, and strange, unfamiliar noises rose from the animated streets. The lights shimmered on the moist glass. It was confusing. The girl ceased trying to read any meaning in it. It all fused into a blur; and she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the novel sensations stimulated by her first ride in a carriage propelled--she knew not how.

At length came a creaking, a soft, skidding motion, and the big car rolled up against a curb and stopped.

"We are home now," said the woman softly, as she descended and again took Carmen's hand. They hurriedly mounted the white stone steps of a tall, gloomy building and entered a door that seemed to open noiselessly at their approach. A glare of light burst upon the blinking eyes of the girl. A negro woman softly closed the door after them. With a wondering glance, Carmen looked about her. In the room at her right she caught a glimpse of women--beautiful, they seemed to her--clad in loose, low-cut, gaily colored gowns. There were men there, too; and some one sat at a piano playing sprightly music. She had seen pianos like that in Cartagena, and on the boat, and they had seemed to her things bewitched. In the room at the end of the hall men and women were dancing on a floor that seemed of polished glass. Loud talk, laughter, and singing floated through the rooms, and the air was warm and stuffy, heavy with perfume. The odor reminded her of the roses in her own little garden in Simití. It was all beautiful, wonderful, fairy-like.

But she had only a moment for this appraisal. Seizing her hand again, the woman whisked her up the flight of stairs before them and into a warm, light room. Then, without speaking, she went out and closed the door, leaving the girl alone.

Carmen sank into a great, upholstered rocking chair and tried to grasp it all as she swayed dreamily back and forth. So this was his home, Mr. Reed's. It was a palace! Like those Josè had described. She wondered if Harris dwelt in a place of such heavenly beauty; for he had said that he did not live with Reed. What would the stupid people of Simití think could they see her now! She had never dreamed that such marvels existed in the big world beyond her dreary, dusty, little home town! Josè had told her much, ah, wonderful things! And so had Harris. But how pitifully inadequate now seemed all their stories! She still wondered what had made that carriage go in which she had come up from the boat. And what would one like it cost? Would her interest in La Libertad suffice to buy one? She speculated vaguely.

Then she rose and wandered about the room. She passed her hand over the clean, white counterpane of the bed. "Oh," she murmured, "how beautiful!" She went dreamily to the bureau and took up, one by one, the toilet articles that lay there in neat array. "Oh, oh, oh!" she murmured, again and again. She glanced into the clear mirror. The little figure reflected there contrasted so oddly with the gorgeously beautiful ones she had glimpsed below that she laughed aloud. Then she went to the window and felt of the soft curtains. "It is heaven," she murmured, facing about and sweeping the room, "just heaven! Oh, how beautiful even the human mind can be! I never thought it, I never thought it!"

Again she sat down in the big rocker and gave herself up to the charm of her surroundings. Her glance fell upon a vase of flowers that stood on a table near another window. She rose and went to them, bending over to inhale their fragrance. "How strange!" she exclaimed, as she felt them crackle in her fingers. Poor child, they were artificial! But she would learn, ere long, that they fittingly symbolized the life of the great city in which she was now adrift.

Time passed. She began to wonder why the woman did not return. Were not the Reeds anxious to know of her safe arrival? But perhaps they had visitors. Surely that was the case. It was a ball--but so different from the simple, artless baile of her native town. Stray snatches of music drifted into the room from the piano below. It stimulated a hunger for more. She went to the door, thinking to open it a little and listen. The door was locked!

For a moment she stood reflecting. Then apprehension began to steal over her. She went hastily, instinctively, to a window and raised the curtain. There were iron bars in front of it! She remembered suddenly that prison windows were like that. She hurried to the other. It was likewise barred. Terror's clammy hand gripped at her heart. Then she caught herself--and laughed. "How silly!" she exclaimed, sinking again into the rocker. "God is everywhere--right here!"

At that moment the door opened noiselessly and a woman entered. She was younger than the one who had met the boat. When she saw the girl she uttered an exclamation. "Lord! where did you get those clothes?"

Carmen glanced down at her odd attire and then smiled up at the woman. "Cartagena," she said simply. "Mrs. Reed bought them for me. But are you her sister? You don't look like her."

The woman laughed, a sharp, unmusical laugh. The dry cosmetic plastered thick upon her cheeks cracked. She was not beautiful like the others, thought Carmen. Her cheeks were sunken, and her low-cut gown revealed great, protruding collarbones. "Come," she said abruptly, "get out of those rags and into something modern." She opened a closet door and selected a gown from a number hanging there. It was white, and there was a gay ribbon at the waist.

"It'll have to be pinned up," she commented to herself, holding it out before her and regarding Carmen critically.

The girl's eyes danced. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "am I to wear that? How beautiful! Did Mrs. Reed give it to me? And is there a party down stairs?"

The woman returned no answer, but opened a bureau drawer and took from it several other garments, which she threw upon a chair, together with the dress.

"Into the whole lot of 'em," she said sharply, indicating the garments. "And move lively, for supper's waitin' and there'll be callers soon--gentlemen callers," she added, smiling grimly.

She turned and faced Carmen. Their eyes met. The woman stopped abruptly and stood with arms akimbo, regarding the girl. Carmen gazed up at her with a smile of happy, trustful assurance.

The woman was the first to speak. "Where did you come from?" she demanded hoarsely.

Carmen told her. She mentioned Simití, Padre Josè, and Rosendo. Her voice quavered a little; but she brightened up and concluded: "And Mr. Reed's Auntie, she met us--that is, me. Oh, isn't she a beautiful lady!"

The woman seemed to be fascinated by the child's gaze. Then, suddenly, as if something had given way under great strain, she cried: "For God's sake, don't look at me that way! Who are you?" She dropped into a chair and continued to stare at the girl.

"Well, I've told you," replied Carmen. "But," she continued, going quickly to the woman and taking her hand, "you haven't told me your name yet. And we are going to be such good friends, aren't we? Yes, we are. And you are going to tell me all about this beautiful house, and that wonderful carriage I came here in. What did make it go, anyway? Do you ride often? Oh, I hope Mrs. Reed will take me out in it every day!"

The woman's hand tightened over Carmen's. She seemed to struggle with herself. Then, in a low voice:

"Your mother--is she living?"

"Madre Maria is," returned Carmen. "But my mother, my own real mother, she died, long, long ago, on the banks of the great river. My father left her, and she was trying to follow him. Then I was born--"

"The same old story!" muttered the woman fiercely. "I've been there, girl, and know all about it. I followed the man--but it was my kid that died! God, if I could have laid my hands on him! And now you have come here--"

She stopped abruptly and swallowed hard. Carmen gently stole an arm about her neck. "It isn't true," she murmured, laying her soft cheek against the woman's painted one. "No one can desert us or harm us, for God is everywhere. And no one really dies. We have got to know that. Padre Josè said I had a message for the people up here; and now you are the first one I've told it to. But that's it: God is everywhere. And if we know that, why, nothing bad can ever happen to us. But you didn't know it when your husband left you, did you?"

"Husband!" ejaculated the woman. Then she looked up into the girl's deep, wondering eyes and checked herself. "Come," she said abruptly, rising and still holding her hand. "Never mind the clothes." A grim look settled over her features. "We'll go down to supper now as you are."

Carmen's companion led her down the stairs and through the hall to a brightly lighted room at the rear, where about a long table sat a half dozen women. There were places for as many more, but they were unoccupied. The cloth was white, the glass shone, the silver sparkled. And the women, who glanced up at the girl, were clad in gowns of such gorgeous hues as to make the child gasp in amazement. Over all hung the warm, perfumed air that she had thought so delicious when she had first entered the house.

The noisy chatter at once ceased. The woman led her to a chair next to the one she herself took. Carmen looked around for the lady who had met her at the boat. She was not there. The silence and the steady scrutiny of the others began to embarrass her. "Where--where is Auntie?" she asked timidly, looking up at her faded attendant.

A titter ran around the table. One of the women, who swayed slightly in her chair, looked up stupidly. "Who's Auntie?" she muttered thickly. A burst of laughter followed this remark, and Carmen sat down in confusion.

"Where's the Madam, Jude?" asked one of the younger women of Carmen's attendant.

"Dining alone in her room. Headache," was the laconic reply.

"She landed a queen this time, didn't she?" looking admiringly at Carmen. "Gets me, how the old girl does it! What's your name, kiddo?"

"Carmen," replied the girl timidly, looking questioningly about the room.

"That's a good handle. But what's the rest?" put in another.

"Carmen Ariza," the child amended, as her big, wondering eyes swept the group.

"Wow! That's a moniker for you!" laughed one. "Where do you hail from, angel-face?"

The girl looked uncomprehendingly at her interlocutor.

"Your home, you know. I see your finish, all right. But where'd you begin?"

"Tell them where you lived, child," said the woman called Jude in a low voice.

"Simití," replied Carmen, tears choking her words.

"Simití!" echoed around the table. "New York? Ohio? Or Kansas?" A burst of mirth punctuated the question.

"Do the women vote there?"

"Long way from Paris, judging by the fashions."

"Where is Simití, kidlet?"

Carmen answered in a scarcely audible voice, "South America."

Low exclamations of astonishment encircled the table, while the women sat regarding the girl curiously.

"But," continued Carmen in a trembling voice, "where is Mrs. Reed? And isn't Mr. Harris here? Why don't they come? Don't they know I am here?"

She looked appealingly from one to another. Her beautiful face wore such an expression of mingled fear, uncertainty, and helplessness as to throw a hush upon the room. One of the women rose. "God!" she muttered, "it's a shame!" She looked for a moment uncertainly into the big, deep eyes of the girl, and then turned and hastily left the room.

The silence which followed was broken by a pallid, painted creature at the end of the table.

"What an old devil the Madam is! My God! One look into those eyes would have been enough for me!"

"What's the idea, Jude?" asked another, nodding toward the girl. "Does she stay here?"

The woman addressed as Jude shook her head. "This is only a recruiting station for the regular army. She'll go over to French Lucy's; and the Madam will get a round price for the job."

"Old Lucy'll get rich off of her! But she needs the money. Ames owns her house, too, doesn't he?"

"Sure thing!" replied Jude, brightening under the stimulus of her wine. "He owns every house in this block, they say. Got long leases for 'em all. And the rents--suffering Moses! The Madam rolls on the floor and cusses for a week straight every time she pays hers. But just the same, if you've ever noticed, the houses that Ames owns are never raided by the coppers. Ames whacks up with the mayor and the city hall gang and the chief of police. That means protection, and we pay for it in high rents. But it's a lot better'n being swooped down on by the cops every few weeks, ain't it? We know what we're expected to pay, that way. And we never do when we keep handin' it out to the cops."

"That's right," approved some one.

"It sure is. That's what the collector says. And he's got a new collector, fellow from the Ketchim Realty Company. They're the old man's agents now for his dive-houses. He can't get anybody else to handle 'em, so the collector tells me."

"Belle Carey's place was pulled last night, I hear," said one of the women, pushing back her plate and lighting a cigarette.

"Yes," returned Jude, "and why? Cause the house is owned by Gannette--swell guy livin' up on Riverside Drive--and he don't divvy with the city hall. Belle don't pay no such rent as the Madam does--at least so old Lucy tells me."

The half-intoxicated woman down the table, who had stirred their laughter a few minutes before, now roused up heavily. "Ol' Lucy--huh! Used to work for her m'self. Caught a pippin for her once--right off the train--jus' like this li'l hussy. Went to th' depot in a hack. Saw th' li'l kid comin' an' pretended to faint. Li'l kid run to me an' asked could she help. Got her to see me safe home--tee! hee! She's workin' f'r ol' Lucy yet, sound's a dollar."

She fixed her bleared eyes upon Carmen and lapsed back into her former state of sodden stupidity.

The girl rose hastily from her chair. The policeman's words at the pier were floating confusedly through her thought. The strange talk of these women increased the confusion. Perhaps a mistake had been made. She turned beseechingly to Jude. "Isn't this--Mr. Reed's house?" she asked.

Another of the women got up hurriedly and left the table. "I haven't the nerve for another sob-scene," she commented as she went out.

"Where am I? Where am I?" pleaded Carmen, turning from one to another.

Jude reached out and seized her hand tightly. "Pleasant job for me!" she commented ironically, looking at the others. Then, to Carmen:

"You are in a--a hotel," she said abruptly.

"Oh--then--then it was a mistake?" The girl turned her great, yearning eyes upon the woman. Jude shrank under them. "Sit down, and finish your supper," she said harshly, pulling the girl toward the chair.

"No!" replied Carmen loudly. "You must take me to Mr. Reed!"

The maudlin woman down the table chuckled thickly. The negro waitress went quickly out and closed the door. Jude rose, still holding the girl's hand. "Come up stairs with me," she said, leading her away.

"Poor old Jude!" commented one of the women, when the two had left the room. "She's about all in. This sort of business is getting her nerve. But she's housekeeper, and that's part of her job. And--the poor little kid! But ain't she a beauty!"

Jude took the girl into her own room and locked the door. Then she sank wearily into a chair. "God!" she cried, "I'm sick of this--sick of the whole thing!"

Carmen went quickly to her. "Don't!" she said. "Don't! It was all a mistake, and we can go."

"Go!" echoed the woman bitterly. "Where--and how?"

"Why, you said this was a hotel--"

"Hotel! God, it's hell! And you are in forever!"

Carmen gazed at the excited woman with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Now listen," said Jude, bracing herself, "I've got something to tell you. You have been--good God! I can't--I can't! For God's sake, child, don't look at me that way! Who are you? Where do you come from?"

"I told you," replied Carmen quietly.

"Your face looks as if you had come down from the sky. But if you did, and if you believe in a God, you had better pray to Him now!"

"Why--I am not afraid. God is everywhere--right here. I was afraid--a little--at first. But not now. When we stop and just know that we love everybody, and that everybody really loves us, why, we can't be afraid any more, can we?"

The woman looked up at the child in blank amazement. Love! That warped, twisted word conveyed no meaning to her. And God--it was only a convenient execrative. But--what was it that looked out from that strange girl's eyes? What was it that held her fascinated there? What was emerging from those unfathomable depths, twining itself about her withered heart and expanding her black, shrunken soul? Whence came that beautiful, white life that she was going to blast? And could she, after all? Then what stayed her now?

"Look here," she cried sharply, "tell me again all about yourself, and about your friends and family down south, and what it was that the Madam said to you! And be quick!"

Carmen sat down at her feet, and taking her hand, went again over the story. As the child talked, the woman's hard eyes widened, and now and then a big tear rolled down the painted cheek. Her thought began to stray back, far back, along the wreck-strewn path over which she herself had come. At last in the dim haze she saw again the little New England farm, and her father, stern, but honest and respected, trudging behind the plow. In the cottage she saw her white-haired mother, every lineament bespeaking her Puritan origin, hovering over her little household like a benediction. Then night fell, swiftly as the eagle swoops down upon its prey, and she awoke from a terrible dream, stained, abandoned, lost--and seared with a foul oath to drag down to her own level every innocent girl upon whom her hands might thereafter fall!

"And I have just had to know," Carmen concluded, "every minute since I left Simití, that God was everywhere, and that He would not let any harm come to me. But when we really know that, why, the way always opens. For that's prayer, right prayer; the kind that Jesus taught."

The woman sat staring at the girl, an expression of utter blankness upon her pallid face. Prayer! Oh, yes, she had been taught to pray. Well she remembered, though the memory now cut like a knife, how she knelt at her beautiful mother's knee and asked the good Father to bless and protect them all, even to the beloved doll that she hugged to her little bosom. But God had never heard her petitions, innocent though she was. And He had let her fall, even with a prayer on her lips, into the black pit!

A loud sound of male voices and a stamping of feet rose from below. The woman sprang to the door and stood listening. "It's the boys from the college!" she cried in a hoarse whisper.

She turned and stood hesitant for a moment, as if striving to formulate a plan. A look of fierce determination came into her face. She went to the bureau and took from the drawers several articles, which she hastily thrust into the pocket of her dress.

"Now," she said, turning to Carmen and speaking in a low, strained voice, "you do just as I say. Bring your bundle. And for God's sake don't speak!"

Leaving the light burning, she stepped quickly out with Carmen and locked the door after her. Then, bidding the girl wait, she slipped softly down the hall and locked the door of the room to which the girl had first been taken. Both keys she dropped into her pocket. "Now follow me," she said.

