CHAPTER 17

In the days to come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind's iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter's morning. And their stories will vary with the telling, for no two might agree what manner of being it was that came into their midst that day.

Even the bailiffs, as if moved by some strange prescience, had fallen back and allowed her to enter alone. The buzz of subdued chatter ceased, and a great silence came over all as they looked. Some swore, in awed whispers, when the dramatic day had ended, and judge and jury and wrangling lawyer had silently, and with bowed heads, gone quiet and thoughtful each to his home, that a nimbus encircled her beautiful head when she came through the door and faced the gaping multitude. Some said that her eyes were raised; that she saw not earthly things; and that a heavenly presence moved beside her. Nor may we lightly set aside these tales; for, after the curtain had fallen upon the wonderful scene about to be enacted, there was not one present who would deny that, as the girl came into the great room and went directly to the witness chair, God himself walked at her side and held her hand.

"Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

Through the mind of that same white-haired man in the clerical garb ran these words as he watched the girl move silently across the room. She seemed to have taken on a new meaning to him since the previous day. And as he looked, his eyes grew moist, and he drew out his handkerchief.

But his were not the only eyes that had filled then. Hitt and Haynerd bent their heads, that the people might not see; Miss Wall and the Beaubien wept silently, and with no attempt to stay their grief; Jude buried her head in her hands, and rocked back and forth, moaning softly. Why they wept, they knew not. A welter of conflicting emotions surged through their harassed souls. They seemed to have come now to the great crisis. And which way the tide would turn rested with this lone girl.

For some moments after she was seated the silence remained unbroken. And as she sat there, waiting, she looked down at the man who sought to destroy what he might not possess. Some said afterward that as she looked at him she smiled. Who knows but that the Christ himself smiled down from the cross at those who had riven his great heart?

But Ames did not meet her glance. Somehow he dared not. He was far from well that morning, and an ugly, murderous mood possessed him. And yet, judged by the world's standards, he had tipped the crest of success. He had conquered all. Men came and went at his slightest nod. His coffers lay bursting with their heavy treasure. He was swollen with wealth, with material power, with abnormal pride. His tender sensibilities and sympathies were happily completely ossified, and he was stone deaf and blind to the agonies of a suffering world. Not a single aim but had been realized; not a lone ambition but had been met. Even the armed camp at Avon, and the little wooden crosses over the fresh mounds there, all testified to his omnipotence; and in them, despite their horrors, he felt a satisfying sense of his own great might.

The clerk held up the Bible for the girl to give her oath. She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled. "I will tell the truth," she said simply.

The officer hesitated, and looked up at the judge. But the latter sat with his eyes fixed upon the girl. The clerk did not press the point; and Carmen was delivered into the hands of the lawyers.

Cass hesitated. He knew not how to begin. Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he asked the girl to mention briefly the place of her birth, her parentage, and other statistical data, leading up to her association with the defendant.

The story that followed was simply given. It was but the one she had told again and again. Yet the room hung on her every word. And when she had concluded, Cass turned her back again to Simiti, and to Rosendo's share in the mining project which had ultimated in this suit.

A far-away look came into the girl's eyes as she spoke of that great, black man who had taken her from desolate Badillo into his own warm heart. There were few dry eyes among the spectators when she told of his selfless love. And when she drew the portrait of him, standing alone in the cold mountain water, far up in the jungle of Guamoco, bending over the laden batea, and toiling day by day in those ghastly solitudes, that she might be protected and educated and raised above her primitive environment in Simiti, there were sobs heard throughout the room; and even the judge, hardened though he was by conflict with the human mind, removed his glasses and loudly cleared his throat as he wiped them.

Ames first grew weary as he listened, and then exasperated. His lawyer at length rose to object to the recital on the ground that it was largely irrelevant to the case. And the judge, pulling himself together, sustained the objection. Cass sat down. Then the prosecution eagerly took up the cross-examination. Ames's hour had come.

"Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth," murmured the white-haired man in the clerical garb far back in the crowded room. Had he learned the law of Truth to error, "Thou shall surely die"? Did he discern the vultures gnawing at the rich man's vitals? Did he, too, know that this giant of privilege, so insolently flaunting his fleeting power, his blood-stained wealth and his mortal pride, might as well seek to dim the sun in heaven as to escape the working of those infinite divine laws which shall effect the destruction of evil and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven even here upon earth?

Ames leaned over to whisper to Hood. The latter drew Ellis down and transmitted his master's instructions. The atmosphere grew tense, and the hush of expectancy lay over all.

"Miss Carmen," began Ellis easily, "your parentage has been a matter of some dispute, if I mistake not, and—"

Cass was on his feet to object. What had this question to do with the issue?

But the judge overruled the objection. That was what he was there for. Cass should have divined it by this time.

"H'm!" Ellis cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "And your father, it is said, was a negro priest. I believe that has been accepted for some time. A certain Diego, if I recall correctly."

"I never knew my earthly father," replied Carmen in a low voice.

"But you have admitted that it might have been this Diego, have you not?"

"It might have been," returned the girl, looking off absently toward the high windows.

"Did he not claim you as his daughter?" pursued the lawyer.

"Yes," softly.

"Now," continued Ellis, "that being reasonably settled, is it not also true that you used the claim of possessing this mine, La Libertad, as a pretext for admission to society here in New York?"

The girl did not answer, but only smiled pityingly at him. He, too, had bartered his soul; and in her heart there rose a great sympathy for him in his awful mesmerism.

"And that you claimed to be an Inca princess?" went on the merciless lawyer.

"Answer!" admonished the judge, looking severely down upon the silent girl.

Carmen sighed, and drew her gaze away from the windows. She was weary, oh, so weary of this unspeakable mockery. And yet she was there to prove her God.

"I would like to ask this further question," Ellis resumed, without waiting for her reply. "Were you not at one time in a resort conducted by Madam Cazeau, down on—"

He stopped short. The girl's eyes were looking straight into his, and they seemed to have pierced his soul. "I am sorry for you," she said gently, "oh, so sorry! Yes, I was once in that place."

The man knew not whether to smile in triumph or hide his head in shame. He turned to Hood. But Hood would not look at him. Ames alone met his embarrassed glance, and sent back a command to continue the attack.

Cass again rose and voiced his protest. What possible relation to the issue involved could such testimony have? But the judge bade him sit down, as the counsel for the prosecution doubtless was bringing out facts of greatest importance.

Ellis again cleared his throat and bent to his loathsome task. "Now, Miss Ariza, in reference to your labors to incite the mill hands at Avon to deeds of violence, the public considers that as part of a consistent line of attack upon Mr. Ames, in which you were aiding others from whom you took your orders. May I ask you to cite the motives upon which you acted?"

Cass sank back in abject despair. Ketchim was being forgotten!

"We have not attacked Mr. Ames," she slowly replied, "but only the things he stands for. But you wouldn't understand."

Ellis smiled superciliously. "A militant brand of social uplift, I suppose?"

"No, Mr. Ellis, but just Christianity."

"H'm. And that is the sort of remedy that anarchists apply to industrial troubles, is it not?"

"There is no remedy for industrial troubles but Christianity," she said gently. "Not the burlesque Christianity of our countless sects and churches; not Roman Catholicism; not Protestantism; nor any of the fads and fancies of the human mind; but just the Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth, who knew that the human man was not God's image, but only stood for it in the mortal consciousness. And he always saw behind this counterfeit the real man, the true likeness of God. And—"

"You are diverging from the subject proper and consuming time, Miss Ariza!" interrupted the judge sternly.

Carmen did not heed him, but continued quietly:

"And it was just such a man that Jesus portrayed in his daily walk and words."

"Miss Ariza!" again commanded the judge.

"No," the girl went calmly on, "Jesus did not stand for the intolerance, the ignorance, the bigotry, the hatred, and the human hypothesis, the fraud, and chicanery, and the 'Who shall be greatest?' of human institutions. Nor did he make evil a reality, as mortals do. He knew it seemed awfully real to the deceived human consciousness; but he told that consciousness to be not afraid. And then he went to work and drove out the belief of evil on the basis of its nothingness and its total lack of principle. The orthodox churches and sects of to-day do not do that. Oh, no! They strive for world dominion! Their kingdom is wholly temporal, and is upheld by heartless millionaires, and by warlike kings and emperors. Their tenets shame the intelligence of thinking men! Yet they have slain tens of millions to establish them!"

What could the Court do? To remove the girl meant depriving Ames of his prey. But if she remained upon the stand, she would put them all to confusion, for they had no means of silencing her. The judge looked blankly at Ames; his hands were tied.

Ellis hurried to change the current of her talk by interposing another question.

"Will you tell us, Miss Carmen, why you have been working—"

"I have been working for God," she interrupted. Her voice was low and steady, and her eyes shone with a light that men are not wont to see in those of their neighbors. "I have not been working for men. He alone is my employer. And for Him I am here to-day."

Consternation was plainly discernible in the camp of the prosecution. Cass knew now that he need make no more objections. The defense had passed from his hands.

At this juncture James Ketchim, brother of the defendant, thinking to relieve the strain and embarrassment, gave audible voice to one of his wonted witticisms. All turned to look at him. But the effect was not what he had anticipated. No one laughed.

"Hold your tongue, Mr. Ketchim!" roared the exasperated judge, bending far over his desk. "You are just a smart little fool!" And the elder Ketchim retired in chagrin and confusion.