Laughter and music floated up from below, mingled with the clink of glasses. The air was heavy with perfume and tobacco smoke. A door near them opened, and a sound of voices issued. The woman pulled Carmen into a closet until the hall was again quiet. Then she hurried on to another door which she entered, dragging the girl with her. Again she locked the door after her. Groping through the darkness, she reached a window, across which stood a hinged iron grating, secured with a padlock. The woman fumbled among her keys and unfastened this. Swinging it wide, and opening the window beyond, she bade the girl precede her cautiously.

"It's a fire-escape," she explained briefly. She reached through the window grating and fastened the padlock; then closed the window; and quickly descended with the girl to the ground below.

Pausing a moment to get her breath, she seized Carmen's hand and crept swiftly around the big house and into a dark alley. There she stopped to throw over her shoulders a light shawl which she had taken from the bureau. Then she hurried on.

Their course lay through the muddy alley for several blocks. When they emerged they were in a dimly lighted cross street. The air was chill, and the thinly clad woman shivered. Carmen, fresh from the tropics, felt the contrast keenly. A few moments' rapid walking down the street brought them to a large building of yellow brick, surrounded by a high board fence. The woman unfastened the gate and hurried up to the door, over which, by the feeble light of the street lamp, Carmen read, "The Little Sisters of the Poor."

A black-robed woman admitted them and went to summon the Sister Superior. Carmen marveled at her strange attire. A moment later they were silently ushered into an adjoining room, where a tall woman, similarly dressed, awaited them.

"Sister," said Jude excitedly, "here's a little kid--you got to care for her until she finds her friends!"

The Sister Superior instantly divined the status of the woman. "Let the child wait here a moment," she said, "and you come with me and tell your story. It would be better that she should not hear."

In a little while they appeared again. Carmen was drowsing in her chair.

"She's chock full of religion," the woman was saying.

"But you," the Sister replied, "what will you do? Go back?"

"God, no!" cried the woman. "They would murder me!"

"Then you will stay here until--"

"No, no! I have friends--others like myself--I will go to them. I--I couldn't stay here--with her," nodding toward the girl. "But--you will take care of her?"

"Surely," returned the Sister in a calm voice.

Jude looked at Carmen for a moment. She made as if she would speak. Then she turned abruptly and went swiftly out into the chill night.

"Come," said the Sister to Carmen, extending a hand. "Poor little thing!" she murmured as they mounted the stairs. "Poor little thing!"

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Chapter 2

Carmen was astir next morning long before the rising-bell sounded its shrill summons through the long corridors. When she opened her eyes she gazed at the ceiling above in perplexity. She still seemed to feel the tossing motion of the boat, and half believed the bell to be the call to the table, where she should again hear the cheery voice of Harris and meet the tolerant smile of Mrs. Reed. Then a rush of memories swept her, and her heart went down in the flood. She was alone in a great foreign city! She turned her face to the pillow, and for a moment a sob shook her. Then she reached under the pillow and drew out the little Bible, which she had taken from her bundle and placed there when the Sister left her the night before. The book fell open to Isaiah, and she read aloud:

"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles."

She snapped the book shut and quickly rose. "That means me," she said firmly. "Padre Josè said I had a message for the world; and now I am to tell it to these people up here. God has called me in righteousness. That means, He has called me to do right thinking. And I am to tell these people how to think right. They don't know as yet."

Suddenly her thought reverted to Cartagena, and to the sturdy little lad who had so proudly claimed the name of Rincón. For a moment she stood still. Then she burst into tears and threw herself back upon the bed.

But she did not lie there long. "I must think only God's thoughts," she said, struggling to her feet and checking her grief. "If it is right for the little boy to be his son, then I must want it to be so. I must want only the right--I have got to want it! And if it is not right now, then God will make it so. It is all in His hands, and I must not think of it any more, unless I think right thoughts."

She dressed herself quickly, but did not put on the shoes. "I simply can not wear these things," she mourned, looking at them dubiously; "and I do not believe the woman will make me. I wonder why the other woman called her Sister. Why did she wear that ugly black bonnet? And why was I hurried away from that hotel? It was so much pleasanter there, so bright and warm; and here it is so cold." She shivered as she buttoned her thin dress. "But," she continued, "I have got to go out now and find Mr. Reed and Mr. Harris--I have just got to find them--and to-day! But, oh, this city is so much larger than Simití!"

She shook her head in perplexity as she put the Bible back again in the bundle, where lay the title papers to La Libertad and her mother's little locket, which Rosendo had given her that last morning in Simití. The latter she drew out and regarded wistfully for some moments. "I haven't any father or mother but God," she murmured. "But He is both father and mother to me now." With a little sigh she tied up the bundle again. Holding it in one hand and carrying the much despised shoes in the other, she left the cheerless room and started down the long, cold hall.

When she reached the stairway leading to the floor below she stopped abruptly. "Anita's babe!" she exclaimed half-aloud. "I have been thinking only of myself. It is not blind! It sees! It sees as God sees! What is it that the Bible says?--'And I will bring them by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.' I must know that--always! And Padre Josè said he would remember it, too."

Again she choked back the tears which surged up at the remembrance of the priest, and, bracing herself, hastily descended the stairs, murmuring at every step, "God is everywhere--right here!"

At the far end of the lower hall she saw, through an open door, a number of elderly people sitting at long tables. Toward them she made her way. When she reached the door, she stopped and peered curiously within. A murmur of astonishment rose from the inmates when they caught sight of the quaint object in the doorway, standing uncertainly, with her shoes in one hand, the awkwardly tied bundle in the other, and garbed in the chaotic attire so hastily procured for her in Cartagena.

A Sister came quickly forward and, taking the girl's hand, led her into a smaller adjoining room, where sat the Sister Superior at breakfast. The latter greeted the child gently and bade her be seated at the table. Carmen dropped into a chair and sat staring in naïve wonder.

"Well," began the Sister at length, "eat your breakfast quickly. This is Sunday, you know, and Mass will be said in the chapel in half an hour. You look frightened. I don't wonder. But you are with friends here, little girl. What is your name?"

Carmen quickly recovered her spirits, and her nimble tongue its wonted flexibility. Without further invitation or preface she entered at once upon a lively description of her wonderful journey through the jungle, the subsequent ocean voyage, and the mishap at the pier, and concluded with the cryptical remark: "And, you know, Señora, it is all just as Padre Josè said, only a series of states of consciousness, after all!"

The Sister stared blankly at the beaming child. What manner of being was this that had been so strangely wafted into these sacred precincts on the night breeze! The abandoned woman who had brought her there, the Sister remembered, had dropped an equally cryptical remark--"She's chock full of religion."

But gratitude quickly mastered her wonder, and the woman, pondering the child's dramatic recital, murmured a sincere, "The Virgin be praised!"

"Oh," said Carmen, looking up quickly as she caught the words, "you people up here talk just like those in Simití. But Padre Josè said you didn't know, either. You ought to, though, for you have had so many more ad--advantages than we have. Señora, there are many big, clumsy words in the English language, aren't there? But I love it just the same. So did Padre Josè. We used to speak it all the time during the last years we were together. He said it seemed easier to talk about God in that language than in any other. Do you find it so, Señora?"

"What do you mean, child?" asked the puzzled Sister. "And who is this Josè that you talk so much about?"

"He--taught me--in Simití. He is the priest there."

"Well," replied the Sister warmly, "he seems to have taught you queer things!"

"Oh, no!" returned Carmen quickly, "he just taught me the truth. He didn't tell me about the queer things in the world, for he said they were not real."

Again the Sister stared at the girl in dumb amazement. But the child's thought had strayed to other topics. "Isn't it cold up here!" she exclaimed, shivering and drawing her dress about her. "I guess I'll have to put on these shoes to keep my feet warm."

"Certainly, child, put them on!" exclaimed the Sister. "Didn't you wear shoes in your country?"

"No," replied Carmen, tugging and straining at the shoes; "I didn't wear much of anything, it was so warm. Oh, it is beautiful down there, Señora, so beautiful and warm in Simití!" She sighed, and her eyes filled with tears. But she brushed them away and smiled bravely up at the Sister. "I've come here because it is right," she said with a firm nod of her head. "Padre Josè said I had a message for you. He said you didn't know much about God up here. Why, I don't know much of anything else!" She laughed a happy little laugh as she said this. Then she went on briskly:

"You know, Señora, Padre Josè isn't really a priest. But he said he had to stay in the Church in order to teach me. I never could understand why. I am sure he just thought wrong about it. But, anyway, he will not have to be a priest any more, now that I have gone, will he? You know, Don Jorge said priests were a bad lot; but that isn't so, for there are many good priests, aren't there? Yes, there are. Only, they don't understand, either. Why, Señora," she exclaimed, suddenly remembering the Sister's previous injunction, "is this a church? You said there would be Mass in the chapel--"

"No," replied the Sister, still studying the girl attentively, while her manner became more severe; "this is a home for old people, a charitable institution."

"Oh," replied Carmen, with a very vague idea of what that meant. "Well," her face alight and her eyes dancing, "I don't belong here then, do I? I am never going to be old," she meditated. "Why, God never grows old! And we are His children, you know. The Bible says we are made in His image and likeness. Well, if that is so, how can we ever grow old? Just think of God hobbling around in heaven with a cane and saying: 'Well, I'm getting old now! I'll soon be dying!' Isn't that awful! We wouldn't grow old and die if it wasn't for our wrong way of thinking, would we? When we think His thoughts, why, we will be like Him. But not until then. Padre Josè says this, and he knows it is true--only, he seems to have a hard time proving it. But, Señora, we have all got to prove it, some time, every one of us. And then there will not be any places like this for old people--people who still believe that two and two are seven, you know. And that's my message."

The woman looked at her blankly; but the girl rambled on. "Padre Josè sometimes talked of the charitable institutions out in the world, and he always said that charity was a crime against the people. And he was right, for that is just the way Jesus looked at it, isn't it? Jesus did not give money to beggars, but he did better, he healed them of the bad state of mind that was making them poor and sick. Why don't the priests do that? Can you heal the sick? Jesus, when he taught, first said a thing, and then he turned right around and proved it. Now do you do that? I try to. I've tried it all my life. And, why, Señora, I've had thousands of proofs!"

The Sister did not reply; and Carmen, stealing a covert glance at her, continued:

"You know, Señora, it is just as wicked to be sick and poor as it is to tell a lie, because being sick and poor is just the ex--the ex-ter-nal-i-zation of our thought; and such thought is not from God; and so to hold such thoughts and to believe them real is to believe in power apart from God. It is having other gods than the one God; and that is breaking the very first Commandment, isn't it? Yes, it is; and you can prove it, just as you can prove the principles in mathematics. Señora, do you know anything about mathematics?"

The astonished woman made an involuntary sign of negation.

"Oh, Señora," cried the enthusiastic girl, "the things that Jesus taught can be proved just as easily as we prove the rules in mathematics! Why not? for they are truth, and all truth can be demonstrated, you know. You know, Señora, God is everywhere--not only in heaven, but right here where we are. Heaven, Padre Josè used to say so often, is only a perfect state of mind; and so it is, isn't it? God, you know, is mind. And when we reflect Him perfectly, why, we will be in heaven. Isn't it simple? But," she went on after catching her breath, "we can't reflect Him as long as we believe evil to be real and powerful. Evil isn't anything. It is just zero, nothing--"

"I've heard that before," interrupted the woman, recovering somewhat from her surprise. "But I think that before you get out of New York you will reverse that idea. There's a pretty fair amount of evil here, and it is quite real, we find."

"But it isn't!" cried Carmen. "If it is real, then God made it. It seems real to you--but that is only because you give it reality in your consciousness. You believe it real, and so it becomes to you."

"Well," said the woman dryly, "on that basis I think the same may be said of good, too."

"No," answered Carmen eagerly, "good is--"

"There," interrupted the Sister coldly, holding up an admonitory hand, "we are not going to discuss the foolish theological notions which that fallen priest put into your poor little head. Finish your breakfast."

The child looked at the woman in mute protest. Josè a fallen priest! Would these people up here so regard him? It was a new thought, and one that she would not accept.

"Señora," she began again, after a brief interval, "Padre Josè is a good man, even the human Padre Josè. And he is trying to solve his problem and know God. And he is trying to know himself, not as other people think they know him, but as God knows him, and as I have always tried to know him. You have no right to judge him--and, anyway, you are not judging him, but only your wrong idea of him. And that," she said softly, "is nothing."

The Sister did not answer. She was beginning to feel the spell of those great brown eyes, that soft, rich voice, and the sparkling expression of innocence, purity, and calm assurance that bubbled from those red lips. And she was losing herself in contemplation of the girl's luxuriant beauty, whose rich profusion her strange, foreign attire could not disguise.

"Señora," said Carmen suddenly, "the people on the boat laughed at my clothes. But I don't think them half as funny as that great black bonnet you are wearing. Why do you wear it? I never saw one until I was brought here."

It was said innocently, and with no thought of offense. But the woman instantly roused from her meditation and assumed an attitude of severe dignity. "Finish your breakfast," she commanded sharply. "And remember after this that children's manners here are not those of your country."

The girl fell quiet under the rebuke, and the meal ended in silence. As they were rising from the table a cheery voice came from the outer room, and presently a priest looked in.

"Good morning, Sister," he cried heartily. "Well, who's this?" as his eyes fell upon Carmen. He was a young man, apparently still in the twenties, of athletic build, inclined rather to stoutness, and with a round, shining face that radiated health and good nature.

The Sister quietly returned his cordial greeting. "It is a little waif," she said in answer to his query, "who strayed in here last night."

"Aha," said the priest, "another derelict! And will you send her to the orphanage?"

"I'm afraid if I do the little heretic will corrupt all the other children," replied the Sister. "Father," she continued seriously, "I want you to examine this child, and then tell me what you think should be done with her."

"What is it--health?" asked the priest, studying the girl.

"No," replied the Sister; "but another priest has gone wrong, and this," pointing to Carmen, "is the result of his pernicious teachings."

The priest did not reply for some moments. Then he sighed wearily. "Very well, Sister," he said in a low voice. "I will talk with her after the service." He seemed suddenly to have lost his cheerfulness, as he continued to converse with the woman on matters pertaining to the institution.

Carmen, wondering and receptive, took the place assigned to her in the chapel and sat quietly through the service. She had often seen Josè celebrate Mass in the rude little church in Simití, but with no such elaboration as she witnessed here. Once or twice she joined in the responses, not with any thought of worship, but rather to give vent, even if slight, to the impelling desire to hear her own musical voice. She thought as she did so that the priest looked in her direction. She thought others looked at her attentively at the same time. But they had all stared at her, for that matter, and she had felt confused and embarrassed under their searching scrutiny. Yet the old people attracted her peculiarly. Never had she seen so many at one time. And never, she thought, had she seen such physical decrepitude and helplessness. And then she fell to wondering what they were all there for, and what they got out of the service. Did the Mass mean anything to them? Did they believe that thereby their sins were atoned? Did they believe that that priest was really changing the wafer and wine into flesh and blood? She recalled much that Josè had told her about the people up in the States. They were not so different, mentally, from her own, after all.

The Host had been elevated. The people, still gossiping cheerfully, had prostrated themselves before it. The sermon had been short, for the old people waxed impatient at long discourses. Then the priest descended from the pulpit and came to Carmen. "Now, little girl," he said, seating himself beside her, "tell me all about yourself, who you are, where you come from, and what you have been taught. And do not be afraid. I am your friend." Carmen smiled up at him; then plunged into her narrative.

It was two hours later when the Sister Superior looked in and saw the priest and girl still sitting in earnest conversation. She stood listening. "But," she heard the priest say, "you tell me that this Father Josè taught you these things?"

"He taught me English, and French, and German. He taught me mathematics. And he taught me all I know of history, and of the world," the girl replied.

"Yes, yes," the priest went on hurriedly; "but these other things, these religious and philosophical notions, who taught you these?"

The Sister drew closer and strained her ears to hear.

The girl looked down as she answered softly, "God."

The priest's head sank upon his breast. He reached out and laid a hand on hers. "I believe you," he said, in a voice scarcely audible. "I believe you--for we do not teach such things."

The girl looked up with luminous eyes. "Then," she said quizzically, "you are not really a priest."

"Father Waite!" The Sister's voice rang sternly through the quiet chapel. The priest started to his feet in confusion. "The dinner-bell will ring in a few minutes," continued the Sister, regarding the man severely.

"Ah, true," he murmured, hastily glancing at the clock. "The time passed so rapidly--a--a--this girl--"

"Leave the girl to me," replied the Sister coldly. "Unless," she added, "you consider her deranged. Coming from that hot country suddenly into this cold climate might--"

"No, no," interrupted the priest hastily; "she seems uncommonly strong mentally. She has some notions that are a--somewhat different from ours--that is--but I will come and have a further talk with her."

He raised his hand in silent benediction, while the Sister bowed her head stiffly. Then, as if loath to take his eyes from the girl, he turned and went slowly out.

"Come," said the woman sharply. Carmen followed her out into the hall and down a flight of steps to the kitchen below.

"Katherine," said the Sister Superior, addressing an elderly, white-haired Sister who seemed to be in charge of the culinary department, "put this girl to work. Let her eat with you and sleep in your room. And see if you can't work some of the foolish notions out of her head."

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Chapter 3

"Get some o' th' foolish notions out of your head, is it? Och, puir bairn, wid yer swate face an' that hivenly hair, it's welcome ye air to yer notions! But, hist! Ye have talked too brash to the Sister Superior. Ye air that innocent, puir thing! But, mind your tongue, honey. Tell your funny notions to old Katie, an' they'll be safe as the soul of Saint Patrick; but keep mum before the others, honey."

"But, Señora, don't they want to know the truth up here?" There was a note of appeal in the quavering voice.

"Now listen, honey; don't call me sich heathen names. Call me Sister. I'm no Señora, whativer that may be. And as for wantin' to know the truth, God bless ye, honey! th' good Fathers know it all now."

"They don't, Señ--Sister!"

"Well, thin, they don't--an' mebby I'm not so far from agreein' wid ye. But, och, it's dead beat I am, after the Sunday's work! But ye air a right smart little helper, honey--only, ye don't belong in th' kitchen."

"Señ--I mean, Sister--"

"That's better, honey; ye'll get it in time."

"Sister, I've just got to find Mr. Reed! Do you know him?"

"No, honey, it's few I know outside these walls. But ye can put up a bit of a prayer when ye turn in to-night. An' we'd best be makin' for th' bed, too, darlin', for we've a hard day's work to-morrow."

It was Carmen's second night in New York, and as the girl silently followed the puffing old woman up the several long, dark flights of stairs to the little, cheerless room under the eaves, it seemed to her that her brain must fly apart with the pressure of its mental accumulation. The great building in which she was now sheltered, the kitchen, with its marvels of equipment, gas stoves, electric lights, annunciators, and a thousand other equally wonderful appliances which the human mind has developed for its service and comfort, held her fascinated, despite her situation, while she swelled with questions she dared not ask. Notwithstanding the anxiety which she had not wholly suppressed, her curiosity, naïve, eager, and insatiable, rose mountain high. Sister Katherine had been kind to her, had received her with open arms, and given her light tasks to perform. And many times during the long afternoon the old woman had relaxed entirely from her assumed brusqueness and stooped to lay a large, red hand gently upon the brown curls, or to imprint a resounding kiss upon the flushed cheek. Now, as night was settling down over the great, roaring city, the woman took the homeless waif into her big heart and wrapped her in a love that, roughly expressed, was yet none the less tender and sincere.

"Ye can ask the Virgin, honey, to send ye to yer frinds," said the woman, as they sat in the gloaming before the window and looked out over the kindling lights of the city.

"What good would that do, Sister?"

"Not much, I guess, honey," answered the woman frankly. "Troth, an' I've asked her fer iverything in my time, from diamonds to a husband, an' she landed me in a convint! But I ain't complainin'."

"You didn't ask in the right way, Sister--"

"Faith, I asked in ivery way I knew how! An' whin I had th' carbuncle on me neck I yelled at her! Sure she may have answered me prayer, fer th' whoop I gave busted the carbuncle, an' I got well. Ye nivir kin tell, honey. An' so I ain't complainin'."

"But, Sis--I can't call you Sister!" pleaded the girl, going to the woman and twining her arms about her neck.

"Och, honey darlin'"--tears started from the old woman's eyes and rolled down her wrinkled cheeks--"honey darlin', call me Katie, just old Katie. Och, Holy Virgin, if I could have had a home, an' a beautiful daughter like you--!" She clasped the girl in her great arms and held her tightly.

"Katie, when you pray you must pray knowing that God has already given you what you need, and that there is nothing that can keep you from seeing it."

The woman wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "An' so, darlin', if I want diamonds I must know that I have 'em, is it that, honey?"

"You dear thing!" murmured Carmen, drawing closer, and laying her soft cheek against the leathery visage of the old woman.

"Say that again, honey--och, say it again! It's words, darlin', that's nivir been said to old Katie!"

"Why, hasn't any one ever been kind to you?"

"Kind! Och, ivirybody's kind to me, honey! But nobody has ivir loved me--that way. The good Lord made me a fright, honey--ain't ye noticed? I've a face like an owl. An' they told me from th' cradle up I'd nivir land a man. An' I didn't, honey; they all ran from me--an' so I become a bride o' th' Church. But I ain't complainin'."

"But, Katie, the face is nothing. Why, your heart is as big--as big as the whole world! I hadn't been with you an hour before I knew that. And, Katie dear, I love you."

"Och, darlin'," murmured the woman, "sure th' Virgin be praised fer sendin' ye to me, a lonely old woman!"

"It was not the Virgin, Katie, but God who brought me here," said the girl gently, as she caressed the old Sister's cheek.

"It's all one, honey; the Virgin's th' Mother o' God."

"Why, Katie! You don't know what you are saying!"

"Troth, child, she has th' same power as God! Don't we pray to her, an' she prays to th' good God to save us? Don't she have influence with Him?"

"No, Katie, no. There is no person or thing that persuades God to be good to His children. There is nothing that influences Him. He is infinite--infinite mind, Katie, and infinite good. Oh, Katie, what awful things are taught in this world as truth! How little we know of the great God! And yet how much people pretend they know about Him! But if they only knew--really knew, as Jesus did--why, Katie, there wouldn't be an old person, or a sick or unhappy one in the whole world! Katie," after a little pause, "I know. And I'm going to tell them."

The old Sister drew the child closer. "Air these more o' yer funny notions, darlin'?"

"I suppose they are what the world thinks funny, Katie," answered the girl.

"An' I don't wonder! We are not taught such things, honey. But then, th' world moves, girlie--even old Katie sees that. Only, the Church don't move with it. An' old Katie can see that, too. An' so, I'm thinkin', does Father Waite."

"I know he does, Katie."

"Faith, an' how do ye know it, child?"

"He talked with me--a long time, this morning. He said God had taught me what I know."

"Aye, is it so? Thin me own suspicions air right; he's out o' tune! Did ye say, girlie dear, that he didn't scold ye fer yer funny notions?"

"No, Katie, he said they were right."

"Did he so! Thin, lassie dear, things is goin' to happen. An' he's a good man--troth, they make no better in this world!"

The old Sister lapsed into thought. Carmen looked out wonderingly over the city. She yearned to know what it held for her.

"Katie," she said at length, bending again over the woman, "will you help me find Mr. Reed?"

"Och, lassie--what's your name again?"

"Carmen," replied the girl, "Carmen Ariza."

"Cair-men Aree--now ain't that a name fer ye! An' yer nationality, girl?"

"I'm a Colombian, Katie."

"Whist! Where is it? In Afrikay?"

"South America," with a little sigh.

"Now think o' that! An' I'm Scotch-Irish, honey; an' we're both a long way from th' ol' sod! Lassie dear, tell me about last night. But, no; begin 'way back. Give us th' whole tale. Old Katie's weak in th' head, girlie, but she may see a way out fer ye. Th' Virgin help ye, puir bairn!"

Midnight boomed from the bell in a neighboring tower when Carmen finished her story.

"Be the Saints above!" exclaimed the old Sister, staring at the girl in amazement. "Now do ye let me feel of ye to see that ye air human; fer only a Saint could go through all that an' live to tell it! An' the place ye were in last night! Now be Saint Patrick, if I was rich I'd have Masses said every day fer that Jude who brung ye here! Don't tell me th' good Lord won't forgive her! Och, God! she's a Saint already."

"She's a good woman, Katie; and, somehow, I felt sorry for her, but I don't know why. She has a beautiful home in that hotel--"

"Hotel, is it! Hivins above! But--och, sure, it was a hotel, honey. Only, ye air better off here wi' old Katie."

"And now you will help me?"

"Help you, lassie! God bless ye, yes! But--unless it's wi' Father Waite, I don't know what I can do. Ye air in bad with th' Sister Superior fer yer talk at th' breakfast table. Ye're a fresh little heathen, honey. An' she's suspicious of Father Waite, too. We all air. An' he th' best man on airth! But his doctrine ain't just sound, sweatheart. Hivins, doctrine! It means more'n a good heart! There, honey, lave it to me. But it's got to be done quick, or th' Sister Superior'll have ye in an orphan asylum, where ye'll stay till ye air soused in th' doctrine! I can manage to get word to Father Waite to-morrow, airly. Jinny will run over fer me. A bit of a word wi' him'll fix it, lassie dear. An' now, honey swate, off with them funny clothes and plump into bed. Saints above! it's all but marnin' now!"

A few minutes later the woman turned to the girl who lay so quiet at her side.

"Honey," she whispered, "was ye tellin' me awhile back that ye knew the right way to pray?"

"Yes, Katie dear," the child murmured.

"Thin do you pray, lass, an' I'll not trouble the Virgin this night."

* * * * *

"Well, Father, what do you think now?" The Sister Superior looked up aggressively, as Father Waite slowly entered the room. His head was bowed, and there was a look of deep earnestness upon his face.

"I have talked with her again--an hour, or more," he said reflectively. "She is a--a remarkable girl, in many ways." He stopped, uncertain how to proceed.

The Sister eyed him keenly. "She attracts and repels me, both," she said. "At times she seems positively uncanny. And she appears to be suffering from religious dementia. Do you not think so?"

It was a compromising question, and the priest weighed his words carefully before replying. "She does--seem to--to have rather--a--rather unusual--religious views," said he slowly.

"Would it not be well to have Dr. Sullivan examine her?"

"To what end?"

"That we may know what to do with her. If she is mentally unsound she must not be sent to the orphanage."

"She should be taken--a--I mean, we should try to locate her friends. I have already searched the city directory; but, though there are many Reeds, there are none listed with the initials she gave me as his. I had thought," he continued hesitatingly, "I had thought of putting her in charge of the Young Women's Christian Association--"

"Father Waite!" The Sister Superior rose and drew herself up to her full height. "Do you mean to say that you have contemplated delivering her into the hands of heretics?" she demanded coldly, her tall figure instinct with the mortal pride of religious superiority.

"Why, Sister," returned the priest with embarrassment, "would it not be wise to place her among those whose views harmonize more closely with hers than ours do?"

"Father! I am surprised--!"

"But--she is not a Catholic!" urged the man, with a gesture of impatience. "And she will never be one. The combined weight of all the centuries of church authority could not make her one--never! I must take her to those with whom she rightfully belongs."

The Sister Superior's eyes narrowed and glittered, and her face grew dark. "Never!" she said in a low tone. "I would rather see her dead! Father Waite, you exceed your authority! I am in charge here, and I shall report this case to the Bishop!"

The priest stood hesitant for a moment. The futility of his case seemed to impress him. Taking up his hat, he bowed without speaking and went out. The Sister Superior stepped to the telephone. Outside the door the man listened until he caught the number she called. His face grew dark and angry, and his hands clenched a she strode down the hall.

On the stairs that led up from the kitchen stood Sister Katherine.

"Hist! Father!"

He stopped and turned to the woman. Her finger went up to her lips.

"Wait on th' corner--behind the church! The lassie will meet you there!"

Before he could reply the woman had plunged again into the dark stairway. Stopping at a small closet below, she took out a bundle. Then she hurried to the kitchen and summoned Carmen, who was sitting at a table peeling potatoes.

"Troth, lazy lass," she commanded sharply, "do you take the bucket and mop and begin on the front steps. And mind that ye don't bring me heavy hand down on ye! Och, lassie darlin'," she added, when she had drawn the startled girl out of hearing of the others, "give yer old Katie a kiss, and then be off! Troth, it breaks me heart to see ye go--but 'twould break yours to stay! Go, lassie darlin', an' don't fergit old Katie! Here," thrusting the girl's bundle and a dollar bill into her hands, "an' God bless ye, lass! Ye've won me, heart an' soul! Ye'll find a frind at th' nixt corner!" pointing up the street. She strained the girl again to her breast, then opened the door and hastily thrust her out into the street.

For a moment Carmen stood dazed by the suddenness of it all. She looked up confusedly at the great, yellow building from which she had been ejected. There was no visible sign of life. Then, grasping her bundle and the dollar bill, she hurried out through the gate and started up the street.

Around the corner stood Father Waite. The man's face was furrowed, and his body trembled. The girl went up to him with a glad smile. The priest looked up, and muttered something incoherent under his breath a she took her hand.

"Where are we going, Padre?" she asked.

He drew some loose change from his pocket, and hailed an approaching street car.

"To police headquarters," he replied, "to ask them to help us find your friends."

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Chapter 4

From the mysterious wastes which lie far out on the ocean, the fog was again creeping stealthily across the bay and into the throbbing arteries of the great city. Through half-opened doors and windows it rolled like smoke, and piled like drifted snow against the mountains of brick and stone. Caught for a moment on a transient breeze, it swirled around a towering pile on lower Broadway, and eddied up to the windows of the Ketchim Realty Company, where it sifted through the chinks in the loose frames and settled like a pall over the dingy rooms within.

To Philip O. Ketchim, junior member of the firm, it seemed a fitting external expression of the heavy gloom within his soul. Crumpled into the chair at the broad table in his private office, with his long, thin legs stretched out before him, his hands crammed into the pockets of his trousers, and his bullet-shaped head sunk on his flat chest, until it seemed as if the hooked nose which graced his hawk-like visage must be penetrating his breast-bone, the man was the embodiment of utter dejection. On the littered table, where he had just tossed it, lay the report of Reed and Harris on the pseudo-mineral properties of the Molino Company--the "near-mines" in the rocky cañon of the far-off Boque. Near it lay the current number of a Presbyterian review, wherein the merits of this now moribund project were advertised in terms whose glitter had attracted swarms of eager, trusting investors.

The firm name of Ketchim Realty Company was something of a misnomer. The company itself was an experiment, whose end had not justified its inception. It had been launched a few years previously by Douglass Ketchim to provide business careers for his two sons, James and Philip. The old gentleman, still hale and vigorous, was one of those sturdy Englishmen who had caught the infection of '49 and abruptly severed the ties which bound them to their Kentish homes for the allurements of the newly discovered El Dorado of western America. Across the death-haunted Isthmus of Panamá and up the inhospitable Pacific coast the indomitable spirit of the young adventurer drove him, until he reached the golden sands of California. There he toiled for many years, until Fortune at length smiled upon his quenchless efforts. Then he tossed aside his rough tools and set out for the less constricted fields of the East.

He invested his money wisely, and in the course of years turned it several times. He became a banker. He aspired to the hand of a sister of a railway president, and won it. He educated his sons in the best colleges of the East, and then sent them to Europe on their honeymoons. And finally, when the burden of years began to press noticeably, and the game became less attractive, he retired from the field of business, cleared off his indebtedness, organized the Ketchim Realty Company, put its affairs on the best possible basis, and then committed the unpardonable folly of turning it over to the unrestricted management of his two sons.

The result was chaos. At the expiration of a year the old gentleman hurried back into the harness to save the remnant of his fortune, only to find it inextricably tied up in lands of dubious value and questionable promotional schemes. The untangling of the real estate he immediately took into his own hands. The schemes he left to his sons.