"Miss Carmen," pursued Ellis, eager to recover his advantage, for he saw significant movements among the jury, "do you not think the unfortunate results at Avon quite prove that you have allied yourself with those who oppose the nation's industrial progress?"

Carmen sat silent. Order had now been restored in the court room, and Ellis was feeling sure of himself again.

"You have opposed the constructive development of our country's resources by your assaults upon men of wealth, like Mr. Ames, for example, have you not?"

Then the girl opened her mouth, and from it came words that fell upon the room like masses of lead. "I stand opposed to any man, Mr. Ellis, who, to enrich himself, and for the purpose of revenge, spreads the boll weevil in the cotton fields of the South."

Dull silence descended upon the place. And yet it was a silence that fell crashing upon Ames's straining ears. He sat for a moment stunned; then sprang to his feet. All eyes were turned upon him. He held out a hand, and made as if to speak; then sank again into his chair.

Ellis stood as if petrified. Then Hood rose and whispered to him. Ellis collected himself, and turned to the judge.

"Your Honor, we regret to state that, from the replies which Miss Ariza has given, we do not consider her mentally competent as a witness. We therefore dismiss her."

But Cass had leaped to the floor. "Your Honor!" he cried. "I should like to examine the witness further!"

"She is dismissed!" returned the judge, glowering over his spectacles at the young lawyer.

"I stand on—"

"Sit down!" the judge bellowed.

"Miss Carmen!" called Cass through the rising tumult, "the lawyer for the prosecution has heaped insults upon you in his low references to your parentage. Will you—"

The judge pounded upon his desk with the remnant of his broken gavel. Then he summoned the bailiffs.

"I shall order the room cleared!" he called in a loud, threatening voice.

The murmur subsided. The judge sat down and mopped his steaming face. Hood and Ellis bent in whispered consultation. Ames was a study of wild, infuriated passion. Cass stood defiantly before the bar. Carmen sat quietly facing the crowded room. She had reached up and was fondling the little locket which hung at her throat. It was the first time she had ever worn it. It was not a pretty piece of jewelry; and it had never occurred to her to wear it until that day. Nor would she have thought of it then, had not the Beaubien brought it to the Tombs the night before in a little box with some papers which the girl had called for. Why she had put it on, she could not say.

Slowly, while the silence continued unbroken, the girl drew the slender chain around in front of her and unclasped it.

"I—I never—knew my parents," she murmured musingly, looking down lovingly at the little locket. Then she opened it and sat gazing, rapt and absorbed, at the two little portraits within. "But there are their pictures," she suddenly announced, holding the locket out to Cass.

It was said afterward that never in the history of legal procedure in New York had that court room held such dead silence as when Cass stood bending over the faces of the girl's earthly parents, portrayed in the strange little locket which Rosendo had taken from Badillo years before. Never had it known such a tense moment; never had the very air itself seemed so filled with a mighty, unseen presence, as on that day and in that crisal hour.

Without speaking, Hood rose and looked over Cass's shoulder at the locket. A muffled cry escaped him, and he turned and stared at Ames. The judge bent shaking over his desk.

"Mr. Hood!" he exclaimed. "Have you ever seen those pictures before?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hood in a voice that was scarcely heard.

"Where, sir?"

Hood seemed to have frozen to the spot. His hands shook, and his words gibbered from his trembling lips.

"The—the woman's portrait, sir—is—is—the one in—in Mr. Ames's yacht!"

"My God!"

The piercing cry rang through the still room like a lost soul's despairing wail. Ames had rushed from his seat, overturning his chair, thrusting the lawyers aside, and seized the locket. For a moment he peered wildly into it. It seemed as if his eyes would devour it, absorb it, push themselves clean through it, in their eagerness to grasp its meaning.

Then he looked up. His eyes were red; his face ashen; his lips white. His unsteady glance met the girl's. His mouth opened, and flapped like a broken shutter in the wind. His arms swung wildly upward; then dropped heavily. Suddenly he bent to one side; caught himself; straightened up; and then, with a horrifying, gurgling moan, crashed to the floor. The noise of the tremendous fall reverberated through the great room like an echo of Satan's plunge into the pit of hell.

Pandemonium broke upon the scene. Wild confusion seized the excited spectators. They rushed forward in a mass, over railings, over chairs and tables, heedless of all but the great mystery that was slowly clearing away in the dim light that winter's morning. Through them the white-haired man, clad in clerical vestments, elbowed his way to the bar.

"Let me see the locket!" he cried. "Let me see it!"

He tore it from Hood's hand and scanned it eagerly. Then he nodded his head. "The same! The very same!" he murmured, trembling with excitement. Then, shouting to the judge above the hubbub:

"Your Honor! I can throw some light upon this case!"

The crowd fell back.

"Who are you?" called the judge in a loud, quavering voice.

"I am Monsignor Lafelle. I have just returned from Europe. The woman's portrait in this little locket is that of Dona Dolores, Infanta, daughter of Queen Isabella the Second, of Spain! And this girl," pointing to the bewildered Carmen, who sat clinging to the arms of her chair, "is her child, and is a princess of the royal blood! Her father is the man who lies there—J. Wilton Ames!"



CHAPTER 18

Borne on pulsing electric waves, the news of the great denouement flashed over the city, and across a startled continent. Beneath the seas it sped, and into court and hovel. Madrid gasped; Seville panted; and old Padre Rafael de Rincon raised his hoary head and cackled shrilly.

To the seething court room came flying reporters and news gatherers, who threw themselves despairingly against the closed portals. Within, the bailiffs fought with the excited crowd, and held the doors against the panic without.

Over the prostrate form of Ames the physicians worked with feverish energy, but shook their heads.

In the adjoining ante-room, whither she had been half carried, half dragged by Hitt when Ames fell, sat Carmen, clasped in the Beaubien's arms, stunned, bewildered, and speechless. Hitt stood guard at the door; and Miss Wall and Jude tiptoed about with bated breath, unable to take their eyes from the girl.

In the court room without, Haynerd held the little locket, and plied Monsignor Lafelle with his incoherent questions. The excited editor's brain was afire; but of one thing he was well assured, the Express would bring out an extra that night that would scoop its rivals clean to the bone!

In a few minutes the bailiffs fought the mob back from the doors and admitted a man, a photographer, who had been sent out to procure chemicals in the hope that the portrait of the man in the locket might be cleaned. Ten minutes later the features of J. Wilton Ames stood forth clearly beside those of the wife of his youth. The picture showed him younger in appearance, to be sure, but the likeness was unmistakable.

"Lord! Lord! Monsignor, but you are slow! Come to the point quickly! We must go to press within an hour!" wailed Haynerd, shaking the churchman's arm in his excitement.

"But, what more?" cried Lafelle. "I saw the portrait in the Royal Gallery, years ago, in Madrid. It impressed me. I could not forget the sad, sweet face. I saw it again in the stained-glass window in the Ames yacht. I became suspicious. I inquired when I returned to Spain. There was much whispering, much shaking of heads, but little information. But this I know: the queen, the great Isabella, had a lover, a wonderful tenor, Marfori, Marquis de Loja. And one day a babe was taken quietly to a little cottage in the Granada hills. Rumor said that it was an Infanta, and that the tenor was its father. Who knew? One man, perhaps: old Rafael de Rincon. But Rome suddenly recalled him from Isabella's court, and after that he was very quiet."

"But, Ames?" persisted Haynerd.

Lafelle shrugged his shoulders. "Mr. Ames," he said, "traveled much in Europe. He went often to Spain. He bought a vineyard in Granada—the one from which he still procures his wine. And there—who knows?—he met the Infanta. But probably neither he nor she guessed her royal birth."

"Well! Good Lord! Then—?"

"Well, they eloped—who knows? Whether married or not, I can not say. But it is evident she went with him to Colombia, where, perhaps, he was seeking a concession from Congress in Bogota. So far, so good. Then came the news of his father's sudden death. He hastened out of the country. Possibly he bade her wait for his return. But a prospective mother is often excitable. She waited a day, a week—who knows how long? And then she set out to follow him. Alas! she was wild to do such a thing. And it cost her life. She died at the little riverine town of Badillo, after her babe, Carmen, was born. Is it not plausible?"

"God above!" cried Haynerd. "And the girl's wonderful voice?"

"A heritage from her grandfather, the tenor, Marfori," Lafelle suggested.

"But—the portraits—what is the name under that of Ames? Guillermo? That is not his!"

"Yes, for Guillermo in Spanish is William. Doubtless Ames told her his name was Will, contracted from Wilton, the name he went by in his youth. And the nearest the Spanish could come to it was Guillermo. Diego's name was Guillermo Diego Polo. And after he had seen that name in the locket he used it as a further means of strengthening his claim upon the girl."

"Then—she is—a—princess!"

"Yes, doubtless, if my reasoning is correct. Not an Inca princess, but a princess of the reigning house of Spain."

Haynerd could hold himself no longer, but rushed madly from the room and tore across town to the office of the Express.

Then came the white-enameled ambulance, dashing and careening to the doors of the building where Ames lay so quiet. Gently, silently, the great body was lifted and borne below. And then the chattering, gesticulating mob poured from the court room, from the halls and corridors, and out into the chill sunlight of the streets, where they formed anew into little groups, and went over again the dramatic events but a few minutes past.