A word in passing regarding these sons, for they typify a form of parasitical growth, of the fungus variety, which in these days has battened and waxed noxious on the great stalk of legitimate commercial enterprise. They were as dissimilar, and each as unlike his father, as is possible among members of the same family. Both sought, with diligent consecration, the same goal, money; but employed wholly different means to gain that end. James, the elder, was a man of ready wit, a nimble tongue, and a manner which, on occasions when he could think of any one but himself, was affable and gracious. He was a scoffer of religion, an open foe of business scruple, and the avowed champion of every sort of artifice and device employed in ancient, mediaeval, or modern finance to further his own selfish desires, in the minimum of time, and at whatever cost to his fellow-man. In his cups he was a witty, though arrogant, braggart. In his home he was petulant and childish. Of real business acumen and constructive wisdom, he had none. He would hew his way to wealth, if need be, openly defiant of God, man, or the devil. Or he would work in subtler ways, through deceit, jugglery, or veiled bribe. But he generally wore his heart on his sleeve; and those who perforce had business relations with him soon discovered that, though utterly unscrupulous, his character was continuously revealed through his small conceit, which caused him so to work as to be seen of men and gain their cheap plaudits for his sharp, mendacious practices.

Philip retained a degree of his father's confidence--which James wholly lacked--and he spared himself no pains to cultivate it. Though far less ready of wit than his stubby, bombastic brother, he was a tenacious plodder, and was for this reason much more likely ultimately to achieve his sordid purposes. His energy was tireless, and he never admitted defeat. He never worked openly; he never appeared to have a decided line of conduct; and no one could ever say what particular course he intended to pursue. Apparently, he was a man of exemplary habits; and his mild boast that he knew not the taste of tobacco or liquor could not be refuted. He was an elder in the Presbyterian church in the little suburb where he lived, and superintendent of its Sunday school. His prayers were beautiful expressions of reverent piety; and his conversation, at all times chaste and modest, announced him a man of more than ordinary purity of thought and motive. While it is true that no one could recall any pious deed, any charitable act, or any conduct based on motives of self-abnegation and brotherly love performed by him, yet no one could ever point to a single coarse or mean action emanating from the man. If there was discord in company affairs, the wanton James always bore the onus. And because of this, relations between the brothers gradually assumed a condition of strain, until at length James openly and angrily denounced Philip as a hypocrite, and refused longer to work with him. Thereupon the milder Philip offered the other cheek and installed a mediator, in the person of one Rawlins, a sickly, emaciated, bearded, but loyal Hermes, who thenceforth performed the multifold functions of pacificator, go-between, human telephone, and bearer of messages, documents, and what-not from one to the other for a nominal wage and the crumbs that dropped from the promoter's table.

The fog and the gloom thickened, and Ketchim sat deeply immersed in both. He was still shaking from the fright which he had received that morning. On opening the door as he was about to leave his house to take the train to the city, he had confronted two bulky policemen. With a muffled shriek he had slammed the door in their astonished faces and darted back into the house, his heart in his throat and hammering madly. How could he know that they were only selling tickets to a Policemen's Ball? Then he had crept to the window and, concealed in the folds of the curtain, had watched them go down the street, laughing and turning often to glance back at the house that held such a queer-mannered inmate.

Rousing himself from the gloomy revery into which he had lapsed, Ketchim switched on the light and took up again the report of Reed and Harris. Sullenly he turned its pages, while the sallow skin on his low forehead wrinkled, and his bird-like face drew into ugly contortions.

"Fools!" he muttered. "Didn't they see that clause in their contract, providing an additional fifty thousand in stock for them in case they made a favorable report?"

A light tap at the door, and a low cough, preceded the noiseless entrance of the meek-souled Rawlins.

"A--a--this is the list which Reverend Jurges sent us--names and addresses of his congregation. I've mailed them all descriptive matter; and I wrote Mr. Jurges that the price of his stock would be five dollars, but that we couldn't sell to his congregation for less than seven. That's right, isn't it? I told him Molino stock would go up to par next month. That's what you said, I believe."

"How much stock did Jurges say he'd take?" demanded Ketchim, without looking up.

"Why, he said he could only get together two thousand dollars at present, but that later he would have some endowment insurance falling due--"

"How soon?"

"About a year, I think he said."

"Well, he ought to be able to borrow on that. Did you write him so?"

"No--but I can."

"Do so--but only hint at it. And tell him to send his check at once for the stock he has agreed to take."

"Why, he sent that some days ago. I thought you--"

"He did?" cried Ketchim, his interest now fully aroused. "Well, where is it?"

"Er--your brother James received the letter, and I believe he put the check in his pocket."

Ketchim gave vent to a snort of rage. "You tell James," he cried, pounding the desk with his fist, "that as president and treasurer of the Molino Company I demand that check!"

"Yes, sir--and--"

"Well?"

"Mr. Cass 'phoned before you got down this morning. He said the bank refused to extend the time on your note."

Ketchim sank back limply into his chair, and his face became ashen.

"And here is the mail," pursued the gentle Hermes, handing him a bundle of letters.

Ketchim roused himself with an effort. His eyes flashed angrily. "Do you know whether James has been selling any of his own Molino stock?" he asked.

"I--I believe he has, sir--a little."

"Humph! And how much?"

"He sold some two hundred shares yesterday--I believe; to a Miss Leveridge."

"Leveridge? Who's she? What did he get for it?"

"Why, the Leveridge children--grown men and women now--have just sold their farm down state; and Mr. James saw the sale announced in the papers. So he got in touch with Miss Alvina Leveridge. I believe he sent Houghton down there; and he closed a deal. Mr. James got eight dollars a share, I believe."

"You believe! You know, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," meekly.

Ketchim gulped down his wrath, and continued:

"How much did the Leveridges get for their farm? And why didn't you inform me of the sale?" he demanded, fixing the humble Rawlins with a cold eye.

"A--a--twenty-five thousand dollars, sir, I believe. And I didn't see the notice until--"

"As usual, James saw it first! An excellent scout you are! Twenty-five thousand dollars! How many acres?"

"A hundred and eighty, I believe."

Ketchim reflected. "James is still dickering with Miss Leveridge, I suppose?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Nezlett got back last night, didn't he? Very well, call him up and tell him to get ready to go at once to--wherever the Leveridges live. And--I want to see him right away!"

He abruptly dismissed the factotum and turned to his mail. As his glance fell upon the pile he gasped. Then he quickly drew out a letter and tore it open. His thin lips moved rapidly as his eyes roved over the paper. He laid the letter down and looked wildly about. Then he took it up again and read aloud the closing words:

"--and, having bought somewhat heavily of Molino stock, and believing that your representations were made with intent to deceive, I shall, unless immediate reparation or satisfactory explanation is made, take such steps as my counsel may advise.

"Yours, etc., "J. WILTON AMES."

Congealing with fear, Ketchim took his stock memorandum from a drawer and consulted it. "He put in ten thousand, cash," he murmured, closing the book and replacing it. "And I always wondered why, for he doesn't go into things that he can't control. There's where I was a fool! He shouldn't have been sold a dollar's worth! He knows we can't return the money; and now he's tightening the screws! He has something up his sleeve; and we've fallen for it!"

He settled back in his chair and groaned aloud. "Why did he buy? Did he think he'd reach Uncle Ted through us? By Jove! that's it! For a year or more he's wanted to oust Uncle from the C. & R., and now he thinks by threatening the family with disgrace, and us fellows with the pen, he can do it! What fools we've been! Oh, if I ever get out of this I'll steer clear of these deals in the future!" It was his stock resolution, which had never borne fruit.

The door opened slightly, and the noiseless Rawlins timidly announced the arrival of Reed and Harris.

"Show them in at once!" cried Ketchim, jumping up and hastily passing his hands over his hair and face. Then, advancing with a wan smile, he courteously greeted the callers.

"Well, fellows," he began, waving them to seats, "it looks a little bad for Molino, doesn't it? I've just been reading your report--although of course you told me over the 'phone yesterday that there was no hope. But," he continued gravely, and his face grew serious, "I'm glad, very glad, of one thing, and that is that there are men in the world to-day who are above temptation."

"Which means--?" queried Harris.

"Why," continued Ketchim, smiling pallidly, "the little joker that James inserted in the contract, about your getting fifty thousand in the event of a favorable report. I told him it didn't look well--but he said it would test you. He would be funny, though, no matter how serious the business. But you showed that you were men."

Harris snickered; but Reed turned the conversation at once. "We have been studying how we could help you pull the thing out of the fire. Suppose you give us," he suggested, "a little of Molino's history. Then perhaps something may occur to us."

"There isn't much to tell," replied Ketchim gloomily. "The mines were located by a man named Lakes, at one time acting-Consul at Cartagena. He is half Colombian, I believe. He came up to New York and interested Bryan, Westler, and some others, and they asked us to act as fiscal agents."

"But you never had title to the property," said Reed.

"Certainly we have the title! Why do you say that?"

"Because, on our way down the Magdalena river we made the acquaintance of a certain Captain Pinal, of the Colombian army. When he learned that we were mining men he told us he had a string of rich properties that he would like to sell. I inquired their location, and he said they lay along the Boque river. And I learned that he had clear title to the property, too--Molino's mines. Now you have sold some three or four hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock on alleged mines to which you never had even the shadow of a claim!"

"But--" murmured Ketchim weakly, "we thought we had. We acted in good faith--we took Mr. Lakes's word--and we showed our confidence and sincerity by purchasing machinery to operate--"

"Oh, the machinery went down there, all right!" ejaculated Harris with a laugh. "I judge it was designed to manufacture barrel staves, rather than to extract gold! Lakes had it shipped to Cartagena; rented part of an old woman's house; dumped the machinery in there; and now she's wild. Can't get her pay from you for storing the machinery; and can't sell the stuff, nor move it. So there she sits, under some six or eight tons of iron junk, waiting for the Lord to perform a miracle!"

Ketchim smiled feebly. "It's too bad!" he murmured. "But Molino has no funds--"

"You are still selling stock, aren't you?" demanded Reed.

"Oh, no!" quickly returned Ketchim. "We would not sell any more stock until we received your report--and not then, unless the report were favorable. That would not have been right!"

Reed eyed him narrowly. But the image of truth sat enthroned upon Ketchim's sharp features.

"It is unfortunate, boys," the promoter continued dejectedly. "But I care nothing for my own losses; it's the poor stockholders I am thinking about. I would do anything to relieve them. I've prayed to be led to do right. What would you suggest?"

"I suggest," blurted out Harris, "that, having already relieved them considerably, you'll soon be wearing a striped suit!"

The last trace of color faded from Ketchim's face, but the sickly smile remained. "I'd wear it, willingly, if by so doing I could help these poor people," he mournfully replied.

"Well," pursued Harris, "it'll help some when they learn that you're in one."

"Boys," said Ketchim suddenly, quite disregarding the insinuation, "to-morrow is Sunday, and I want you both out to dinner with me, and we will talk this all over. Then in the afternoon I want you to come over and see my little Sunday school. Fellows," he continued gravely, "I've prayed for you and for your success every day since you left. And my faith in my Saviour is too great to be shattered now by your adverse report. He certainly will show us a way out; and I can trust him and wait."

Reed and Harris looked at him and then at each other with puzzled expressions on their faces. The man continued earnestly:

"Colombia is a rich and undeveloped country, you have said. There must be other mineral properties available there. Did you see none on your travels? Or could we not organize an exploration party to search for mines?"

"Who'd furnish the wherewithal?" asked Harris bluntly.

"Oh, that could be arranged."

"Will your sheep stand for further shearing?" queried the grinning Harris.

"Fellows," said Ketchim, brightening and drawing his chair closer, "you've got something--I know it! You've got something to suggest that will save the Molino stockholders!"

"But not yourself, eh?" taunted Harris.

"I shall sacrifice myself," answered Ketchim deprecatingly. His manner had now become animated, and he leaned expectantly toward them.

Reed and Harris again looked questioningly at each other. "I guess we might as well," said Reed in a low voice. "It is bound to come out, anyway."

"Sure," returned Harris; "drive ahead."

"Mr. Ketchim," began Reed, turning to the eager, fidgeting man, "when I came to New York a year ago, looking for a business opening, my friend and former classmate in the University, Mr. Cass, put me in touch with you. At that time you were booming the Molino company hard, and, I have no doubt, thought you really had something down in Colombia. But when you offered to lease me a portion of your properties there, I laughed at you. And, in the course of time, I succeeded in convincing you that you knew nothing whatsoever about the properties on which you were selling so much stock. Then, after months of parley, from an offer to permit me to go down to Colombia at my own expense to examine Molino's mines, to ascertain whether or not I wished to operate a part of them on a royalty basis, you adopted my own view, namely, that the time had come for you to know whether the company possessed anything of value or not. And so you sent my associate, Mr. Harris, and myself down there to examine and report on Molino's so-called mines. And you gave us each a block of stock as part compensation. We found the mines barren. And now you have got to face a body of stockholders from whom you have lured thousands of dollars by your misrepresentations. From talks with your salesmen, I am convinced that this body of stockholders is made up chiefly of widows and indigent clergymen."

"Which of my salesmen told you that?" interrupted Ketchim heatedly.

"Let us waive that," replied Reed calmly. "The fact is, you are in a hard way just at present, is it not so?"

"Fellows," said Ketchim, with an air of penitent humility, "the officers and stockholders of the Molino Company have been grossly deceived and unfortunately--"

"All right," interrupted Reed, "we'll pass that. But Harris and I have played square with you. And we are going to continue to do so, and to offer you a possible opportunity to do something for your poor stockholders, and incidentally for yourself and us. The fact is, we do know of another property down there, but we haven't the title--"

"That makes no difference!" interrupted Ketchim. "I mean, it can be acquired--" striving to restrain his eagerness.

"That's just the question," replied Reed. "The title is at present vested in a young Colombian girl, who, unfortunately, is lost. This girl came up to the States with us--"

"Ha!" exclaimed Ketchim, unable longer to hold himself. "Then you broke your contract, for that stipulated that whatever you might acquire there should belong to me! I engaged your services, remember!"

"I believe," put in Harris dryly, "we were employed by the Molino company."

"But my mother advanced the funds to send you down there!" cried Ketchim.

"How about the poor stockholders?" queried Harris, with an insinuating grin.

"I'm speaking for the stockholders, of course," said Ketchim, subsiding. "But, proceed, please."

"There is no likelihood that this poor girl will ever be heard of again," continued Reed. "Nor is it likely that the title papers, which she has with her, will be of any use to those into whose hands she has fallen. Her old foster-father held the title to this mine, but transferred it to the girl, stipulating that she and I should divide a large interest in the stock of a company formed to develop and operate it. For my share, I agreed to bring the young girl to the States and place her in a school, at my own expense." He went on to relate the manner in which Carmen had been lost, and then continued: "Of course, the title to this mine is registered in Cartagena, and in the girl's name, as the old man gave me power to have that change made. But, now that she is gone, the property naturally reverts to him."

"We will relocate it!" declared Ketchim impatiently.

"No, that wouldn't be right to the old man," returned Reed. "But, it might be that the property could now be secured from him. He is old and penniless, and without any further interest in life. It is a bare chance, but we might prevail upon him to join us in the formation of a company to take over his mine, La Libertad."

"Is that the name of it?" asked Ketchim, reaching for a writing pad. "Spell it for me, please. And the name of the old man."

Reed complied, and then continued: "Now, Mr. Ketchim, we are living strictly up to the letter of our contract by giving you this information. It would require not less than one hundred thousand dollars, cash in hand, to acquire that mine, develop it, make trails, and erect a stamp-mill. Mr. Harris and I are in no condition financially to advance or secure such an amount."

"It is barely possible," mused Harris, "that my father and Uncle John could do something."

"We don't have to call upon them!" cried Ketchim. "Your interest, Mr. Reed, in this mine already belongs to Molino, as you were acting under contract with us--"

"I have covered that point, Mr. Ketchim," replied Reed evenly. "But the time has come for us all to put our shoulders to the wheel, act fairly with one another, help the Molino stockholders, and at the same time make good ourselves. Mr. Harris and I have barely entered upon our business careers, and we have come to New York to establish ourselves. This may afford the opportunity. We know where this mine is--we know the old man, and may be able to influence him. To forestall possible complications, we should begin negotiations with him at once. But--remember--everything must be done in the name of the company, not in your own name. And Mr. Harris and I must personally negotiate with the old man, and receive a very liberal compensation for our work."

"Certainly!" cried the excited Ketchim. "Goodness, fellows! why didn't you tell me this yesterday over the 'phone, and save me a night of torment? But I forgive you. Gracious! Rawlins," he said, addressing that individual, who had entered in response to the buzzer, "'phone Cass to come right over. And tell Miss Honeywell to give you ten dollars for our lunch, and charge it to Molino. It's company business. By Jove, fellows! this is a happy day for me. Since the old man gave you a share in the mine, Molino has property, after all!"

"Has it to get," amended Harris dubiously.

"Oh, we'll get it!" cried Ketchim, rubbing his hands gleefully. "But now while waiting for Cass, tell me more about your trip. It is wonderful! And so romantic!"

In the midst of the ensuing recital, Cass was announced; and Ketchim, after detailing to him the previous conversation, launched into the project which had been developing in his own mind while Reed had been describing his experiences in the South.

"What we want is another organization, fellows," he said in conclusion, "to take over the tottering Molino; purchase its assets with stock; give Molino stockholders an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, and so on. We'll let Molino die in the arms of a new company, eh?"

"But one with a somewhat wider scope," suggested Cass, with an air of importance. "A sort of general development company, to secure La Libertad, if possible; prospect for other mineral properties; and develop the resources of the country."

"Just so," assented Ketchim, with increasing enthusiasm. "A company to go in for coffee, cotton--you say you saw wild cotton, didn't you, fellows? Great! And cocoanuts, timber, cattle--in fact, we'll get concessions from the Colombian Government, and we'll--"

"Just rip things wide open, eh?" finished Harris.

"That's it!" cried Ketchim radiantly. "Uncle Ted has influence at Washington, with the Pan American Union, and so on--why, we can get anything we want! Ames and the bank will both cool down--by Jove, this is great!"

"But where's the cold and vulgar cash coming from to oil the wheels?" put in the practical Harris.

"Oh, I can sell the stock," replied Ketchim. "Then, too, there's the Molino stockholders; why, I'll bet there's hardly one that wouldn't be able to scrape up a few dollars more for the new company! By the way, what'll we call it? Give us a name, somebody."

"I'd call it the Salvation Company," drawled Harris, "as it is likely to delay your trip to Sing Sing."

A general laugh, in which Ketchim joined heartily, followed the remark.

"I suggest we call it the Simití Development Company," said Cass, after a moment's dignified reflection.

"Great!" cried Ketchim. "It has a prosperous ring! And now its capitalization? We must make it big!"

"Hem!" returned Cass. "If these gentlemen can acquire that mine, I think I would capitalize for, say, about three millions." He went to the desk and made some calculations. "I assume," he continued somewhat pompously after a few moments' figuring, "that you wish to retain me, and that I am to take my compensation in stock?"

Ketchim quickly assented. He knew that Cass had correctly concluded that in no other way was he likely to be reimbursed. And, at best, it was only a hazard, a wild gamble. In fact, it was a last desperate chance. Moreover, stock was always available; while cash was a rare commodity.

"Suppose, then," continued the sapient young lawyer, "that we capitalize for three millions; set aside one million, five hundred and one thousand as treasury stock, to be sold to raise money for development purposes; transfer to the Ketchim Realty Company one million, as compensation for acting as fiscal agents of the new company; transfer to these two gentlemen, as part compensation for past and future services, the sum of four hundred thousand in stock; give to the stockholders of the Molino Company the sum of fifty-nine thousand in stock for all the assets, machinery, good will, et cetera, of that company; and to me, for services to be rendered, forty thousand dollars' worth of the stock. All of us shall agree not to sell any of our personal holdings of stock until the company shall be placed upon a dividend-paying basis. And Mr. Reed, or Mr. Harris, or both, will return to Colombia immediately to relocate the mine, and prepare for its development, while the Ketchim Realty Company at once endeavor to sell the treasury stock."

Having delivered himself of this comprehensive plan, Cass settled back in his chair and awaited remarks.

"Well," observed Ketchim at length, "that's all right--only, I think we should be allowed to sell our personal stock if we wish. Of course," with a deprecating wave of his hand, "there isn't the slightest likelihood of our ever wanting to do that--with a mine such as you have described, fellows. But--why hedge us about?"

"Not one dollar's worth of your stock shall you be permitted to sell!" cried Harris, bringing his fist down upon the desk.

"I suggest that we leave that for the Directors to decide later," offered Cass, anxious to avoid discord. He was young, scarcely out of the twenties, just married, just admitted to the bar, and eager to get a toe-hold in the world of business. "And now," he concluded, "if agreeable to you, I will put this through at once, organize the company, and get the charter. You gentlemen will return to Colombia as soon as Mr. Ketchim can provide the necessary funds."

"Mr. Harris and I have formed an engineering partnership," said Reed. "As such, we will handle the affairs of the new company in Colombia. Mr. Harris will proceed to that country, while I go to California to open a copper mine which we have taken over there. In time I will relieve Mr. Harris in the South. Now, Mr. Ketchim, what can you do?"

"I'll send Houghton and Nezlett out on the road to-morrow. Rawlins has just told me of one prospect, a bully one! We don't need to wait for the papers from Albany before going ahead. But we find it costs about forty-eight cents to sell a dollar's worth of stock, and so some time will be needed to raise enough to send Mr. Harris back to Colombia--unless," he added, eying Harris furtively, "he will advance us the amount of his own expenses--"

"Which he will not!" retorted Harris warmly. "I haven't it, anyway. Nor has Reed. We're both broke."

"There's a revolution on down there now," said Reed, "and we'd better go easy for a while. Besides, Harris needs time to study the language. But, are we all agreed on the terms? Salary for Harris while in Colombia to be settled later, of course."

"It's all satisfactory, I think," said Ketchim, smiling happily. "The details can be worked out anon--Molino stockholders' meeting, and so on."

"Then," said Reed, rising, "we will consider the new company launched, to take over the defunct Molino and to operate on a comprehensive scale in Colombia, beginning with the development of La Libertad, if we can secure it."

At that moment Rawlins opened the door and peered in. "A gentleman to see Mr. Reed," he announced softly; "a priest, I believe."

Harris sprang to his feet. The door swung open, and Father Waite entered with Carmen.

With a glad cry the girl dropped her bundle and bounded into the arms of the astonished Harris. Reed grasped the priest's hand, and begged him to speak. Ketchim and the young lawyer looked on in perplexity.

"I was unable to find your name in the city directory, Mr. Reed," explained the priest, his face beaming with happiness. "But at police headquarters I found that you had made inquiries, and that detectives were searching for the girl. I learned that you were living with your wife's sister, and that you had no business address, having just come up from South America. So I telephoned to your sister-in-law, and your wife informed me that you had an appointment this morning at this office. I therefore came directly here with the girl, who, as you see, is safe and sound, but with an additional interesting experience or two to add to the large fund she already possessed." He looked down at Carmen and smiled. "And now," he concluded, laughing, as he prepared to depart, "I will not ask for a receipt for the child, as I see I have several witnesses to the fact that I have delivered her to the proper custodian." He bowed and went to the door.

"Wait!" cried Reed, seizing him by the hand. "We want to thank you! We want to know you--"

"I will give you my card," replied the priest. "And I would be very happy, indeed, if some time again I might be permitted to see and talk with the little girl." He handed his card to Reed; then nodded and smiled at Carmen and went out.

"By Jove!" sputtered Harris, pushing the girl aside and making after him. But he was too late. The priest had already caught a descending elevator, and disappeared. Harris returned to the bewildered group. "I guess that knocks the Simití Company sky-high," he exclaimed, "for here is the sole owner of La Libertad!"

Ketchim collapsed into a chair, while Reed, saying that he would keep his dinner engagement with Ketchim on the following day, picked up Carmen's precious bundle and, taking her hand, left the room. "I am going home," he called back to Harris; "and you be sure to come up to the house to-night. We'll have to readjust our plans now."

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Chapter 5

"Reed," said Harris the following day, as they sat in the dusty, creaking car that was conveying them to their dinner appointment with Ketchim, "who is this Ames that Ketchim referred to yesterday?"

The men were not alone, for Carmen accompanied them. Reed was reluctantly bringing her at the urgent request received from Ketchim over the telephone the previous evening. But the girl, subdued by the rush of events since her precipitation into the seething American world of materialism, sat apart from them, gazing with rapt attention through the begrimed window at the flying scenery, and trying to interpret it in the light of her own tenacious views of life and the universe. If the marvels of this new world into which she had been thrown had failed to realize her expectations--if she saw in them, and in the sense of life which they express, something less real, less substantial, than do those who laud its grandeur and power to charm--she gave no hint. She was still absorbing, sifting and digesting the welter of impressions. She had been overpowered, smothered by the innovation; and she now found her thoughts a tangled jumble, which she strove incessantly to unravel and classify according to their content of reality, as judged by her own standards.

"Why, Ames," replied Reed, turning a watchful eye upon Carmen, "is a multimillionaire financier of New York--surely you have heard of him! He and his clique practically own the United States, and a large slice of Europe. For some reason Ames bought a block of Molino stock. And now, I judge, Ketchim would give his chances on eternal life if he hadn't sold it to him. And that's what's worrying me, too. For, since Ames is heavily interested in Molino, what will he do to the new company that absorbs it?"

"There isn't going to be any new company," asserted Harris doggedly.

"There's got to be!" cried Reed. "Ketchim holds us strictly to our contract. Our negotiations with old Rosendo were made while in the employ of Molino. It wouldn't be so bad if we had only Ketchim to deal with. We've got the goods on him and could beat him. But here enters Ames, a man of unlimited wealth and influence. If he wants La Libertad, he's going to get it, you mark me! Where we fell down was in ever mentioning it to Ketchim. For if we don't come over now he will lay the whole affair before Ames. He told me over the 'phone last night that he was badly in debt--that Ames was pressing him--that many of the Molino stockholders were making pertinent inquiries. Oh, he quite opened his heart! And yesterday I saw on his desk a letter from Ames. I can imagine what it contained. Ketchim would sacrifice us and everything else to keep himself out of Ames's grip. We're in for it, I tell you! And all because we were a bit too previous in believing that the girl had disappeared for good."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Harris, "but doesn't it sound like a fairy-tale, the way Carmen got back to us?"

"And here I am," continued Reed, with a gesture of vexation, "left with the girl on my hands, and with a very healthy prospect of losing out all around. My wife said emphatically last night that she wouldn't be bothered with Carmen."

"Well, she won't bother you. Send her away to school."

"Fine! Good idea!" replied Reed sarcastically. "But do you realize that that involves expense? I'm a comparatively poor man, just getting a start in my profession, and with a young and socially ambitious wife!"

"But--your wife--er, she's going to--to have money some day, isn't she?"

"Very true. But the grim reaper has a little work to do first. And on occasions like this he's always deucedly deliberate, you know. Meantime, we're skating close to the edge--for New Yorkers."

"Well, we may be able to beat Ketchim. Now, my father and Uncle John--"

"Oh, shoot your father and Uncle John!" snapped Reed impatiently.

The conductor opened the door and bawled a cryptical announcement.

"This is the place," said Reed, starting up and making for the door. "And now you rake your thought for some way to deal with Ketchim. And leave your father and Uncle John entirely out of the conversation!"

Ketchim was just bowing out a caller as the young engineers mounted the steps. "See that fellow!" he exclaimed, after giving them a hearty welcome. "I just sold him a hundred shares of Simití stock, at five dollars a share--just half of par. Beginning right on the jump, eh?"

"But--" protested Harris, as they entered the spacious parlor, "the company isn't even in existence yet--and hasn't an asset!"

"Oh, that's all right," replied Ketchim easily. "It's coming into existence, and will have the grandest mine in South America! Boys," he went on earnestly, "I've been talking over the 'phone with Mr. Ames, our most influential stockholder, and a very warm friend of mine. I told him about our conversation of yesterday. He says, go right ahead with the new company--that it's a great idea. He's satisfied with his present holding, and will not increase it. Says he wants Molino stockholders to have the opportunity to purchase all the treasury stock, if they want to."

"Decidedly magnanimous," returned Reed. "But--what about the basis of organization of the new company?"

"Leave it as we planned it, he says. He thinks the arrangement and division of stock fine!"

Reed and Harris looked at each other questioningly. It did not seem possible.

"But," went on Ketchim, "have you seen the morning papers? They are full of the revolution in Colombia. The country is torn wide open, and reports say nothing can be done down there until peace is restored--and that may take a year or two. But, meantime, we will go ahead and organize the new company and take over Molino and prepare to begin work just as soon as you fellows can get into that country. Everybody has simply got to wait until then. And so this," going to Carmen and taking her hand, "is the wonderful little girl! Well! well!"

The entrance of Mrs. Ketchim and her troop of children at this juncture interrupted the conversation. "All enthusiastic Simití stockholders," said Ketchim, waving his hand toward them, after the introductions. "And all going to get rich out of it, too--as well as yourselves, boys. It simply shows how Providence works--one with God is a majority, always."

Carmen glanced up at him wonderingly.

Dinner over, the men were left alone. Carmen had been taken upstairs by the children to the nursery.

"I've got myself slated for the presidency of the new company," said Ketchim, plunging again into the subject nearest his heart; "and I think we'd better put brother James in as vice-president. Perfectly safe," looking at Harris and winking. "He's got to be recognized, you know, since the Ketchim Realty Company act as fiscal agents. Now for directors I've put down Judge Harris, your father--that's to assure you boys that there'll be some one to look after your interests. Then we'll say Reverend Jurges for another. He's got a big congregation and will be able to place a lot of stock. You just ought to see the letter he wrote me about selling stock to his people! You'd never believe he was a good, spiritually-minded clergyman, with an eye single to heavenly riches! Then one of you fellows, say Reed, had better go on the directorate, since Harris will be in Colombia in charge of operations. And--well, Cass, too. He's young and immature, but absolutely square. He'll do all the legal work for his stock interest. We save money that way, see?"

"But what do I do while we are waiting?" asked Harris in some perplexity. "Reed goes to California right away, you know."

"That's all right, old man," Ketchim genially assured him. "The new company will be organized at once--this week, if possible. You go on salary from the moment of its incorporation, and you open your office right here in this building. I'll see that the rent is paid until you go back to Colombia. Everything's arranged, and you turn right in and help Cass with the new company. There'll be plenty to do. You've got to prepare circulars; write boosting letters to stockholders and prospects; follow up leads; and--oh, you'll be busy! But here comes Reverend Coles," looking out of the window as a man came up the steps. "He's interested in some projects I've been exploiting. Just excuse me for a few moments."

He hastened out to greet the visitor and conducted him into a back room. Reed and Harris were left to the contemplation of their own mixed thoughts. Presently Harris, whose eyes had been dilating for some moments, broke out in a hoarse whisper: "Listen! God a'mighty!--he's praying!"

He got up softly and approached the door of the room into which Ketchim had taken his caller. In a few minutes he returned to his chair. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I could see Ketchim through the keyhole, on his knees by the bed, praying with that fellow! Now what the d--!"

Reed held up a warning finger. Through the silence that fell upon them snatches of the prayer being offered in the adjoining room floated to their ears--"O, blessed Saviour, vouchsafe prosperity to our venture, we beseech thee! The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof--we ask thy blessing on these efforts of ours to wrest from the ground the wealth which the Father of lights has deposited there for the benefit of His children--"

Harris snickered aloud. "What's the game?" he whispered.

Reed shook his head in warning. "It may not be a game," he replied. "But if it is, it's an old one, hiding behind the mask of religion. But I'm inclined to believe the man sincere."

"And I'm not!" retorted Harris. "I'd rather deal with his brother. I know James to be an out-and-out rascal--he openly flies the black flag. But this pious fellow--well, he's got me guessing!"

The caller soon departed, and Ketchim again joined the young men. "He's our assistant pastor," he said musingly, as he watched the man go down the walk. "Nice young fellow, waiting for a church. He and some of his friends are interested in a zinc mine we've been floating, down in the Joplin district."

"Got titles?" queried the cynical Harris, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, yes," Ketchim smiled affably.

"Mine producing?"

"Well, no--not yet. Lots of development work to be done, you know. Always is. And there's a lot of water in this mine."

"And in the stock, too, eh?" pursued the cruel Harris. "Got any ore?"

"We haven't struck the deposit yet, although we expect to soon. But," glancing up at the clock on the mantel, "we'll have to be going over to Sunday school now. And I want that little girl to go with Marjorie. Fellows," the man's face became deeply serious, "I have no doubt you are both church members?"

Reed fidgeted uneasily under Ketchim's searching glance; but Harris frankly met the question. "Nope," he asserted, "we're both rank heathen. And I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist."

"Gracious!" cried Ketchim, "how can you say that, when you see the goodness of the Lord on every hand?"