Then, too, emerged Carmen, heavily veiled from the curious, vulgar gaze of the rabble, and entered the waiting limousine, with the Beaubien and Hitt. Miss Wall and the gasping Jude followed in another. The judge had bidden the girl go on her own recognizance. The arrest at Avon; the matter of bail; all had merged into the excitement of the hour and been forgotten. Ketchim went out on Cass's arm. The judge had ordered the clerk to enter an adjournment.

* * * * *

All that afternoon and far into the night a gaping, wondering concourse braved the cold and stood about the walk that led up to the little Beaubien cottage. Within, the curtains were drawn, and Sidney, Jude, and Miss Wall answered the calls that came incessantly over the telephone and to the doors. Sidney had not been in the court room, for Haynerd had left him at the editor's desk in his own absence. But with the return of Haynerd the lad had hurried into a taxicab and commanded the chauffeur to drive madly to the Beaubien home. And once through the door, he clasped the beautiful girl in his arms and strained her to his breast.

"My sister!" he cried. "My own, my very own little sister! We only pretended before, didn't we? But now—now, oh, God above! you really are my sister!"

The scarce comprehending girl drew his head down and kissed him. "Sidney," she murmured, "the ways of God are past finding out!"

Aye, for again, as of old, He had chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He had chosen the weak to confound the mighty; and the base things, and the things despised, had He used to bring to naught the things that are. And why? That no flesh might glory in His terrible presence!

"Carmen!" cried the excited boy. "Think what this means to our book!"

The girl smiled up at him; then turned away. "My father!" she murmured. "He—my father!" she kept repeating, groping her way about the room as if in a haze. "He! It can't be! It can't!"

The still dazed Beaubien drew the girl into her arms. "My little princess!" she whispered. "Oh! But who would have dreamed it! Yet I called you that from the very first. But—oh, Carmen! And he—that man—your father!"

"Don't! Mother, don't! It—it isn't proved. It—"

Then the Beaubien's heart almost stopped. What if it were true? What, then, would this sudden turn in the girl's life mean to the lone woman who clung to her so?

"No, mother dearest," whispered Carmen, looking up through her tears. "For even if it should be true, I will not leave you. He—he—"

She stopped; and would speak of him no more.

But neither of them knew as yet that in that marvelous Fifth Avenue palace, behind those drawn curtains and guarded bronze doors, at which an eager crowd stood staring, Ames, the superman, lay dying, his left side, from the shoulder down, paralyzed.

* * * * *

In the holy quiet of the first hours of morning, the mist rose, and the fallen man roused slowly out of his deep stupor. And then through the dim-lit halls of the great mansion rang a piercing cry. For when he awoke, the curtain stood raised upon his life; and the sight of its ghastly content struck wild terror to his naked soul.

He had dreamed as he lay there, dreamed while the mist was rising. He thought he had been toiling with feverish energy through those black hours, building a wall about the things that were his. And into the design of the huge structure he had fitted the trophies of his conquest. Gannette toiled with him, straining, sweating, groaning. Together they reared that monstrous wall; and as they labored, the man plotted the death of his companion when the work should be done, lest he ask for pay. And into the corners of the wall they fitted little skulls. These were the children of Avon who had never played. And over the great stones which they heaved into place they sketched red dollar-marks; and their paint was human blood. A soft wind swept over the rising structure, and it bore a gentle voice: "I am Love." But the toilers looked up and cursed. "Let us alone!" they cried. "Love is weakness!" And over the rim of the wall looked fair faces. "We are Truth, we are Life!" But the men frothed with fury, and hurled skulls at the faces, and bade them begone! A youth and a tender girl looked down at the sweating toilers. "We ask help; we are young, and times are so hard!" But the great man pointed to himself. "Look at me!" he cried. "I need no help! Begone!" And then the darkness settled down, for the wall was now so high that it shut out the sun. And the great man howled with laughter; the wall was done. So he turned and smote his companion unto death, and dipped his hands in the warm blood of the quivering corpse.

But the darkness was heavy. The man grew lonely. And then he sought to mount the wall. But his hands slipped on the human blood of the red, slimy dollar-marks, and he fell crashing back among his tinkling treasures. He rose, and tried again. The naked, splitting skulls leered at him. The toothless jaws clattered, and the eyeless sockets glowed eerily. The man raised his voice. He begged that a rope be lowered. He would go out once more into the sunlit world. But the chill wind brought him only despairing moans.

Then he rushed madly to the wall, and smote it with his bare hands. It mocked him with the strength which he had given it. He turned and tore his hair and flesh. He gnashed his teeth until they broke into bits. He cursed; he raved; he pleaded; he offered all his great treasure for freedom. But the skulls grinned their horrid mockery at him; and the blood on the stones dripped upon his burning head. And above it all he heard the low plotting of those without who were awaiting his death, that they might throw down the wall and take away his treasure.

And then his fear became frenzy; his love of gold turned to horror; his reason fled; and he dashed himself wildly against the prison which he had reared, until he fell, bleeding and broken. And as he fell, he heard the shrill cackle of demons that danced their hellish steps on the top of the wall. Then the Furies flew down and bound him tight.

"Ah, my God, What might I not have made of Thy fair world Had I but loved Thy highest creature here? It was my duty to have loved the highest; It surely was my profit had I known."

He awoke from his terror, dripping. He feebly lifted his head. Then he sought to raise his arms, to move. He was alive! And then the scream tore from his dry throat. His great body was half dead!

The attendants flew to his couch. The physicians bent over him and sought to soothe his mental agony. The man's torture was fearful to behold; his weakness, pitiable. He sank again into somnolence. But the sleep was one of unbroken horror; and those in the room stopped in the course of their duties; and their faces blanched; and they held their hands to their ears, when his awful moans echoed through the curtained room.

Through his dreams raced the endless panorama of his crowded life. Now he was wading through muddy slums where stood the wretched houses which he rented for immoral purposes. He was madly searching for something. What could it be? Ah, yes, his girl! Some one had said she was there. Who was it? Aye, who but himself? But he found her not. And he wept bitterly.

And then he hurried to Avon; and there he dug into those fresh graves—dug, dug, dug, throwing the dirt up in great heaps behind him. And into the face of each corpse as he dragged it out of its damp bed he peered eagerly. But with awful moans he threw them from him in turn, for she was not there.

Then he fled down, down, far into the burning South; and there he roamed the trackless wastes, calling her name. And the wild beasts and the hissing serpents looked out at him from the thick bush, looked with great, red eyes, and then fled from him with loathing. And, suddenly, he came upon another mound near the banks of a great river. And over it stood a rude cross; and on the cross he read the dim, penciled word, Dolores. Ah, God! how he cried out for the oblivion that was not his. But the ghastly mound froze his blood, and he rushed from it in terror, and fell, whirling over and over, down, down into eternal blackness filled with dying men's groans!

The awful day drew to a close. The exhausted attendants stood about the bed with bated breath. The physicians had called Doctor Morton in consultation, for the latter was a brain specialist. And while they sat gazing at the crazed, stricken giant, hopelessly struggling to lift the inert mass of his dead body, Reverend Darius Borwell entered. He bowed silently to them all; then went to the bedside and took the patient's hand. A moment later he turned to the physicians and nurses.

"Let us ask God's help for Mr. Ames," he said gravely.

They bowed, and he knelt beside the bed and prayed long and earnestly; prayed that the loving Father who had made man in His image would take pity on the suffering one who lay there, and, if it be His will, spare him for Jesus' sake.

He arose from his knees, and they all sat quiet for some moments. Then Doctor Morton's heavy voice broke the silence of death. "Mr. Borwell," he said in awful earnestness, extending his hand toward the bed, "cure that man, if your religion is anything more than a name!"

A hot flush of indignation spread over the minister's face; but he did not reply. Doctor Morton turned to the physicians.

"Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "Mr. Ames, I think, is past our aid. There is nothing on earth that can save him. If he lives, he will be hopelessly insane." He hesitated, and turned to a maid. "Where is his daughter Kathleen?" he asked.

"Upstairs, sir, in her apartments," answered the maid, wiping her red eyes.

"See that she remains there," said the doctor gruffly. "Gentlemen," turning again to the physicians, "I have but one suggestion. Send for—for—that little girl, Carmen."

"It is ill-advised, Doctor," interrupted one of the men. "It would only further excite him. It might hasten the end."

"I do not agree with you," returned Doctor Morton. "As it is, he is doomed. With her here—there may be a chance."

The others shook their heads; but Doctor Morton persisted stubbornly. Finally Doctor Haley gave his ultimatum. "If she is sent for, I shall retire from the case."

"Very well," announced Doctor Morton evenly, "then I will take it myself." He rose and went out into the vestibule where there was a telephone. Calling for the Beaubien cottage, he gave a peremptory order that Carmen come at once in the automobile which he was sending for her.

The Beaubien turned from the telephone to the girl. Her face was deathly pale.

"What is it, mother dearest?"

"They—they want—you!"

"Why—is it—is he—"

"They say he is—dying," the woman whispered.

Carmen stood for a minute as if stunned. "Why—I—didn't know—that there was—anything wrong. Mother, you didn't tell me! Why?"

The Beaubien threw her arms around the girl. Father Waite rose from the table where he had been writing, and came to them.

"Go," he said to Carmen. "The Lord is with thee! Go in this thy might!"

A few minutes later the great bronze doors of the Ames mansion swung wide to admit the daughter of the house.

Doctor Morton met the wondering girl, and led her directly into the sick-room. The other physicians had departed.

"Miss Carmen," he said gravely, "Mr. Ames is past earthly help. He can not live."