"Reed, I believe," continued the imperturbable Harris, waving a hand toward his friend, "has philosophical leanings--New Thought, Subliminal Consciousness, Power in Silence, and all that. But I've got to be shown."

"But surely you believe in the divinity of the Christ?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I never gave it much thought," said Harris. "Been pretty busy, you know. Lots of time for that later."

"Ah, that's what so many say," replied Ketchim sadly; "and then comes the awful voice of the Lord, 'This night thy soul shall be required of thee!' Fellows, I want to pray for you; and I want you both to promise me that you will take up seriously the consideration of your souls' welfare. It's too grave a subject for jest," addressing himself solemnly to the grinning Harris.

"All right, old man," laughed Harris. "But don't dig up any Presbyterian tracts for me. I've got a living witness to--well, to something out of the ordinary, in that girl, Carmen, and I'm inclined to believe she's dug nearer to bottom facts than any of you. So when I'm ready to discuss my soul's welfare I'll just consult her, see?"

"That reminds me," said Ketchim, turning abruptly to Reed, "what do you intend to do with the girl?"

"Quien sabe?" Reed answered abstractedly. "Send her to a boarding school, I guess. At least, that's what I told the old man I'd do."

"So you said before," Ketchim returned. "But where?"

"Don't know yet."

"Well, let me make a suggestion. My daughter Marjorie leaves Tuesday for Conway-on-the-Hudson, where she has been attending Madam Elwin's Select School for Girls. Suppose you go with her--I'm too busy, myself--and take Carmen. It's only a few hours' ride by boat down the river. And the school is without equal. This is Marjorie's third year there, and she's simply in love with it."

Reed began to show signs of interest; and Ketchim, noting the effect of his words, went on briskly:

"Now look here, Molino owes its salvation, and the new company its existence, to that girl. Why shouldn't they do something to show their gratitude? I say, it is no more than right that the new company should support her while she is in school."

"By Jove! not a half-bad idea," commented Harris.

"Certainly not," continued Ketchim earnestly. "Now fix up everything with her as regards the transfer of the mine to the new company, and then let her go with Marjorie to the Elwin school. We can, if you like, make some agreement with her to the effect that when the company is on its feet and she is receiving dividends, she shall return what it may advance for her schooling, eh?"

"You'd better accept the suggestion, Reed," put in Harris. "I'll be here, you know, to keep an eye on the girl; and I'll take her and Marjorie down to Conway myself, and attend to getting her located right."

Reed continued to reflect. He was hardly in a position to refuse such an offer. Besides, he was really leaving her in charge of Harris. "Well," he said at length, "in that case I could leave for California to-morrow night. That matter is pressing hard--all right, I accept the company's offer. It's no more than is due the girl, anyway."

"Good!" replied Ketchim. "I'll make the necessary arrangements at once. And now let's go over to church."

Thus it was that two days later Carmen, still wondering if she was dreaming, was enrolled in the Elwin Select School for Girls, with Marjorie Ketchim for roommate; while Reed, on the Overland Limited, hurrying to the far West, was musing dubiously at frequent intervals on Ketchim's rather conflicting statements, which, until left to this enforced leisure, he had not had time to try to reconcile. At the same time, while Harris was loudly declaiming to the gracious Madam Elwin on the astonishing mental prowess of the girl, Ketchim and Cass sat deeply immersed in the tentative plans for the newly-projected Simití Development Company.

"Now listen," said Ketchim, who for some minutes had been quietly scanning his youthful lawyer, "Ames knows nothing about the formation of this company, but Harris and Reed are not to know that; and we're going to keep Ames in ignorance of all our plans. With the first sales of stock--and they've already begun--we'll return him his Molino investment. Nezlett wired me this morning that he's sure to sell a big block to the Leveridges, that they're mightily interested, and want to meet Carmen. We'll use the girl for just such purposes. That's one reason why I wanted her handy, so's we could reach her at any time. She makes a star impression; and with her as an advertisement we'll sell a million dollars' worth of stock, and no trouble at all! She's got that honest look that's convincing. And she can tell a story that beats the Arabian Nights! Ames has given me a week to explain, or make good his investment. By that time we'll have the Leveridges sold for twice his investment, and we'll just pay him off and remove him. Meantime, you go over to the bank in the morning and put up the best line of talk you're capable of. I've got sixteen hundred dollars to give 'em on that note; and that'll secure more time, until the sales of stock are enough to pay it all up. Perhaps Uncle Ted will advance me enough to take up the note when he hears about La Libertad. And, say, you see brother James, and shake the club over him until he disgorges that check he got from Miss Leveridge. You can hand him a scare that he won't get over. By George, old man! things have taken a great turn, eh? Why, I can just see Simití stock sales humping these next few months. Oh, Miss Honeywell," calling to his cashier, "bring me five dollars, please, and charge it to Molino--I mean, to Simití. Make a new account for that now." Then, again addressing Cass: "Come with me to the football game this afternoon. We can discuss plans there as well as here. Gee whiz, but I feel great!"

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Chapter 6

Carmen's rapid transition from the eternal solitudes of Guamocó to the whirring activities of New York was like a plunge into the maelstrom, and left her groping blindly in the effort to adapt herself to the changed order. There was little in her former mode of existence that could be transferred to her new environment, and she felt that she was starting life like a new-born babe. For days, even weeks, she moved about dreamily, absorbed, ceaselessly striving to orient herself and to accept easily and naturally the marvels, the sudden accession of material aids, and the wonders of this modern, complex civilization, so common to her associates, but scarcely even dreamed of by her in her former home, despite the preparation which Josè had tried to give her. The Elwin school was small, its student-body seldom numbering more than fifty, and in it Carmen found herself hedged about by restrictions which in a way were beneficial, in that they narrowed her environment and afforded her time for her slow adjustment to it.

But if these restrictions aided her, they also rendered the length of her stay in the school almost calculable. Little by little the girl saw the forces developing which she knew must effect her dismissal; little by little, as Madam Elwin's manner toward her became less gracious, and her schoolmates made fewer efforts to conceal from her the fact that she was not one of them, Carmen prepared for the inevitable. Six months after the girl's enrollment, Madam Elwin terminated her series of disparaging reports to Ketchim by a request that he come at once and remove his charge from the school.

"As I have repeatedly said, Mr. Ketchim, the girl is a paradox. And after these months of disappointing effort to instruct her, I am forced to throw up my hands in despair and send for you." Madam Elwin tapped nervously with a dainty finger upon the desk before her.

"But, if I may be permitted the question, what specific reasons have you, Madam, for--ah, for requesting her removal?" asked the very Reverend Dr. William Jurges, who, having come up to the city to attend a meeting of the directors of the Simití company, had accepted Ketchim's invitation to first accompany him on his flying trip to Conway-on-the-Hudson, in response to Madam Elwin's peremptory summons.

"Because," replied that worthy personage with a show of exasperation, "I consider her influence upon the young ladies here quite detrimental. Our school, while non-sectarian, is at least Christian. Miss Carmen is not. Where she got her views, I can not imagine. At first she made frequent mention of a Catholic priest, who taught her in her home town, in South America. But of late she has grown very reserved--I might say, sullen, and talks but little. Her views, however, are certainly not Catholic. In her class work she has become impossible. She refuses to accept a large part of our instruction. Her answers to examination questions are wholly in accord with her peculiar views, and hence quite apart from the texts. For that reason she fails to make any grades, excepting in mathematics and the languages. She utterly refuses to accept any religious instruction whatsoever. She would not be called atheistic, for she talks--or used to at first--continually about God. But her God is not the God of the Scriptures, Dr. Jurges. She is a free-thinker, in the strictest sense. And as such, we can not consent to her remaining longer with us."

"Ah--quite so, Madam, quite so," returned the clergyman, in his unconsciously pompous manner. "Doubtless the child's thought became--ah--contaminated ere she was placed in your care. But--ah--I have heard so much from our good friend, Mr. Ketchim, regarding this young girl, that--ah--I should like exceedingly to see and talk with her--if it might be--ah--"

"Madam Elwin will arrange that, I am sure," interposed Ketchim. "Suppose," he suggested, addressing the lady, "we let him talk with her, while I discuss with you our recently acquired mine in South America, and the advisability of an investment with us."

"Certainly," acquiesced Madam Elwin, rising and pressing one of the several buttons in the desk. "Bring Miss Carmen," she directed, to the maid who answered the summons.

"Pardon me," interrupted Dr. Jurges; "but may I go to her? Ah--it would doubtless be less embarrassing for the child."

"Miss Carmen was in the chapel a few moments ago," volunteered the maid.

"Then take the doctor there," returned Madam Elwin, with a gesture of dismissal.

At the head of the stairway the mingled sounds of a human voice and the soft, trembling notes of an organ drifted through the long hall and fell upon the ears of the clergyman.

"Miss Carmen," said the maid, answering his unspoken thought. "She often comes up to the chapel and sings for hours at a time--alone. The chapel is down there," pointing to the end of the hall.

"Then--ah--leave me," said the doctor. "I will proceed alone."

The maid turned willingly and went below, while the man tiptoed to the chapel door. There he stopped and stood listening. The girl was singing in Spanish, and he could not understand the words. But they would have meant nothing to him then. It was the voice upon which they were borne that held him. The song was a weird lament that had come down to the children of Simití from the hard days of the Conquistadores. It voiced the untold wrongs of the Indian slaves; its sad, unvarying minor echoed their smothered moans under the cruel goad; on the plaintive melody of the repeated chorus their piteous cries were carried to heaven's deaf ears; their dull despair floated up on the wailing tones of the little organ, and then died away, as died the hope of the innocent victims of Spanish lust.

The reverend doctor had never heard a song of that kind before. Nor could he readily associate the voice, which again and again he could not distinguish from the flute-like tones of the organ, with the sordidness and grime of material, fleshly existence. He entered softly and took a seat in the shadow of a pillar. The clear, sweet voice of the young girl flowed over him like celestial balm. Song after song she sang. Some were dreamy bits and snatches in Spanish and English; others were sacred in character. He wondered deeply, as the girl mused over these; yet he knew not that they were her own compositions. Curiosity and uncertainty mastered him at length, and he got softly to his feet and moved away from the pillar, that he might see from what manner of being issued such unbroken harmony. But in his eagerness his foot struck a chair, and the sound echoed loudly through the room.

The music abruptly ceased, and the girl rose and looked over the organ at the intruder.

"I--I beg your pardon," said the clergyman, advancing in some embarrassment. "I was listening to your singing--uninvited, but none the less appreciative. I--"

"Wait, please!" cried the girl, hastily stooping over and fumbling with her shoes. The doctor laughed genially, as he grasped the situation.

"I took them off," she explained hurriedly. "I am not yet accustomed to them. I never wore shoes until I left Simití." Her face was scarlet, and she tried to cover her confusion with a little laugh.

The doctor stood staring at her, lost in admiration of the shapely figure, the heavy, curling hair, and the wonderfully expressive face. The girl quickly recovered her poise and returned him a frank smile.

"You wish to see me?" she said, after waiting in vain for him to begin.

"Ah--a--yes, certainly--that is, I beg your pardon," stammered the doctor. "I did request permission of Madam Elwin to make your acquaintance. We have heard so much about you. I am Doctor Jurges, an Episcopal clergyman." His sentences issued like blasts from an engine exhaust.

"I am Carmen Ariza," said the girl, extending her hand.

"Ah--quite so, quite so," blustered the doctor, clearing his throat noisily. "Let us be seated. Ah--ah--you have a remarkable voice. It gives evidence of careful cultivation."

"No," returned the girl simply. "It has never had any cultivation. It is natural for me to sing. And my poor organ-playing is what I have picked up myself these six months."

The man regarded her with amazement. "Remarkable!" he murmured.

The girl looked up into his face searchingly. "Why," she asked, "should every one up here think it remarkable when a human mind is clear enough to be a transparency for God?"

Had the roof fallen, the excellent doctor could have been no more startled. He cleared his throat violently again; then fumbled nervously in his pocket and drew out his glasses. These he poised upon the ample arch of his ecclesiastical nose, and through them turned a penetrating glance upon the girl.

"H'm! yes," said he at length; "quite so, quite so! And--ah--Miss Carmen, that brings us to the matter in question--your religious instruction--ah--may I ask from whom you received it?"

"From God," was the immediate and frank reply.

The clergyman started, but quickly recovered his equipoise.

"H'm! yes, quite so, quite so! All real instruction descendeth from above. But--your religious views--I believe they are not considered--ah--quite evangelical, are they? By your present associates, that is."

"No," she replied, with a trace of sadness in her tone. "But," looking up with a queer little smile, "I am not persecuting them for that."

"Oh, no," with a jerky little laugh. "Assuredly not! H'm! I judge the persecution has come from the other side, has it not?"

"We will not speak of that," she said quickly. "They do not understand--that is all."

"H'm! no, quite so--that is--ah--may I ask why you think they do not understand? May not you be in error, instead?"

"If that which I believe is not true," the girl replied evenly, "it will fail under the test of demonstration. Their beliefs have long since failed under such test--and yet they still cling jealously to them, and try to force them upon all who disagree with them. I am a heretic, Doctor."

"H'm--ah--yes, I see. But--it is a quite unfortunate characteristic of mankind to attribute one's views indiscriminately to the Almighty--and--ah--I regret to note that you are not wholly free from this error."

"You do not understand, I think," she quickly returned. "I put every view, every thought, every idea to the test. If good is the result, I know that the thought or idea comes from the source of all good, God. The views I hold are those which I have time and again tested--and some of them have withstood trials which I think you would regard as unusually severe." Her thought had rested momentarily upon her vivid experience in Banco, the dangers which had menaced her in distant Simití, and the fire through which she had passed in her first hours in Christian America, the land of churches, sects, and creeds.

"H'm!" the worthy doctor mused, regarding the girl first through his spectacles, and then over the tops of them, while his bushy eyebrows moved up and down with such comicality that Carmen could scarcely refrain from laughing. "H'm! quite so. Ah--suppose you relate to me some of the tests to which your views have been subjected."

"No," she returned firmly; "those experiences were only states of consciousness, which are now past and gone forever. Why rehearse them? They were human, and so, unreal. Why go back now and give them the appearance of reality?"

"Unreal! H'm--then you do not regard untoward experience as given us by God for the testing of our faith, I take it."

Carmen turned her head away with a little sigh of weariness. "I think," she said slowly, "I think we had better not talk about these things, Doctor. You are a preacher. Your views are not mine."

"Why--ah," blustered the clergyman, assuming a more paternal air, "we--ah--would not for a moment cause you embarrassment, Miss Carmen! But--in fact, Madam Elwin has--ah--expressed her disapproval of your views--your religious ideals, if I may put it so baldly, and she--that is--the good lady regrets--"

"She wishes to be rid of me, you mean, Doctor?" said the girl, turning and stretching a mental hand to the sinking divine.

"H'm! well, hardly so--ah--so--"

"Doctor," said the girl calmly, "I know it, and I wish to go. I have been waiting only to see the way open. I do not wish to remain longer in an atmosphere where ignorance and false belief stifle all real progress."

The doctor turned another look of astonishment upon her. He had forgotten that he had not been talking with one of his own age. The fact suddenly pressed upon him. "How old are you?" he blurted.

Carmen could not help laughing. But if her clear mental gaze penetrated the ecclesiastical mask and surmounted the theological assumptions of her interlocutor, enabling her to get close to the heart of the man, she did not indicate it further. "I am nearly sixteen," was her only reply.

"Ah," he reflected, "just a child! My dear girl," he continued, laying a hand indulgently upon hers, "I will advise with Madam Elwin, and will endeavor to convince her that--ah--that your spiritual welfare, if I may so put it, requires that you be not turned adrift at this critical, transitorial period of your life. We must all be patient, while we strive to counteract the--ah--the pernicious teaching to which you were exposed before--ah--before becoming enrolled in this excellent school."

Carmen looked at him steadily for a moment before replying. There was something of pity in the expression of her beautiful face, of tender sympathy for those who seek the light, and who must some day find it, but whose progress is as yet hampered by the human mind's unreasoning adherence to the stepping-stones over which it has been passing through the dark waters of ignorance. "Then, Doctor," she said calmly, "you know what I have been taught?"

"Why--ah--yes--that is, vaguely. But--suppose you inform me briefly." He was beginning to be sensible of having passed judgment upon the girl without first according her a hearing.