The girl turned upon him like a flash from a clear sky. "You mean, he shall not live!" she cried. "For you doctors have sentenced him!"

The startled man bowed before the rebuke. Then a sense of her magnificent environment, of her strange position, and of the vivid events of the past few hours swept over her, and she became embarrassed. The nurses and attendants, too, who stood about and stared so hard at her, added to her confusion.

But the doctor took her hand. "Listen," he said, "I am leaving now, but you will remain. If I am needed, one of the maids will summon me."

Carmen stood for a moment without speaking. Then she walked slowly to the bed and looked down at the man. Doctor Morton motioned to the attendants to withdraw. Then he himself stepped softly out and closed the door. When the girl turned around, she was alone—with death.



CHAPTER 19

A curious, gossiping world, dwelling only in the froth of the human mind, will not comprehend for many a year to come what took place in that dim, tapestried chamber of the rich man in those next hours. When twilight began to steal through the marble halls of the great, shrouded mansion, the nurse in charge, becoming apprehensive, softly opened the door of the sick-room and peeped in. Through the darkness she saw the girl, sitting beside the bed, with the man's right hand clasped in both of hers, and her head resting upon his shoulder. And the nurse quickly closed the door again in awe, and stole away.

The girl sat there all that day and all that night, nor would leave but for brief moments to eat, or to reassure the Beaubien over the telephone that all was well. Doctor Morton came, and went, and came again. Carmen smiled, and held his hand for a moment each time, but said little. Ames had slept. And, more, his cheeks were stained where the scalding tears had coursed down them. But the doctor would ask no questions. He was satisfied. The nurses entered only when summoned. And three days and nights passed thus, while Carmen dwelt with the man who, as the incarnation of error, seeking the destruction of others, had destroyed himself.

Then Doctor Morton announced to a waiting world that his patient would live—but he would say no more. And the world heard, too, that Kathleen Ames had left her father's roof—left in humiliation and chagrin when she learned that Carmen had come there to live—and had gone to England for a prolonged visit with the Dowager Duchess of Altern and her now thoroughly dismayed son. But Sidney came; and with him the black-veiled Beaubien. And they both knelt beside the bed of suffering; and the hand of the now quiet man slowly went out and lay for a moment upon their bowed heads, while Carmen stood near. Then Willett was sent for; and he came often after that, and took his master's scarce audible instructions, and went away again to touch the wires and keys that ended the war of hatred at Avon; that brought Father Danny in the master's private car to the great metropolitan hospital; that sent to the startled Hitt the canceled mortgage papers on the Express; and that inaugurated that great work of restitution which held the dwellers in the Ames mansion toiling over musty books and forgotten records for months to come.

What had passed between the man and the sweet-faced girl who hovered over him like a ray of light, no one may know. That he had trod the glowing embers of hell, his cavernous, deep-lined face and whitening hair well testified. It was said afterward that on that third day he had opened his eyes and looked straight into those of the girl. It was said that she then whispered but one word, "Father." And that, when the sound of her low voice fell upon his straining ears, he had reached out the arm that still held life, and had drawn her head down upon his breast, and wept like a motherless babe. But what he had said, if aught, about the abandoned mother who, on the banks of the distant river, years gone, had yielded her life to him and his child, no one knew. Of but one thing was there any certainty: the name of Padre Jose de Rincon had not crossed their lips during those dark days.

And so two weeks passed. Then strong men lifted the giant from his bed and placed him in a wheel chair; and Carmen drew the chair out into the conservatory, among the ferns and flowers, and sat beside him, his hand still clasped in both of hers. That he had found life, no one who marked his tense, eager look, which in every waking moment lay upon the girl, could deny. His body was dead; his soul was fluttering feebly into a new sense of being.

But with the awakening of conscience, in the birth-throes of a new life, came the horrors, the tortures, the wild frenzy of self-loathing; and, but for the girl who clung so desperately to him, he would have quickly ended his useless existence. What had he done! God! What mad work had he done! He was a murderer of helpless babes! He was the blackest of criminals! The stage upon which the curtain had risen, whereon he saw the hourly portrayal of his own fiendish deeds, stood always before him like a haunting spectre; and as he gazed with horrified eyes, his hair grew hourly white.

And the torture was rendered more poignant by the demands of his erstwhile associates and henchmen. They had taken fright at the first orders which had issued from the sick-bed, but now they swooped down upon the harassed man to learn what might be expected from him in the future. What were to be his policies now in regard to those manifold interests which he was pursuing with such vigor a few weeks ago? Was he still bent upon depriving Senator Gossitch of the seat which the Ames money had purchased? Was the Ketchim prosecution to continue? The Amalgamated Spinners' Association must know at once his further plans. The Budget needed money and advice. His great railroad projects, his mining ventures, his cotton deals, his speculations and gambling schemes—whither should they tend now? Ward bosses, dive keepers, bank presidents, lawyers, magnates, and preachers clamored for admission at his doors when they learned that he would live, but that a marvelous, incomprehensible change had swept over him.

The tired, hectored man turned to Carmen. And she called Hitt and Waite and the keen-minded Beaubien. The latter's wide business experience and worldly knowledge now stood them all in good stead, and she threw herself like a bulwark between the stricken man and the hounds that roared at his gates. There were those among them who, like Ames, had bitterly fought all efforts at industrial and social reform, and yet who saw the dawning of a new era in the realms of finance, of politics, of religion. There were those who sensed the slow awakening of the world-conscience, and who resisted it desperately, and who now sat frightened and angered at the thought of losing their great leader. Their attitude toward life, like his, had been wrong from the beginning; they, like him, were striking examples of the dire effects of a false viewpoint in the impoverishing of human life. But, with him, they had built up a tremendous material fabric. And now they shook with fear as they saw its chief support removed. For they must know that his was a type that was fast passing, and after it must come the complete breakdown of the old financial order. His world-embracing gambling—which touched all men in some way, for it had to do with the very necessities of life, with crops, with railroads, with industries, and out of which he had coined untold millions—had ceased forever. What did it portend to them?

And to him also came Reverend Darius Borwell, in whose congregation sat sanctimonious malefactors of vast wealth, whose pockets bulged with disease-laden profits from the sales of women's bodies and souls. Reverend Borwell came to offer the sufferer the dubious consolations of religion—and inquire if his beautiful change of heart would affect the benefaction which he had designed for the new church.

Ah, this was the hour when the fallen giant faced the Apostle's awful question: What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death!

And then came Monsignor Lafelle, asking not to see the sick man, but the girl. And, alone with her in the great library that day, he bent low over her hand and begged that she would forgive and forget. It was he who told Mrs. Ames that flagrantly false tale of the girl's parentage. He had received it from Wenceslas, in Cartagena. It was he who, surmising the dark secret of Ames, had concluded that the supposed Infanta had been his wife. And he had returned to New York to confront him with the charge, and to make great capital out of it. But he had never suspected for a moment Carmen's connection with the mystery. And now—

But the girl saw only the image of God in the humiliated man. And when he kissed her hand and departed, she bade him know, always, that she loved him as a brother. And he knew it, knew that her love was of the spirit—it left all for the Christ.

A few days later there was delivered at the Ames mansion a cable message from Cartagena, in reply to one which the master had sent to the lawyer, Estrella. Ames shook with suppressed excitement when he read it. Then he bade Carmen send at once for Hitt, Willett, and Captain McCall, and leave them with him for a private conference.

"She must not know! She must not know!" Ames repeated, as the three men sat leaning eagerly forward an hour later, drinking in every word he spoke. "If the mission is successful, well and good. If it fails, then our silence now will be justified, for as yet I have said nothing to her regarding him. Peace is being concluded there. Wenceslas has won—but with—but of that later. When can you get under way, McCall?"

"To-night, sir. The bunkers are full."

"Very good. I will go aboard at ten. You will weigh anchor immediately."

"What?" cried Hitt. "You will go?"

"I will!" The sudden flash of his old-time energy nearly startled them from their chairs. "And," he added, "you, Mr. Hitt, will accompany us. Now, Willett, have the door of my limousine widened to accommodate this wheel chair. I want a dozen men to insure our privacy, and to keep the way clear. No one not in our confidence must see us depart."

Hitt gasped. "But—Carmen—"

"Goes with us," returned Ames. "I can not spare her for a moment. Madam Beaubien will have charge of the house during our absence. We will be back here, weather favorable, in three weeks—or not at all!"

"Yet, she will know—"

"Nothing. I take the trip, ostensibly, for the change; to get away from those who are hounding me here; for recuperation—anything! Go, now, and make ready!" The man's eyes glistened like live coals, and his sunken cheeks took on a feverish glow.

That night the Cossack, enveloped in gloom, steamed noiselessly out of New York harbor, and turned her prow to the South. And when she had entered the high sea, Captain McCall from his bridge aloft sent a message down to the waiting engineer:

"Full speed ahead!"



CHAPTER 20

Cartagena's slumber of centuries had been broken by nearly four years of civil warfare. But on the day that the lookout in the abandoned convent of Santa Candelaria, on the summit of La Popa, flashed the message down into the old city that a steam yacht had appeared on the northern horizon, she was preparing to sink back again into quiet dreams. For peace was being concluded among the warring political factions. The country lay devastated and blood-soaked; but the cause of Christ had triumphed, and the Church still sat supreme in the councils of Bogota. Cartagena was en fete; the last of the political agitators would be executed on the morrow. And so the lookout's message was received with indifference, even though he embellished it with the comment that the boat must be privately owned, as no ships of the regular lines were due to arrive that day.