"Well," she smiled up at him, "I have been taught the very hardest thing in the whole world."

"H'm, indeed! Ah, quite so--and that?"

"To think."

"To--ah--to think!" He again clutched at his mental poise. "Well, yes, quite so! But--ah--is it not the function of all our schools to teach us to think?"

"No," answered the girl decidedly; "not to teach us to think, but to cause us blindly to accept what is ignorantly called 'authority'! I find we are not to reason, and particularly about religious matters, but to accept, to let those 'in authority' think for us. Is it not so? Are you not even now seeking to make me accept your religious views? And why? Because they are true? Oh, no; but because you believe them true--whether they are or not. Have you demonstrated their truth? Do you come to me with proofs? Do your religious views rest upon anything but the human mind's undemonstrated interpretation of the Bible? And yet you can not prove that interpretation true, even though you would force it upon such as I, who may differ from you."

"I--ah--" began the doctor nervously. But Carmen continued without heeding the interruption:

"Only yesterday Professor Bales, of the University, lectured here on 'The Prime Function of Education.' He said it was the development of the individual, and that the chief end of educational work was the promotion of originality. And yet, when I think along original lines--when I depart from stereotyped formulæ, and state boldly that I will not accept any religion, be it Presbyterian, Methodist, or Roman Catholic, that makes a God of spirit the creator of a man of flesh, or that makes evil as real as good, and therefore necessarily created and recognized by a God who by very necessity can not know evil--then I am accused of being a heretic, a free-thinker; and the authorities take steps to remove me, lest my influence contaminate the rest of the pupils!"

"H'm--ah--yes, quite so--that is--I think--"

"Do you, a preacher, think?" the girl went on hurriedly. "Or do you only think that you think? Do you still believe with the world that the passing of a stream of human thought, or a series of mental pictures, through your mentality constitutes real thinking? Do you believe that jumping from one human mental concept to another twenty-four hours a day constitutes thinking? Have you yet learned to distinguish between God's thoughts and their opposites, human thoughts? Do you know what Jesus taught? Have you a real, working, demonstrable knowledge of Christianity? Do you heal the sick, raise the dead, and preach the truth that sets men free from the mesmerism of evil? If so, then you are unevangelical, too, and you and I are both heretics, and we'd better--we'd better leave this building at once, for I find that the Inquisition is still alive, even in America!"

She stopped, and caught her breath. Her face was flushed, and her whole body quivered with emotion.

"The Inquisition! Why, my dear young lady, this is a Christian nation!"

"Then," said the girl, "you have still much to learn from the pagan nations that have gone before."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the doctor, again adjusting his glasses that he might see her more clearly. "My dear child, you have been thinking too much, and too seriously."

"No, Doctor," she replied; "but you preachers have not been thinking enough, nor even half seriously. Oh," she went on, while her eyes grew moist, and ever and again her throat filled, "I had expected so much in this great country! And I have found so little--so little that is not wholly material, mechanical, and unreal! I had imagined that, with all your learning and progress, which Padre Josè told me about, you would know God much better than we in the darkened South. But your god is matter, machinery, business, gold, and the unreal things that can be bought with money. Some one wrote, in a recent newspaper, that America's god was 'mud and mammon!' What do I find the girls here in this school talking about but dress, and society, and the unreal, passing pleasures of the physical senses! Do they know God? No--nor want to! Nor do the preachers! There are religious services here every Sunday, and sermons by preachers who come down from the city. Sometimes a Baptist; sometimes a Presbyterian; and sometimes an Episcopalian, or a Methodist. What is the result? Confusion--religious confusion. Each has a different concept of God; yet they all believe Him the creator of a man of flesh and bones, a man who was originally made perfect, but who fell, and was then cursed by the good and perfect God who made him. Oh, what childish views for men to hold and preach! How could a good God create anything that could fall? And if He could, and did, then He knew in advance that the man would fall, and so God becomes responsible, not man. Oh, Doctor, is it possible that you believe such stuff? How can you! how can you! Is it any wonder that, holding such awful views, you preachers have no longer the power to heal the sick? Do you not know that, in order to heal the sick, one must become spiritually-minded? But no one who holds to the puerile material beliefs embraced in your orthodox theology can possibly be spiritual enough to do the works Jesus said we should all do if we followed him--really understood him."

"My dear child--you really are quite inconsistent--you--"

"Inconsistent! What a charge for an orthodox preacher to bring! Let us see: You say that the Scriptures teach that God made man in His image and likeness--the image and likeness of spirit. Very well. Spirit, God, is eternal, immortal. Then while He exists can His image fade away, or die? Can or would God cause it to do so? Can or would He destroy His own reflection? And could that image, always being like Him, ever change, or manifest sin, or disease, or evil, unless God first manifested these things? And if God did manifest them, then, perforce, the image would have to do likewise. But, in that case, could God justly punish His image for faithfully reflecting its original? Consistent! Oh, it is you preachers, lacking sufficient spirituality to correctly interpret the Scriptures, who are wildly, childishly, ignorantly inconsistent!"

Carmen rose and faced the clergyman. "I did not mean to condemn you, Doctor," she said earnestly. "I wage no warfare with persons or things. My opposition is directed only against the entrenched human thought that makes men spiritually blind and holds them in the mesmeric chains of evil. I am young, as you reckon years, but I have had much experience in the realm of thought--and it is there that all experience is wrought out before it becomes externalized. I have told you, my teacher was God. He used as a channel a priest, who came years ago to my little home town of Simití, in far-off Colombia. His life had been wrecked by holding to the belief of evil as a power, real and intelligent. He began to see the light; but he did not overcome fear sufficiently to make his demonstration and break the imaginary bonds which held him. He saw, but he did not prove. He will, some day. And, Doctor, you and everybody else will have to do the same. For, unless Jesus uttered the most malicious falsehoods ever voiced, every human being will have to take every step that he took, make every demonstration that he made, and prove all that he proved, before mortals will cease to consume with disease, perish miserably in accidents, and sink with broken lives into graves that do not afford a gateway to immortal life! My God is infinite, eternal, unchanging mind. The god of the preachers, judging from their sermons preached here, is a human, mental concept, embodying spirit and matter, knowing good and evil, and changing with every caprice of their own unstable mentalities. My religion is the Christianity of the Master, love. Oh, how this poor world needs it, yearns for it! The love that demonstrates the nothingness of evil, and drives it out of human experience! The love that heals the sick, raises the dead, binds up broken hearts! The love that will not quench the religious instincts of children, and falsely educate them to know all manner of evil; but that teaches them to recognize it for what it is, the lie about God, and then shows them how to overcome it, even as Jesus did. My God is truth. Is truth real? Ah, yes, you say. But error is the opposite of truth. Then can error, evil, be real? No, not if you will be consistent. Again, God is infinite. But God is spirit. Then all is spirit and spirit's manifestation--is it not true? What, then, becomes of the evil that men hug to their bosoms, even while it gnaws into their hearts? It is the opposite of good, of mind, of truth, God. And the opposite of truth is supposition. Is it not so? And the supposition is--where? In your mentality. And you can put it out whenever you are willing to drop your ceremonials and your theories, and will open your mentality to truth, which will make you free, even as the Master said. That is my religion, Doctor. Those are the religious views which you have been sent by Madam Elwin to investigate. Am I a heretic? Or unevangelical?"

She waited a few moments for the doctor to reply. Then, as he remained silent, she went up to him and held out her hand.

"You do not care to talk with me longer, I think," she said. "Perhaps we may meet again. But, as regards Madam Elwin's wishes, you may tell her that I shall leave the school."

"Have you--have you been fitting yourself for any--ah--particular work--ah--for your support, that is?" inquired the doctor gravely, as he took the proffered hand. He had been swept off his feet by the girl's conversation, and he had not the temerity to combat her views.

"Yes," replied Carmen. "I have been working daily to gain a better understanding of the teachings of Jesus, and through them, of God. My single aim has been to acquire 'that mind which was in Christ Jesus.' And I have no other business than to reflect it to my fellow-men in a life of service. That is my Father's business, and I am working with Him. My mission in this world is to manifest God. I am going out now to do that, and to show what love will do. God will use me, and He will supply my every need. And now, good-bye."

She turned abruptly from him and went to the organ. Soon the same song which he had heard as he entered the room rose again through the stillness. A strong emotion seemed to possess him. He started toward the girl; checked himself; and stood hesitating. Then his lips set, and he turned and walked slowly from the room.

In the hall two women were approaching, and as they drew near he recognized one of them.

"Why," he exclaimed with enthusiasm, holding out both hands, "my dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles! It is not so long since we met at the Weston's. But what, may I ask, brings you here?"

"This is my sister, Mrs. Charles Reed, Doctor Jurges. We have come to, make a duty call on Mr. Reed's protégée, the little South American savage, you know. Madam Elwin said she was up here with you?"

"Ah, yes, quite so--er, in the chapel, I believe," said the clergyman, his face becoming suddenly grave. "I would return with you, but my time is--ah--so limited." He bowed low, with his hand in the breast of his long frock coat, and passed on down the hall.

As the women approached the door of the chapel through which came Carmen's low singing they turned and looked at each other inquiringly. Then they quietly entered the doorway and stood listening. Carmen, concealed behind the organ, did not see them.

The song stopped, and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles went quickly to the organ. Bending over it, she gazed down into the face of the startled girl. "My goodness!" she exclaimed. "Get up and let me see what sort of a looking creature you are."

Carmen rose, and Mrs. Reed came forward and gave her a tempered greeting. Then Mrs. Hawley-Crowles fell back and stared at the girl from head to foot. "You know," she said to her sister, "this is the first glimpse I've had of your husband's discovery. I was out of the city when he brought her to my house, you remember. But," turning again to Carmen, "sing that song over, dear, please--the one you were singing just now."

Carmen seated herself again at the organ, and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles drew her sister to the rear of the room. "It will sound better back here," she explained.

After the lapse of a few minutes she turned to Mrs. Reed. "Belle," she said, nodding her head sententiously, "you had a pearl, and you threw it away. That girl there is our social fortune! Her voice, and her face--why, with our ward--this beautiful, gifted, South American owner of a famous mine--as a lever, we can force the Beaubien to bring the Ames to our terms! She goes back with us to-night! You've been blind!"

Meantime, the dainty Madam Elwin and the amiable Doctor Jurges in the office below had reached a conclusion. "A young lady of--ah--invincible will," the doctor had observed; "and already--ah--decidedly mature, despite her tender years. Should she--ah--assume leadership over the pupils of your school, my dear Madam Elwin, the result might be disquieting. There can be no question as to her religious views, as I have said. But, what astonishes me is--ah--that this strange cult should have its devotees even in the wilds of tropical America! Astonishing--and so unfortunate! The girl is utterly--ah--unevangelical, Madam; and the advisability of removing her from the school can not be questioned. Do you not agree with me, Mr. Ketchim?"

"By all means," asserted the latter gentleman with great seriousness, while his eyes dwelt tenderly upon Madam Elwin's written order for a hundred shares of Simití stock which he held in his hand.

"Very well, then," said the lady with a determined nod of her head; "I shall request Mrs. Reed to take her to-day." Then, with a proper sense of what it meant to have the moral support of such an eminent divine as Doctor Jurges, she rang for her maid and bade her summon Mrs. Reed and the girl.

Thus it was that Carmen was again shifted a space on the checkerboard of life, and slept that night once more under the spacious roof of the wealthy relict of the late James Hawley-Crowles, on Riverside Drive.

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Chapter 7

As has been said, Carmen's six months in the Elwin school had been a period of slow adjustment to the changed order. She had brought into this new world a charm of unsophistication, an ingenuous naïveté, such as only an untrammeled spirit nourished in an elemental civilization like that of primitive Simití could develop. Added to this was the zest and eagerness stimulated by the thought that she had come as a message-bearer to a people with a great need. Her first emotion had been that of astonishment that the dwellers in the great States were not so different, after all, from those of her own unprogressive country. Her next was one of sad disillusionment, as the fact slowly dawned upon her trusting thought that the busy denizens of her new environment took no interest whatsoever in her message. And then her joy and brilliant hopefulness had chilled, and she awoke to find her strange views a barrier between herself and her associates. She had brought to the America of the North a spirit so deeply religious as to know naught else than her God and His ceaseless manifestation. She had come utterly free of dogma or creed, and happily ignorant of decaying formularies and religious caste. Her Christianity was her demonstrable interpretation of the Master's words; and her fresh, ebulliant spirit soared unhampered in the warm atmosphere of love for mankind. Her concept of the Christ stirred no thought within her of intolerance toward those who might hold differing views; nor did it raise interposing barriers within her own mind, nor evoke those baser sentiments which have so sadly warped the souls of men into instruments of deadly hatred and crushing tyranny. Her spiritual vision, undimmed and world-embracing, saw the advent of that day when all mankind would obey the commands of Jesus, and do the works which he did, even to the complete spiritualization and dematerializing of all human thought. And her burning desire was to hasten the coming of that glad hour.

The conviction that, despite its tremendous needs, humanity was steadily rejecting, even in this great land of opportunity and progress, the remedy for its consuming ills, came to her slowly. And with it a damping of her ardor, and a dulling of the fine edge of her enthusiasm. She grew quiet as the days passed, and drew away from her companions into her thought. With her increasing sense of isolation came at length a great longing to leave these inhospitable shores, and return to her native environment and the sympathy and tender solicitude of her beloved Rosendo and Padre Josè. But, alas! that was at present impossible. Indeed, she could not be certain now of their whereabouts. A great war was raging in Colombia, and she knew not what fate had befallen her loved ones. To her many letters directed to Simití there had come back no reply. Even Harris, who had written again and again to both Rosendo and Josè, had received no word from them in return. Corroding fear began to assail the girl; soul-longing and heart-sickness seized upon her; her happy smile faded; and her bright, bubbling conversation ceased.

Then one day, standing alone in her room, she turned squarely upon the foul brood of evil suggestions crowding upon her and, as if they were fell spirits from the nether world, bade them begone. "Listen!" she cried aloud. "I know you for what you are--nothing! You seemed to use Padre Josè, but you can't use me! God is everywhere--right here! He is my life; and you, evil thoughts, can't make me think He isn't! I am His image and likeness; I am His witness; and I will not witness to His opposite, evil! My life is filled with harmony; and you, evil thoughts, can't reverse that fact! God has brought me here, else I would not have come, for He is the cause of all that is. It is for me to stand and see His glory. No! no!" as she paced about the room and seemed to ward off the assaults of an invisible enemy, "there is no power apart from Him! On that I stand!"

Then, in the lull of battle, "Father divine, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And now I lay my all upon the altar of love, and throw myself upon Thy thought."

From that day, despite continued attacks from error--despite, too, the veiled slights and covert insinuations of her schoolmates, to whom the girl's odd views and utter refusal to share their accustomed conversation, their interest in mundane affairs, their social aspirations and worldly ambitions, at length made her quite unwelcome--Carmen steadily, and without heed of diverting gesture, brought into captivity every thought to the obedience of her Christ-principle, and threw off for all time the dark cloud of pessimism which human belief and the mesmerism of events had drawn over her joyous spirit.

Mrs. Reed had not been near her since her enrollment in the school; but Ketchim had visited her often--not, however, alone, but always with one or more prospective purchasers of Simití stock in tow whom he sought to influence favorably through Carmen's interesting conversation about her native land. Harris came every Sunday, and the girl welcomed the great, blundering fellow as the coming of the day. At times he would obtain Madam Elwin's permission to take the girl up to the city on a little sight-seeing expedition, and then he would abandon himself completely to the enjoyment of her naïve wonder and the numberless and often piquant questions stimulated by it. He was the only one now with whom she felt any degree of freedom, and in his presence her restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be taken out. "I couldn't stand it!" she sobbed as, outside the door, she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; "I just couldn't! It was heavenly! Oh, it was God that we heard--it was God!" And the astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst of pent-up emotion as he led her, silent and absorbed, back to the school.