Quietly the graceful craft swept down past Tierra Bomba and into the Boca Chica, between the ancient forts of San Fernando and San Jose, and came to anchor out in the beautiful harbor, a half mile from the ancient gate of the clock. A few curious idlers along the shore watched it and commented on its perfect lines. And the numerous officials of the port lazily craned their necks at it, and yawningly awaited the arrival of the skiff that was immediately lowered and headed for the pier.

The tall American who stepped from the little boat and came at once to them to show his papers, easily satisfied their curiosity, for many tourists of the millionaire class dropped anchor in Cartagena's wonderful harbor, and came ashore to wander among the decaying mementos of her glorious past. And this boat was not a stranger to these waters. On the yacht itself, as they glanced again toward it, there was no sign of life. Even the diminishing volume of smoke that rose from its funnels evidenced the owner's intention of spending some time in that romantic spot.

From the dock, Hitt passed through the old gateway in the massive wall, quickly crossed the Plaza de Coches, and lost himself in the gay throngs that were entering upon the day's festivities. Occasionally he dropped into wine shops and little stores, and lingered about to catch stray bits of gossip. Then he slowly made his way up past the Cathedral and into the Plaza de Simon Bolivar.

For a while, sitting on a bench in front of the equestrian statue of the famous Libertador, he watched the passing crowds. From time to time his glance strayed over toward the Cathedral. Once he rose, and started in that direction; then came back and resumed his seat. It was evident that he was driven hard, and yet knew not just what course to pursue.

Finally he jumped to his feet and went over to a little cigar store which had caught his eye. He bent over the soiled glass case and selected several cigars from the shabby stock. Putting one of them into his mouth, he lighted it, and then casually nodded to a powerfully built man standing near.

The latter turned to the proprietor and made some comment in Spanish. Hitt immediately replied to it in the same tongue. The man flushed with embarrassment; then doffed his hat and offered an apology. "I forget, senor," he said, "that so many Americans speak our language."

Hitt held out his hand and laughed heartily at the incident. Then his eye was attracted by a chain which the man wore.

"May I examine it?" he asked, bending toward it.

"Cierto, senor," returned the man cordially. "It came from an Indian grave up in Guamoco. I am a guaquero—grave digger—by profession; Jorge Costal, by name."

Hitt glanced up at the man. Somehow he seemed to be familiar with that name. Somewhere he seemed to have heard it. But on whose lips? Carmen's? "Suppose," he said, in his excellent Spanish, "that we cross the Plaza to yonder wine shop. You may be able to tell me some of the history of this interesting old town. And—it would be a great favor, senor."

The man bowed courteously and accepted the invitation. A few moments later they sat at a little table, with a bottle between them, commenting on the animated scene in the street without.

"Peace will be concluded to-day, they say," reflected Hitt, by way of introduction.

"Yes," returned the man grimly, "there is but little more blood to let. That flows to-morrow."

"Political agitators?" Hitt suggested.

The man's face darkened. "Only one," he muttered. "The other is—"

He stopped and eyed Hitt furtively. But the American manifested only a casual interest.

"Their names?" he asked nonchalantly.

"They were posted this morning," said the man. "Amado Jesus Fanor and Jose de Rincon."

Hitt started, but held himself. "Who—who are they?" he asked in a controlled voice.

"A liberal general and an ex-priest."

"Ex-priest?" exclaimed Hitt.

The man looked at him wonderingly. "Yes, senor. Why?"

"Oh, nothing—nothing. It is the custom to—to shoot ex-priests down here, eh?"

"Caramba! No! But this man—senor, why do you ask?"

"Well—it struck me as curious—that's all," returned Hitt, at a loss for a suitable answer. "You didn't happen to know these men, I presume?"

"Na, senor, you seek to involve me. Who are you, that you ask such questions of a stranger?" The man reflected the suspicious caution of these troublous times.

"Why, amigo, it is of no concern to me," replied Hitt easily, flicking the ashes from his cigar. "I once knew a fellow by that name. Met him here years ago. Learned that he afterward went to Simiti. But I—"

"Senor!" cried the man, starting up. "Are you the Americano, the man who explored?"

"I am," said Hitt, bending closer to him. "And we are well met, for you are Don Jorge, who knew Padre Jose de Rincon in Simiti, no?"

The man cast a timid glance around the room. "Senor," he whispered, "we must not say these things here! I leave you now—"

"Not yet!" Hitt laid a hand upon his. "Where is he?" he demanded in a low voice.

"In San Fernando, senor."

"And how long?"

"A year, I think. He was first three years in the prison in Cartagena. But the Bish—"

"Eh? Don Wenceslas had him removed to San Fernando?"

The man nodded.

"And—"

"He will be shot to-morrow, senor."

Hitt thought with desperate rapidity. Then he looked up. "Why do you say he is an ex-priest?" he asked.

"He has just been excommunicated," replied the man. "Cursed, they say, by bell, book, and candle."

"Good heavens! That he might be shot? Ah, I see it all! Ames's message! Of course Don Wenceslas would not dare to execute a priest in good standing. And so he had him excommunicated, eh?"

Don Jorge shrugged his shoulders. "Quien sabe?" he muttered.

Hitt sat for a while in a deep study. Time was precious. And yet it was flying like the winds. Then he roused up.

"You knew a little girl—in Simiti—in whom this Rincon was interested?"

"Ah, yes, senor. But—why do you ask? She went to the great States from which you come. And I think little was heard from her after that."

"Eh? Yes, true. She lived with—"

"Don Rosendo Ariza."

"Yes. And he?"

"Dead—he and his good wife, Dona Maria."

Hitt's head sank. How could he break this to Carmen? Then he sprang to his feet. "Come," he said, "we will stroll down by the walls. I would like a look at San Fernando."

"Ha! Senor, you—you—"

Hitt threw him a look of caution, and shook his head. Then, motioning him to follow, he led him out and down through the winding, tortuous thoroughfares. On the summit of the walls were sentinels, posted at frequent intervals; and no civilian might walk upon the great enclosure until peace had been formally declared.

Hailing a passing carriage, Hitt urged the wondering Don Jorge into it, and bade the driver convey them to the old ruin of San Felipe, and leave them. There they climbed the broken incline into the battered fortress, and seated themselves in the shadow of a crumbling parapet. They were alone on the enormous, grass-grown pile. From their position they commanded a wonderful view across the town and harbor, and far out over the green waters of the Caribbean. The Cossack lay asleep in the quiet harbor. Don Jorge saw it, and wondered whence it came.

"Listen, amigo," began Hitt, pointing to the yacht. "In that boat is a girl, whose dearest earthly treasure is the condemned prisoner out there in San Fernando. That girl is the little Carmen, foster-daughter of old Rosendo."

"Hombre!" cried Don Jorge, staring at Hitt as if he suspected his sanity.

"It is true, friend, for I myself came with her in that boat."

"Caramba!"

"And," continued Hitt, glancing again about the ruined fortress and lowering his voice, "we have come for Jose de Rincon."

"Santa Virgen! Are you loco?"

Hitt smiled. "And now," he went on eagerly, "how are we to get him?"

"But, amigo! San Fernando is closely guarded! And he—por supuesto, he will be in the dungeons!"

"No doubt," returned Hitt dryly, "if your excellent friend Wenceslas has had anything to do with it. But dungeons have windows, eh?"

"Caramba, yes; and San Fernando's are just above the water's edge. And when the waves are high the sea pours into them!"

"And—could we learn which window is his, do you think?"

"Senor, I know," replied the man.

"Ha! And—"

"I learned from one of the soldiers, Fernando, who once lived in Simiti. I had thought, senor, that—that perhaps I—"

"That perhaps you might make the attempt yourself, eh?" put in Hitt eagerly.

Don Jorge nodded. Hitt sprang to his feet and looked out toward the silent fortress.

"Don Jorge, it is dark out over the harbor at night, eh? No searchlights?"

"None, senor."

Hitt began to pace back and forth. Suddenly he stopped, and stood looking down through a hole in the broken pavement. Then he knelt and peered long and eagerly into it.

"Look here, friend," he called. "How does one get into that place?"

Don Jorge came and looked into the aperture. "It is one of the rooms of the fortress," he said. "But—caramba! I know not how it may be reached."

"The passageways?"

"Caved—all of them."

"But—you are a mighty husky fellow; and I am not weak. Suppose we try lifting one of these flags."

"Na, senor, as well try the tunnels! But, why?"

Hitt did not answer. But, bidding Don Jorge follow, he sought the fallen entrance to the old fortress, and plunged into the dark passage that led off from it into the thick gloom. Groping his way down a long, damp corridor, he came to a point where three narrower, brick-lined tunnels branched off, one of them dipping into the earth at a sharp angle. He struck a match, and then started down this, followed by the wondering Don Jorge.

A thousand bats, hideous denizens of these black tunnels, flouted their faces and disputed their progress. Don Jorge slapped wildly at them, and cursed low. Hitt took up a long club and struck savagely about him. On they stumbled, until the match flickered out, and they were left in Stygian blackness, with the imps of darkness whirring madly about them. Hitt struck another match, and plunged ahead.

At length they found the way blocked by a mass of rubbish which had fallen from the roof. Hitt studied it for a moment, then climbed upon it and, by the aid of the feeble light from his matches, peered into the foul blackness beyond.

"Come," he said, preparing to proceed.

"Na, amigo! Not I!" exclaimed Don Jorge. His Latin soul had revolted.

"Then wait for me here," said Hitt, pushing himself through the narrow aperture at the top of the rubbish, and fighting the horde of terrified bats.

A few minutes later he returned, covered with slime, and scratched and bleeding. "All right," he muttered. "Now let's get out of this miserable hole!"

Out in the sunlight once more, Hitt sought to remove the stains from his clothes, meanwhile bidding Don Jorge attend well to his words.

"You swim, eh?"

"Yes."

"Then do you come to the beach to-night to bathe, down across from the yacht. And, listen well: you would do much for the little Carmen, no? And for your friend Jose? Very good. You will swim out to the yacht at seven to-night, with your clothes in a bundle on your head, eh? And, Don Jorge—but we will discuss that later. Now you go back to the city alone. I have much to do. And, note this, you have not seen me."

Meantime, to the group of politicians, soldiers, and clergy assembled in the long audience room of the departmental offices to debate the terms of the peace protocol, news of the arrival of the Cossack was brought by a slow-moving messenger from the dock. At the abrupt announcement the acting-Bishop was seen to start from his chair. Was the master himself on board? Quien sabe? And, if so—but, impossible! He would have advised his faithful co-laborer of his coming. And yet, what were those strange rumors which had trickled over the wires, and which, in his absorption in the local issues, and in the excitement attendant upon the restoration of peace and the settlement of the multifold claims of innumerable greedy politicians, he had all but forgotten? A thousand suggestions flashed through his mind, any one of which might account for the presence of the Cossack in Cartagena's harbor that day. But extreme caution must be observed until he might ascertain its errand. He therefore despatched a message to the yacht, expressing his great surprise and pleasure, and bidding its master meet him at a convenient hour in his study in the Cathedral. This done, he bent anew to the work before him, yet with his thought harried by doubt, suspicion, and torturing curiosity.

Wenceslas soon received a reply to his message. The master was aboard, but unable to go ashore. The acting-Bishop would therefore come to him at once.

Wenceslas hesitated, and his brow furrowed. He knew he was called upon to render his reckoning to the great financier who had furnished the sinews of war. But he must have time to consider thoroughly his own advantage, for well he understood that he was summoned to match his own keen wits with those of a master mind.

And then there flashed through his thought the reports which had circled the world but three short weeks before. The man of wealth had found his daughter; and she was the girl for whom the two Americans had outwitted him four years ago! And the girl—Simiti—and—ah, Rincon! Good! He laughed outright. He would meet the financier—but not until the morrow, at noon, for, he would allege, the unanticipated arrival of Ames had found this day completely occupied. So he again despatched his wondering messenger to the Cossack. And that messenger was rowed out to the quiet yacht in the same boat with the tall American, whose clothes were torn and caked with mud, and in whose eyes there glowed a fierce determination.

That night the sky was overcast. The harbingers of the wet season had already arrived. At two in the morning the rain came, descending in a torrent. In the midst of it a light skiff, rocking dangerously on the swelling sea, rounded a corner of San Fernando and crept like a shadow along the dull gray wall. The sentry above had taken shelter from the driving rain. The ancient fort lay heavily shrouded in gloom.

At one of the narrow, grated windows which were set just above the water's surface the skiff hung, and a long form arose from its depths and grasped the iron bars. A moment later the gleam of an electric lantern flashed into the blackness within. It fell upon a rough bench, standing in foul, slime-covered water. Upon the bench sat the huddled form of a man.

Then another dark shape rose in the skiff. Another pair of hands laid hold on the iron bars. And behind those great, calloused hands stretched thick arms, with the strength of an ox. An iron lever was inserted between the bars. The heavy breathing and the low sounds of the straining were drowned by the tropic storm. The prisoner leaped from the bench and stood ankle-deep in the water, straining his eyes upward.

The light flashed again into his face. His heart pounded wildly. His throbbing ears caught the splash of a knotted rope falling into the water at his feet. Above the noise of the rain he thought he heard a groaning, creaking sound. Those rusted, storm-eaten bars in the blackness above must be slowly yielding to an awful pressure. He turned and dragged the slime-covered bench to the window, and stood upon it. Then he grasped the rope with a strength born anew of hope and excitement, and pulled himself upward. The hands from without seized him; and slowly, painfully, his emaciated body was crushed through the narrow space between the bent bars.

* * * * *

Cartagena awoke to experience another thrill. And then the ripple of excitement gave place to anger. The rabble had lost one of its victims, and that one the chief. Moreover, the presence of that graceful yacht, sleeping so quietly out there in the sunlit harbor, could not but be associated with that most daring deed of the preceding night, which had given liberty to the excommunicated priest and political malefactor, Jose de Rincon. Crowds of chattering, gesticulating citizens gathered along the harbor shores, and loudly voiced their disappointment and threats. But the boat lay like a thing asleep. Not even a wisp of smoke rose from its yellow funnels.

Then came the Alcalde, and the Departmental Governor, grave and sedate, with their aids and secretaries, their books and documents, their mandates and red-sealed processes, and were rowed out to confront the master whom they believed to have dared to thwart the hand of justice and remain to taunt them with his egregious presence. This should be made an international episode, whose ramifications would wind down through years to come, and embrace long, stupid congressional debates, apologies demanded, huge sums to salve a wounded nation, and the making and breaking of politicians too numerous to mention!

But the giant who received them, bound to his chair, in the splendid library of the palatial yacht, and with no attendant, save a single valet, flared out in a towering rage at the gross insult offered him and his great country in these black charges. He had come on a peaceful errand; partly, too, for reasons of health. And he was at that moment awaiting a visit from His Grace. What manner of reception was this, that Cartagena extended to an influential representative of the powerful States of the North!

"But," the discomfited Indignation Committee gasped, "what of the tall American who was seen to land the day before?"

The master laughed in their faces. He? Why, but a poor, obsessed archaeologist, now prowling around the ruins of San Felipe, doubtless mumbling childishly as he prods the dust and mold of centuries! Go, visit him, if they would be convinced!

And when these had gone, chagrined and mortified—though filled with wonder, for they had roamed the Cossack, and peered into its every nook and cranny, and stopped to look a second time at the fair-haired young boy who looked like a girl, and hovered close to the master—came His Grace, Wenceslas. He came alone, and with a sneer curling his imperious lips. And his calm, arrogant eyes held a meaning that boded no good to the man who sat in his wheel chair, alone, and could not rise to welcome him.

"A very pretty trick, my powerful friend," said the angered churchman in his perfect English. "And one that will cause your Government at Washington some—"

"Enough!" interrupted Ames in a steady voice. "I sent for you yesterday, intending to ask you to release the man. I had terms then which would have advantaged you greatly. You were afraid to see me until you had evolved your plans of opposition. Only a fixed and devilish hatred, nourished by you against a harmless priest who possessed your secrets, doomed him to die to-day. But we will pass that for the present. I have here my demands for the aid I have furnished you. You may look them over." He held out some typewritten sheets to Wenceslas.

The churchman glanced hastily over them; then handed them back with a smile.

"With certain modifications," he said smoothly. "The terms on which peace is concluded will scarcely admit of—"

"Very well," returned Ames quietly. "And now, La Libertad?"

Wenceslas laughed. "En manos muertas, my friend," he replied. "It was your own idea."

"And the emerald concession?"

"Impossible! A government monopoly, you know," said His Grace easily. "You see, my friend, it is a costly matter to effect the escape of state prisoners. As things stand now, your little trick of last night quite protects me. For, first you instruct me, long ago, to place the weak little Jose in San Fernando; and I obey. Then you suffer a change of heart, and slip down here to release the man, who has become a state prisoner. That quite removes you from any claims upon us for a share of the spoils of war. I take it, you do not wish to risk exposure of your part in this four years' carnage?"

Ames drew a sigh. Then he pulled himself together. "Wenceslas," he said, "I am not the man with whom you dealt in these matters. He is dead. I have but one thing more to say, and that is that I renounce all claims upon you and your Government, excepting one. La Libertad mine was owned by the Rincon family. It was rediscovered by old Rosendo, and the title transferred to his foster-daughter. Its possession must remain with her and her associates. There is no record, so you have informed me, to the effect that the Church possesses this mine."

"But, my friend, there shall be such a record to-day," laughed Wenceslas. "And, in your present situation, you will hardly care to contest it."

Ames smiled. He now had the information which he had been seeking. The title to the famous mine lay still with the Simiti company. He pressed the call-button attached to his chair. The door opened, and Don Jorge entered, leading the erstwhile little newsboy, Jose de Rincon, by the hand.

Wenceslas gasped, and staggered back. He knew not the man; but the boy was a familiar figure.

Don Jorge advanced straight to him. Their faces almost touched.

"Your Grace, were you married to the woman by whom you had this son?" Don Jorge's steady words fell upon the churchman's ears like a sentence of death.

"I ask," continued the dark-faced man, "because I learned last night that the lad's mother was my daughter, the little Maria."

"Santa Virgen!"

"Yes, Your Grace, a sainted virgin, despoiled by a devil! And the man who gave me this information—would you like to know? Bien, it was Padre Jose de Rincon, in whose arms she died, you lecherous dog!"

Wenceslas paled, and his brow grew moist. He stared at the boy, and then at the strong man whom he had so foully wronged.

"If you have concluded your talk with Senor Ames," continued Don Jorge, "we will go ashore—you and the lad and I."

Wenceslas's face brightened. Ashore! Yes, by all means!