With the throwing of the girl upon her own thought came a rapid expansion of both mind and body into maturity, and the young lady who left the Elwin school that bright spring afternoon under the protection of the self-sufficient Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was very far from being the inquisitive, unabashed little girl who had so greatly shocked the good Sister Superior by her heretical views some six months before. The sophistication engendered by her intercourse with the pupils and instructors in the school had transformed the eager, trusting little maid, who could see only good into a mature woman, who, though her trust remained unshaken, nevertheless had a better understanding of the seeming power "that lusteth against the spirit," and whose idea of her mission had been deepened into a grave sense of responsibility. She saw now, as never before, the awful unreality of the human sense of life; but she likewise understood, as never previously, its seeming reality in the human consciousness, and its terrible mesmeric power over those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had been made patent. Jesus taught--and then proved. She must do likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from the day that she bade the suggestions of fear and evil leave her, she had consecrated herself anew to a searching study of the Master's life and words, if happily she might acquire "that mind" which he so wondrously expressed.

But the assumption of an attitude of quiet demonstration was by no means sudden. There were times when she could not restrain the impulse to challenge the beliefs so authoritatively set forth by the preachers and lecturers whom Madam Elwin invited to address her pupils, and who, unlike Jesus, first taught, and then relegated their proofs to a life beyond the grave. Once, shortly after entering the school, forgetful of all but the error being preached, she had risen in the midst of an eloquent sermon by the eminent Darius Borwell, a Presbyterian divine of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to set forth, God had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his theories of endless future rewards and fiery punishments, dwelt at length upon the traditional idea that the sorrows of the world are God-sent for mankind's chastisement and discipline.

Then she gradually learned to be less defiant of the conventions and beliefs of the day, and determined quietly to rise superior to them. But her experience with the preachers wrought within her a strong determination henceforth to listen to no religious propaganda whatsoever, to give no further heed to current theological beliefs, and to enter no church edifice, regardless of the tenets of the sect worshiping within its precincts. The wisdom of this decision she left for the future to determine.

"Oh," she cried, "my only mission is to manifest the divine, not to waste time listening to the theories of ignorant preachers, who fail utterly to prove the truth of their teachings! Oh, how the world needs love--just love! And I am going to love it with the selfless love that comes from God, and destroys error and the false beliefs that become externalized in the human consciousness as sickness, failure, old age, and death! Love, love, love--it is mankind's greatest need! Why, if the preachers only knew, the very heart and soul of Christianity is love! It is love that casts out fear; and fear is at the bottom of all sickness, for fear leads to belief in other gods than the one Father of Christ Jesus! Christianity is aflame with love! Oh, God--take me out into the world, and let me show it what love can do!"

And the divine ear heard the call of this beautiful disciple of the Christ--aye, had heard it long before the solicitous, fluttering little Madam Elwin decided that the strange girl's unevangelical views were inimical to the best interests of her very select school. The social ambitions of the wealthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles threw wide the portals of the world to Carmen, and she entered, wide-eyed and wondering. Nor did she return until the deepest recesses of the human mind had revealed to her their abysmal hideousness, their ghastly emptiness of reality, and their woeful mesmeric deception.

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Chapter 8

Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, more keenly perceptive than her sister, had seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The scourge of years of fruitless social striving had rendered her desperate, and she would have staged a ballet on her dining table, with her own ample self as première danseuse, did the attraction but promise recognition from the blasé members of fashionable New York's ultra-conservative set. From childhood she had looked eagerly forward through the years with an eye single to such recognition as life's desideratum. To this end she had bartered both youth and beauty with calculated precision for the Hawley-Crowles money bags; only to weep floods of angry tears when the bargain left her social status unchanged, and herself tied to a decrepit old rounder, whose tarnished name wholly neutralized the purchasing power of his ill-gotten gold. Fortunately for the reputations of them both, her husband had the good sense to depart this life ere the divorce proceedings which she had long had in contemplation were instituted; whereupon the stricken widow had him carefully incinerated and his ashes tenderly deposited in a chaste urn in a mausoleum which her architect had taken oath cost more than the showy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds and threw herself again into the terrific competition for social standing, determined this time that it should be a warfare to the death.

And so it bade fair to prove to her, when the eminent nerve specialist, Dr. Bascom Ross, giving a scant half hour to the consideration of her case, at the modest charge of one hundred dollars, warned her to declare a truce and flee to the Alps for unalloyed rest. She complied, and had returned with restored health and determination just as her sister came up from South America, bringing the odd little "savage" whom Reed had discovered in the wilds of Guamocó. A prolonged week-end at Newport, the last of the summer season, accounted for her absence from the city when Reed brought Carmen to her house, where he and his wife were making their temporary abode. Six months later, in her swift appraisal of the girl in the Elwin school, to whom she had never before given a thought, she seemed to see a light.

"It does look like a desperate chance, I admit," she said, when recounting her plans to her sister a day or so later. "But I've played every other card in my hand; and now this girl is going to be either a trump or a joker. All we need is a word from the Beaubien, and the following week will see an invitation at our door from Mrs. J. Wilton Ames. The trick is to reach the Beaubien. That I calculate to do through Carmen. And I'm going to introduce the girl as an Inca princess. Why not? It will make a tremendous hit."

Mrs. Reed was not less ambitious than her sister, but hitherto she had lacked the one essential to social success, money. In addition, she had committed the egregious blunder of marrying for love. And now that the honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year, which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in time her wandering father would pass away; and there was no doubt that his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin. But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach herself to her wealthy, sharp-witted sister, and hope to be towed safely into the social swim, should that scheming lady ultimately achieve her high ambition.

Just why Mrs. Hawley-Crowles should have seen in Carmen a means of reaching a woman of the stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further its own dubious aims through guileless innocence and trust. Perhaps Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference, that she knew not why she was led to adopt certain means; while Carmen, penetrating externals, consciously sought to turn those who would employ her into channels for the expression of her own dominant thought. Be that as it may, the Beaubien was now the stone before the door of their hope, and Carmen the lever by which these calculating women intended it should be moved.

"The Beaubien, my dear," explained Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to her inquisitive sister, whose life had been lived almost entirely away from New York, "is J. Wilton Ames's very particular friend, of long standing. As I told you, I have recently been going through my late unpleasant husband's effects, and have unearthed letters and memoranda which throw floods of light upon Jim's early indiscretions and his association with both the Beaubien and Ames. Jim once told me, in a burst of alcoholic confidence, that she had saved him from J. Wilton's clutches in the dim past, and for that he owed her endless gratitude, as well as for never permitting him to darken her door again. Now I have never met the Beaubien. Few women have. But I dare say she knows all about us. However, the point that concerns us now is this: she has a hold on Ames, and, unless rumor is wide of the truth, when she hints to him that his wife's dinner list or yachting party seems incomplete without such or such a name, why, the list is immediately revised."

The position which the Beaubien held was, if Madam On-dit was not to be wholly discredited, to say the least, unique. It was not as social dictator that she posed, for in a great cosmopolitan city where polite society is infinitely complex in its make-up such a position can scarcely be said to exist. It was rather as an influence that she was felt, an influence never seen, but powerful, subtle, and wholly inexplicable, working now through this channel, now through that, and effecting changes in the social complexion of conservative New York that were utterly in defiance of the most rigid convention. Particularly was her power felt in the narrow circle over which Mrs. J. Wilton Ames presided, by reason of her own and her husband's aristocratic descent, and the latter's bursting coffers and supremacy in the realm of finance.

Only for her sagacity, the great influence of the woman would have been short-lived. But, whatever else might be said of her, the Beaubien was wise, with a discretion that was positively uncanny. Tall, voluptuous, yet graceful as a fawn; black, wavy, abundant hair; eyes whose dark, liquid depths held unfathomable mysteries; gracious, affable, yet keen as a razor blade; tender, even sentimental on occasions, with an infinite capacity for either love or hate, this many-sided woman, whose brilliant flashes of wit kept the savant or roué at her table in an uproar, could, if occasion required, found an orphanage or drop a bichloride tablet in the glass of her rival with the same measure of calculating precision and disdain of the future. It was said of her that she might have laid down her life for the man she loved. It is probable that she never met with one worth the sacrifice.

While yet in short dresses she had fled from her boarding school, near a fashionable resort in the New Hampshire hills, with a French Colonel, Gaspard de Beaubien, a man twice her age. With him she had spent eight increasingly miserable years in Paris. Then, her withered romance carefully entombed in the secret places of her heart, she secured a divorce from the roistering colonel, together with a small settlement, and set sail for New York to hunt for larger and more valuable game.

With abundant charms and sang-froid for her capital, she rented an expensive apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city, and then settled down to business. Whether she would have fallen upon bad days or not will never be known, for the first haul of her widespread net landed a fish of supreme quality, J. Wilton Ames. On the plea of financial necessity, she had gone boldly to his office with the deed to a parcel of worthless land out on the moist sands of the New Jersey shore, which the unscrupulous Gaspard de Beaubien had settled upon her when she severed the tie which bound them, and which, after weeks of careful research, she discovered adjoined a tract owned by Ames. Pushing aside office boy, clerk, and guard, she reached the inner sanctum of the astonished financier himself and offered to sell at a ruinous figure. A few well-timed tears, an expression of angelic innocence on her beautiful face, a despairing gesture or two with her lovely arms, coupled with the audacity which she had shown in forcing an entrance into his office, effected the man's capitulation. She was then in her twenty-fourth year.

The result was that she cast her net no more, but devoted herself thenceforth with tender consecration to her important catch. In time Ames brought a friend, the rollicking James Hawley-Crowles, to call upon the charming Beaubien. In time, too, as was perfectly natural, a rivalry sprang up between the men, which the beautiful creature watered so tenderly that the investments which she was enabled to make under the direction of these powerful rivals flourished like Jack's beanstalk, and she was soon able to leave her small apartment and take a suite but a few blocks from the Ames mansion.

At length the strain between Ames and Hawley-Crowles reached the breaking point; and then the former decided that the woman's bewitching smiles should thenceforth be his alone. He forthwith drew the seldom sober Hawley-Crowles into certain business deals, with the gentle connivance of the suave Beaubien herself, and at length sold the man out short and presented a claim on every dollar he possessed. Hawley-Crowles awoke from his blissful dream sober and trimmed. But then the Beaubien experienced one of her rare and inexplicable revulsions of the ethical sense, and a compromise had to be effected, whereby the Hawley-Crowles fortune was saved, though the man should see the Beaubien no more.

By this time her beauty was blooming in its utmost profusion, and her prowess had been fairly tried. She took a large house, furnished it like unto a palace, and proceeded to throw her gauntlet in the face of the impregnable social caste. There she drew about her a circle of bon-vivants, artists, littérateurs, politicians, and men of finance--with never a woman in the group. Yet in her new home she established a social code as rigid as the Median law, and woe to him within her gates who thereafter, with or without intent, passed the bounds of respectful decorum. His name was heard no more on her rosy lips.

Her dinners were Lucullan in their magnificence; and over the rare wines and imperial cigars which she furnished, her guests passed many a tip and prognostication anent the market, which she in turn quietly transmitted to her brokers. She came to understand the game thoroughly, and, while it was her heyday of glorious splendor, she played hard. She had bartered every priceless gift of nature for gold--and she made sure that the measure she received in return was full. Her gaze was ever upon the approaching day when those charms would be but bitter memories; and it was her grim intention that when it came silken ease should compensate for their loss.

Ten years passed, and the Beaubien's reign continued with undimmed splendor. In the meantime, the wife of J. Wilton Ames had reached the zenith of her ambitions and was the acknowledged leader in New York's most fashionable social circle. These two women never met. But, though the Beaubien had never sought the entrée to formal society, preferring to hold her own court, at which no women attended, she exercised a certain control over it through her influence upon the man Ames. What Mrs. Ames knew of the long-continued relations between her husband and this woman was never divulged. And doubtless she was wholly satisfied that his wealth and power afforded her the position which her heart had craved; and, that secure, she was willing to leave him to his own methods of obtaining diversion. But rumor was persistent, maliciously so; and rumor declared that the list of this envied society dame was not drawn up without the approval of her husband and the woman with whom his leisure hours were invariably spent. Hence the hope of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose doting mate had once fawned in the perfumed wake of the luxurious Beaubien.

Carmen, whose wishes had not been consulted, had voiced no objection whatever to returning to the Hawley-Crowles home. Indeed, she secretly rejoiced that an opportunity had been so easily afforded for escape from the stifling atmosphere of the Elwin school, and for entrance into the great world of people and affairs, where she believed the soil prepared for the seed she would plant. That dire surprises awaited her, of which she could not even dream, did not enter her calculations. Secure in her quenchless faith, she gladly accepted the proffered shelter of the Hawley-Crowles mansion, and the protection of its worldly, scheming inmates.

In silent, wide-eyed wonder, in the days that followed, the girl strove to accustom herself to the luxury of her surroundings, and to the undreamed of marvels which made for physical comfort and well-being. Each installment of the ample allowance which Mrs. Hawley-Crowles settled upon her seemed a fortune--enough, she thought, to buy the whole town of Simití! Her gowns seemed woven on fairy looms, and often she would sit for hours, holding them in her lap and reveling in their richness. Then, when at length she could bring herself to don the robes and peep timidly into the great pier glasses, she would burst into startled exclamations and hide her face in her hands, lest the gorgeous splendor of the beautiful reflection overpower her.

"Oh," she would exclaim, "it can't be that the girl reflected there ever lived and dressed as I did in Simití! I wonder, oh, I wonder if Padre Josè knew that these things were in the world!"

And then, as she leaned back in her chair and gave herself into the hands of the admiring French maid, she would close her eyes and dream that the fairy-stories which the patient Josè had told her again and again in her distant home town had come true, and that she had been transformed into a beautiful princess, who would some day go in search of the sleeping priest and wake him from his mesmeric dream.

Then would come the inevitable thought of the little newsboy of Cartagena, to whom she had long since begun to send monetary contributions--and of her unanswered letters--of the war devastating her native land--of rudely severed ties, and unimaginable changes--and she would start from her musing and brush away the gathering tears, and try to realize that her present situation and environment were but means to an end, opportunities which her God had given her to do His work, with no thought of herself.

A few days after Carmen had been installed in her new home, during which she had left the house only for her diurnal ride in the big limousine, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles announced her readiness to fire the first gun in the attack upon the Beaubien. "My dear," she said to her sister, as they sat alone in the luxurious sun-parlor, "my washerwoman dropped a remark the other day which gave me something to build on. Her two babies are in the General Orphan Asylum, up on Twenty-third street. Well, it happens that this institution is the Beaubien's sole charity--in fact, it is her particular hobby. I presume that she feels she is now a middle-aged woman, and that the time is not far distant when she will have to close up her earthly accounts and hand them over to the heavenly auditor. Anyway, this last year or two she has suddenly become philanthropic, and when the General Orphan Asylum was building she gave some fifty thousand dollars for a cottage in her name. What's more, the trustees of the Asylum accepted it without the wink of an eyelash. Funny, isn't it?

"But here's the point: some rich old fellow has willed the institution a fund whose income every year is used to buy clothing for the kiddies; and they have a sort of celebration on the day the duds are given out, and the public is invited to inspect the place and the inmates, and eat a bit, and look around generally. Well, my washerwoman tells me that the Beaubien always attends these annual celebrations. The next one, I learn, comes in about a month. I propose that we attend; take Carmen; ask permission for her to sing to the children, and thereby attract the attention of the gorgeous Beaubien, who will be sure to speak to the girl, who is herself an orphan, and, ten to one, want to see more of her. The rest is easy. I'll have a word to say regarding our immense debt of gratitude to her for saving Jim's fortune years ago when he was entangled in her net--and, well, if that scheme doesn't work, I have other strings to my bow."

But it did work, and with an ease that exceeded the most sanguine hopes of its projector. On the day that the General Orphan Asylum threw wide its doors to the public, the Hawley-Crowles limousine rubbed noses with the big French car of the Beaubien in the street without; while within the building the Beaubien held the hand of the beautiful girl whose voluntary singing had spread a veil of silence over the awed spectators in the great assembly room, and, looking earnestly down into the big, trusting, brown eyes, said: "My dear child, I want to know you." Then, turning to the eager, itching Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "I shall send my car for her to-morrow afternoon, with your permission."

With her permission! Heavens! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles wildly hugged her sister and the girl all the way home--then went to bed that night with tears of apprehension in her washed-out eyes, lest she had shown herself too eager in granting the Beaubien's request. But her fears were turned to exultation when the Beaubien car drew up at her door the following day at three, and the courteous French chauffeur announced his errand. A few moments later, while the car glided purring over the smooth asphalt, Carmen, robed like a princess, lay back in the cushions and dreamed of the poor priest in the dead little town so far away.

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