The trio turned and quietly left the room. Gaining the deck, Wenceslas found a skiff awaiting them, and two strong sailors at the oars. Don Jorge urged him on, and together they descended the ladder and entered the boat. A few moments later they landed at the pier, and the skiff turned back to the yacht.

As to just what followed, accounts vary. There were some who remembered seeing His Grace pass through the narrow streets with a dark-skinned, powerful man, whose hand grasped that of the young newsboy. There were others who said that they saw the boy leave them at the Cathedral, and the two men turn and enter. Still others said they saw the heavy-set man come out alone. But there was only one who discovered the body of Wenceslas, crumpled up in a hideous heap upon the floor of his study, with a poignard driven clean through his heart. That man was the old sexton, who fled screaming from the awful sight late that afternoon.

Again Cartagena shook with excitement, and seethed with mystery. Had the escaped prisoner, Rincon, returned to commit this awful deed? There were those who said he had. For the dark-skinned man who had entered the Cathedral with His Grace was seen again on the streets and in the wine shops that afternoon, and had been marked by some mounting the broken incline of San Felipe.

Again the Governor and Alcalde and their numerous suite paid a visit to the master on board the Cossack. But they learned only that His Grace had gone ashore long before he met his fearful death. And so the Governor returned to the city, and was driven to San Felipe. But his only reward was the sight of the obsessed archaeologist, mud-stained and absorbed, prying about the old ruins, and uttering little cries of delight at new discoveries of crumbling passageways and caving rooms. And so there was nothing for the disturbed town to do but settle down and ponder the strange case.

A week later smoke was seen again pouring out of the Cossack's funnels. That same day the Governor and Alcalde and their suites were bidden to a farewell banquet on board the luxurious yacht. Far into the night they sat over their rare wines and rich food, drinking deep healths to the entente cordial which existed between the little republic of the South and the great one of the North. And while they drank and sang and listened enraptured to the wonderful pipe-organ, a little boat put out from the dark, tangled shrubbery along the shore. And when it rubbed against the yacht, a muffled figure mounted the ladder which hung in the shadows, and hastened through the rear hatchway and down into the depths of the boat. Then, long after midnight, the last farewell being said by the dizzy officials, and the echoes of Adios, adios, amigos! lingering among its tall spars, the Cossack slipped noiselessly out of the Boca Chica, and set its course for New York.

A few hours later, while the boat sped swiftly through the phosphorescent waves, the escaped prisoner, Jose de Rincon, who had lain for a week hidden in the bowels of old fort San Felipe, stood alone in the wonderful smoking room of the Cossack, and looked up at the sweet face pictured in the stained-glass window above. And then he turned quickly, for the door opened and a girl entered. A rush, a cry of joy, and his arms closed about the fair vision that had sat by his side constantly during the four long years of his imprisonment.

"Carmen!"

"My Jose!"

"I have solved my problem! I have proved God! I have found the Christ!"

"I knew you would, for he was with you always!"

"But—oh, you beautiful, beautiful girl!"

Then in a little while she gently released herself and went to the door through which she had entered. She paused for a moment to smile back at the enraptured man, then turned and flung the door wide.

A woman entered, leading a young boy. The man uttered a loud exclamation and started toward her.

"Ana!"

He stopped short and stared down at the boy. Then he looked wonderingly at Carmen.

"Yes," she said, stooping and lifting the boy up before Jose, "it is Anita's babe—and he sees!"

The man clasped the child in his arms and buried his face in its hair.

Verily, upon them that sat in darkness had the Light shined.



CHAPTER 21

Another summer had come and gone. Through the trees in Central Park the afternoon sunlight, sifted and softened by the tinted autumn leaves, spread over the brown turf like a gossamer web. And it fell like a gentle benediction upon the massive figure of a man, walking unsteadily beneath the trees, holding the hand of a young girl whose beauty made every passer turn and look again.

"Now, father," laughed the girl, "once more! There! Why, you step off like a major!"

They were familiar figures, out there in the park, for almost daily during the past few weeks they might have been seen, as the girl laughingly said, "practicing their steps." And daily the man's control became firmer; daily that limp left arm and leg seemed increasingly to manifest life.

On a bench near by sat a dark-featured woman. About her played her boy, filling the air with his merry shouts and his imperfect English.

"There, father, comes Jose after us," announced the girl, looking off with love-lit eyes at an approaching automobile. "And Lewis is with him. Now, mind, you are going to get into the car without any help!"

The man laughed, and declared vehemently that if he could not get in alone he would walk home. A few minutes later they had gone.

The profound depth of those changes which had come into the rich man's life, he himself might not fathom. But those who toiled daily with him over his great ledgers and files knew that the transformation went far. There were flashes at times of his former vigor and spirit of domination, but there were also periods of grief that were heart-rending to behold, as when, poring over his records for the name of one whom in years past he had ruthlessly wrecked, he would find that the victim had gone in poverty beyond his power to reimburse him. And again, when his thought dwelt on Avon, and the carnal madness which had filled those new graves there, he would sink moaning into his chair and bury his drawn face in his hands and sob.

And yet he strove madly, feverishly, to restore again to those from whom he had taken. The Simiti company was revived, through his labors, and the great La Libertad restored to its reanimated stockholders. Work of development had begun on the property, and Harris was again in Colombia in charge of operations. The Express was booming, and the rich man had consecrated himself to the carrying out of its clean policies. The mills at Avon were running day and night; and in a new location, far from the old-time "lungers' alley," long rows of little cottages were going up for their employes. The lawyer Collins had been removed, and Lewis Waite was to take his place within a week. Father Danny, now recovered, rejoiced in resources such as he had never dared hope to command.

And so the rich man toiled—ah, God! if he had only known before that in the happiness of others lay his own. If only he could have known that but a moiety of his vast, unused income would have let floods of sunshine into the lives of those dwarfed, stunted children who toiled for him, and never played! Oh, if when he closed his mills in the dull months he had but sent them and their tired mothers to the country fields, how they would have risen up and called him blessed! If he could have but known that he was his brother's keeper, and in a sense that the world as yet knows not! For he is indeed wise who loves his fellow-men; and he is a fool who hates them!

The great Fifth Avenue mansion was dark, except where hung a cluster of glowing bulbs over the rich mahogany table in the library. There about that table sat the little group of searchers after God, with their number augmented now in ways of which they could not have dreamed. And Hitt, great-souled friend of the world, was speaking again as had been his wont in the days now gone.

"The solution of the problems of mankind? Ah, yes, there is a cure-all; there is a final answer to every ethical question, every social, industrial, economic problem, the problems of liquor, poverty, disease, war. And the remedy is so universal that it dissolves even the tangles of tariff and theology. What is it? Ah, my friends, the girl who came among us to 'show the world what love will do' has taught us by her own rich life—it is love. But not the sex-mesmerism, the covetousness, the self-love, which mask behind that heavenly name. For God is Love. And to know Him is to receive that marvelous Christ-principle which unlocks for mankind the door of harmony.

"No, the world's troubles are not the fault of one man, nor of many, but of all who seek happiness in things material, and forget that the real man is the likeness of spirit, and that joy is spiritual. The trusts, and the men of wealth, are not all malefactors; the churches are not wholly filled with evil men. But all, yes all, have 'missed the mark' through the belief that matter and evil are real, and must grope amid sickness, poverty, crime, and death, until they are willing to turn from such false beliefs, and from self, and seek their own in the reflection of Him, who is Love, to their fellow-men. It is only as men join to search for and apply the Christ-principle that they truly unite to solve the world's sore problems and reveal the waiting kingdom of harmony, which is always just at hand. And it can be done. It must be, sometime.

"In that day all shall know that cause and effect are mental. The man who hears the tempter, the carnal mind's suggestion to enrich himself materially at the cost of his brother, will know that it is but the voice of mesmerism, that 'man-killer from the beginning', which bids him sever himself from his God, who alone is infinite abundance. The society woman who flits like a gorgeous butterfly about the courts of fashion, her precious days wasted in motoring, her nights at cards, and whose vitality goes into dress, and into the watery schemes for 'who shall be greatest' in the dismal realm of the human mind, must learn, willingly or through suffering, that her activities are but mesmeric shams that counterfeit the divine activity which manifests in joy and fullness for all.

"Christianity? What is it but the Christ-knowledge, the knowledge of good, and its correlated knowledge, that evil is only the mesmeric lie which has engulfed the world? But, oh, the depths of that divine knowledge! The knowledge which heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, and opens the prisons to them that are captive! We who are gathered here to-night, feeling in our midst that great, unseen Presence which makes for righteousness, know now that 'in my flesh shall I see God,' for we have indeed already seen and known Him."

With them sat the man who, swept by the storms of error and the carnal winds of destruction, had solved his problem, even as the girl by his side told him he should, and had been found, when his foul prison opened, sitting "clothed and in his right mind" at the feet of the Christ. Jesus "saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit—God—like a dove descending upon him—immediately the Spirit—carnal belief, error, the lie—driveth him into the wilderness." And there he was made to prove God. So Jose de Rincon, when the light had come, years gone, in desolate Simiti, had been bidden to know the one God, and none else. But he wavered when the floods of evil rolled over him; he had looked longingly back; he had clung too tightly to the human concept that walked with him like a shining light in those dark days. And so she had been taken from him, and he had been hurled into the wilderness—alone with Him whom he must learn to know if he would see Life.

Then self-consciousness went out, in those four years of his captivity, and he passed from thence into consciousness of God.

Then his great world-knowledge he saw to have been wholly untrue. His store of truth he saw to have been but relative at best. His knowledge had rested, he then knew, upon viewpoints which had been utterly false. And so, like Paul, he died that he might live. He crucified Self, that he might resurrect the image of God.

"The world," resumed Hitt, "still worships false gods, though it reaches out for Truth. And yet, what are we all seeking? Only a state of consciousness, a consciousness of good, of joy and harmony. And we are seeking to rid ourselves of the consciousness of evil, with its sin, its disease and death. But, knowing now that consciousness is mental activity, the activity of thought, can we not see that harmony and immortality are within our grasp? for they are functions of right thought. Salvation is not from evil realities, but from the false sense of evil, even as Jesus taught and proved. The only salvation possible to mankind is in learning to think as Jesus did—not yielding our mentalities daily to a hodge-podge of mixed thoughts of good and evil, and then running to doctors and preachers when such yielding brings its inevitable result in sickness and death. Jesus insisted that the kingdom of heaven was within men, a tremendous potentiality within each one of us. How may it be reached? By removing hampering false belief, by removing the limitations of superstition and human opinion which hold its portals closed. True progress is the release of mankind from materialism, with its enslaving drudgery, its woes, and its inevitable death. Mankind's chief difficulty is ignorance of what God is. Jesus proved Him to be mind, spirit. He proved Him to be the creator of the spiritual universe, but not the originator of the lie of materiality. He showed matter to be but the manifestation of the false belief that creation is material. He showed it to be but a sense-impression, without life, without stability, without existence, except the pseudo-existence which it has in the false thought of which the human or carnal consciousness is formed. But the lack of understanding of the real nature of matter, and the persistent belief in the stability of its so-called laws, has resulted in centuries of attempts to discredit the Bible records of his spiritual demonstrations of God's omnipotence and immanence, and so has prevented the human mind from accepting the proofs which it so eagerly sought. And now, after nineteen centuries of so-called Christian teaching, the human mind remains still deeply embedded in matter, and subject to the consentaneous human beliefs which it calls material laws. Jesus showed that it was the communal mortal mind, with its false beliefs in matter, sin, disease, and death, that constituted 'the flesh'; he showed that mortals are begotten of such false beliefs; he showed that the material universe is but manifested human belief. And we know from our own reasoning that we see not things, but our thoughts of things; that we deal not with matter, but with material mental concepts only. We know that the preachers have woefully missed the mark, and that the medicines of the doctors have destroyed more lives than wars and famine, and yet will we not learn of the Master? To reach God through material thinking is utterly impossible, for He is spirit, and He can be cognized only by a spiritual consciousness. Yet such a consciousness is ours, if we will but have it.

"Ah, friends, God said: Let US make man in OUR image and likeness—let Life, Love, Spirit make its spiritual reflection. But where is that man to-day? Buried deep beneath the dogma and the crystallized human beliefs of mortals—buried beneath 'the lie' which mankind accept about truth. Nothing but scientific religion will meet humanity's dire needs and reveal that man. And scientific religion admits of actual, practical proof. Christianity is as scientific as mathematics, and quite as capable of demonstration. Its proofs lie in doing the works of the Master. He is a Christian who does these works; he who does not is none. Christianity is not a failure, but organized ecclesiasticism, which always collapses before a world crisis, has failed utterly. The hideous chicane of imperial government and imperial religion against mankind has resulted in a Christian veneer, which cracks at the first test and reveals the unchanged human brute beneath. The nations which writhe in deadly embrace to-day have never sought to prove God. They but emphasize the awful fact that the human mind has no grasp upon the Principle which is God, and at a time of crisis reverts almost instantly to the primitive, despite so-called culture and civilization. Yes, religion as a perpetuation of ancient human conceptions, of materialistic traditions and opinions of 'the Fathers,' is a flat failure. By it the people of great nations have been molded into servile submission to church and ruler—have been persuaded that wretchedness and poverty are eternal—that heaven is a realm beyond the grave, to which admission is a function of outward oblation—and that surcease from ills here, or in the life to come, is a gift of the Church. Can we wonder that commercialism is mistaken by nations for progress? That king and emperor still call upon God to bless their barbaric attempts at conquest? And that human existence remains, what it has always been, a ghastly mockery of Life?

"Healing the sick by applied Christianity is not the attempt to alter a mental concept; it is the bringing out of harmony where before was discord. Evil can not be 'thought away.' He who indulges evil only proves his belief in its reality and power. Christian healing is not 'mental suggestion,' wherein all thought is material. When evil thinking is overcome, then the discords which result from it will disappear from consciousness. That is the Christ-method. Behind all that the physical senses seem to see, know, and feel, is the spiritual fact, perfect and eternal. Jesus healed the sick by establishing this fact in the human consciousness. And we must learn to do likewise. The orthodox churches must learn it. They must cease from the dust-man, whose breath is in his nostrils; they must cease from preaching evil as an awful reality, permitted by God, or existing despite Him; they must know it as Jesus bade all men know it, as the lie about Truth. Then, by holding the divine ideal before the human mind, they will cause that mentality gradually to relinquish its false beliefs and copy the real. And thus, step by step, changing from better to better beliefs, at length the human mind will have completely substituted reality for unreality, and will be no more, even in thought. The 'old man' will have given place to the 'new.' This is the method of Jesus. There is no other. Yes, for the present we reckon with material symbols; we have not yet fully learned their unreality. But at length, if we are faithful, we shall lay them aside, and know only Truth and its pure manifestations.

"Ah, my friends, how simple is Christianity! It is summed up in the Sermon on the Mount. Our salvation is in righteousness. He who thinks right shall know things as they are. He who thinks wrong shall seem to know them as they are not, and shall pass his days in sore travail, even in wars, famine, and utter misery. Then why not take up the demonstration of Christianity in the spirit of joy and freedom from prejudice with which we pursue our earthly studies, and as gladly, thankfully seek to prove it? For it, of all things, is worth while. It alone is the true business of men. For if what we have developed in our many talks regarding God, man, and the mental nature of the universe and all things is true, then are the things with which men now occupy themselves worth while? No, decidedly no! But are the things which we have developed true? Yes, for they can be and have been demonstrated. Then, indeed, are we without excuse. Carmen has shown us the way. No, she is not unnatural; she is only divinely natural. She has shown us what we all may become, if we but will. She has shown us what we shall be able to do when we are completely lost in accord with God, and recognize no other life, substance, nor law than His. But—

"'I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil,' cried the prophet. Truth always has its suppositional opposite! Choose ye then whom ye will serve. All is subject to proof. Only that which is demonstrably true, not after the change which we call death, but here this side of the grave, can stand. The only test of a Christian is in the 'signs following.' Without them his faith is but sterile human belief, and his god but the distorted human concept whom kings beseech to bless their slaughter.

"'Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?

"'His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

"'That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

"'Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.'"

The fire crackled briskly on the great hearth. Carmen rose and turned off the light above them. All drew their chairs about the cheery blaze.

Silence, sacred, holy, lay upon them. The rich man, now possessing treasures beyond his wildest dreams, sat holding his daughter's hand. Her other hand lay in Jose's. Sidney had just entered; and Haynerd had sent word that he would join them soon.

Then the silence was broken by the rich man. His voice was unsteady and low.

"My friends, sorrow and joy fill my heart to-night. To the first I am resigned; it is my due; and yet, were it greater, I know not how I could live. But the joy—who can understand it until he has passed through death into life! This little girl's mother knew not, nor did I, that she was royal born. Sometimes I wonder now if it is really so. And yet the evidence is such that I can scarcely doubt. We met in the sun-kissed hills of Granada; and we loved. Her old nurse was Argus-eyed; and our meetings were such as only lovers can effect. I was young, wild, and my blood coursed like a torrent through my veins! But I loved her, yes, base though I was, I loved her. And in these years since I left her in that little house in Bogota, I have suffered the agonies of the lost when her memory and my own iniquity fell upon me and smote me sore—

"We were married in Spain, and the marriage was performed by Padre Rafael de Rincon."

"My uncle!" cried the startled Jose.

"And then we fled," continued Ames. "I was rich; I was roaming the world, extending my vast business interests; and I took her to Colombia, where I labored with the politicians in Bogota to grant me timber and cattle concessions. We had a cottage on the outskirts of the city, where we were happy. With us lived her faithful old nurse, whom she would not leave in Spain—

"Then, one day, came a cable message that my father had died. The news transformed me. I knew I must return at once to New York. But—I would not take a wife back with me! Why, I know not. I was mad! And I kissed her tear-stained face, and bade her wait, for I would return and make her happy. And then—

"Months later I wrote to her, and, receiving no reply, I caused inquiry to be made. But she had gone—whither, no one knew. The old nurse, too, had disappeared. I never learned that a woman had been left at Badillo to die. And she was not known in Bogota. She was timid, and went out seldom. And then—then I thought that a marriage here would strengthen my position, for I was powerful and proud.

"Oh, the years that her sad face haunted me! I was mad, mad! I know not why, but when the Cossack was built I had her portrait in glass set in the smoking room. And night after night I have sat before it and cursed myself, and implored her to forgive!"

"But—the locket?" said Father Waite.

"It came from Spain. I was Guillermo to her, and she Dolores to me. But I had never forgotten it. Had Carmen ever worn it in my presence I must have recognized it at once. Oh, God, that she had! What would it not have saved!"