During the discussion Don Mario, the Alcalde, called to pay his respects to Jose. He had just returned from a week's visit to Ocana, whither he had gone on matters of business with Simiti's most eminent citizen, Don Felipe Alcozer, who was at present sojourning there for reasons of health. Learning of the priest's recent severe illness, Don Mario had hastened at once to pay his devoirs. And now the Holy Virgin be praised that he beheld the Cura again fully restored! Yes, the dismal little house in question belonged to him, but would the Cura graciously accept it, rent free, and with his most sincere compliments? Jose glanced at Rosendo and, reading a meaning in the slight shake of his head, replied that, although overwhelmed by the Alcalde's kindness, he could take the cottage only on the condition that it should become the parish house, which the Church must support. A shade of disappointment seemed to cross the heavy face of Don Mario, but he graciously acquiesced in the priest's suggestion; and arrangements were at once concluded whereby the house became the dwelling place of the new Cura.

Rosendo thereupon sent out a call for assistants, to which the entire unemployed male population of the town responded. Mud for the walls was hastily brought from the lake, and mixed with manure and dried grass. A half dozen young men started for the islands to cut fresh thatch for the roof. Others set about scraping the hard dirt floors; while Don Mario gave orders which secured a table, several rough chairs, together with iron stewpans and a variety of enameled metal dishes, all of which Rosendo insisted should be charged against the parish. The village carpenter, with his rusty tools and rough, undressed lumber, constructed a bed in one of the rooms; and Juan, the boatman, laboriously sought out stones of the proper shape and size to support the cooking utensils in the primitive dirt hearth.

Often, as he watched the progress of these arrangements, Jose's thoughts reverted longingly to his father's comfortable house in far-off Seville; to his former simple quarters in Rome; and to the less pretentious, but still wholly sufficient menage of Cartagena. Compared with this primitive dwelling and the simple husbandry which it would shelter, his former abodes and manner of life had been extravagantly luxurious. At times he felt a sudden sinking of heart as he reflected that perhaps he should never again know anything better than the lowly life of this dead town. But when his gaze rested upon the little Carmen, flying hither and yon with an ardent, anticipatory interest in every detail of the preparations, and when he realized that, though her feet seemed to rest in the squalid setting afforded by this dreary place, yet her thought dwelt ever in heaven, his heart welled again with a great thankfulness for the inestimable privilege of giving his new life, in whatever environment, to a soul so fair as hers.

While his house was being set in order under the direction of Rosendo, Jose visited the church with the Alcalde to formulate plans for its immediate repair and renovation. As he surveyed the ancient pile and reflected that it stood as a monument to the inflexible religious convictions of his own distant progenitors, the priest's sensibilities were profoundly stirred. How little he knew of that long line of illustrious ancestry which preceded him! He had been thrust from under the parental wing at the tender age of twelve; but he could not recall that even before that event his father had ever made more than casual mention of the family. Indeed, in the few months since arriving on ancestral soil Jose had gathered up more of the threads which bound him to the ancient house of Rincon than in all the years which preceded. Had he himself only been capable of the unquestioning acceptance of religious dogma which those old Conqueros and early forbears exhibited, to what position of eminence in Holy Church might he not already have attained, with every avenue open to still greater preferment! How happy were his dear mother then! How glorious their honored name!—

With a sigh the priest roused himself and strove to thrust these disturbing thoughts from his mind by centering his attention upon the work in hand. Dona Maria came to him for permission to take the moldy vestments from the sacristia to her house to clean them. The Alcalde, bustling about, panting and perspiring, was distributing countless orders among his willing assistants. Carmen, who throughout the morning had been everywhere, bubbling with enthusiasm, now appeared at the church door. As she entered the musty, ill-smelling old building she hesitated on the threshold, her childish face screwed into an expression of disgust.

"Come in, little one; I need your inspiration," called Jose cheerily.

The child approached, and slipped her hand into his. "Padre Rosendo says this is God's house," she commented, looking up at Jose. "He says you are going to talk about God here—in this dirty, smelly old place! Why don't you talk about Him out of doors?"

Jose was becoming innured to the embarrassment which her direct questions occasioned. And he was learning not to dissemble in his replies.

"It is because the people want to come here, dear one; it is their custom."

Would the people believe that the wafer and wine could be changed into the flesh and blood of Jesus elsewhere—even in Nature's temple?

"But I don't want to come here!" she asseverated.

"That was a naughty thing to say to the good Cura, child!" interposed Don Mario, who had overheard the girl's remark. "You see, Padre, how we need a Cura here to save these children; otherwise the Church is going to lose them. They are running pretty wild, and especially this one. She is already dedicated to the Church; but she will have to learn to speak more reverently of holy things if she expects to become a good Sister."

The child looked uncomprehendingly from, one to the other.

"Who dedicated her to the Church?" demanded Jose sharply.

"Oh, Padre Diego, at her baptism, when she was a baby," replied Don Mario in a matter of fact tone.

Jose shuddered at the thought of that unholy man's loathsome hands resting upon the innocent girl. But he made no immediate reply. Of all things, he knew that the guarding of his own tongue was now most important. But his thought was busy with Rosendo's burning words of the preceding day, and with his own solemn vow. He reflected on his present paradoxical, hazardous position; on the tremendous problem which here confronted him; and on his desperate need of wisdom—yea, superhuman wisdom—to ward off from this child the net which he knew the subtlety and cruel cunning of shrewd, unscrupulous men would some day cause to be cast about her. A soul like hers, mirrored in a body so wondrous fair, must eventually draw the devil's most envenomed barbs.

To Jose's great relief Don Mario turned immediately from the present topic to one relating to the work of renovation. Finding a pretext for sending Carmen back to the house, the priest gave his attention unreservedly to the Alcalde. But his mind ceased not to revolve the implications in Don Mario's words relative to the girl; and when the midday siesta came upon him his brow was knotted and his eyes gazed vacantly at the manifestations of activity about him.

Hurrying across the road to escape the scalding heat, Jose's ears again caught the sound of singing, issuing evidently from Rosendo's house. It was very like the clear, sweet voice which had floated into his room the morning after he awoke from his delirium. He approached the door reverently and looked in. Carmen was arranging the few poor dishes upon the rough table, and as she worked, her soul flowed across her lips in song.

The man listened astonished. The words and the simple melody which carried them were evidently an improvisation. But the voice—did that issue from a human throat? Yes, for in distant Spain and far-off Rome, in great cathedrals and concert halls, he had sometimes listened entranced to voices like this—stronger, and delicately trained, but reared upon even less of primitive talent.

The girl caught sight of him; and the song died on the warm air.

The priest strode toward her and clasped her in his arms. "Carmen, child! Who taught you to sing like that?"

The girl smiled up in his face. "God, Padre."

Of course! He should have known. And in future he need never ask.

"And I suppose He tells you when to sing, too, as He does Cantar-las-horas?" said Jose, smiling in amusement.

"No, Padre," was the unaffected answer. "He just sings Himself in me."

The man felt rebuked for his light remark; and a lump rose in his throat. He looked again into her fair face with a deep yearning.

Oh, ye of little faith! Did you but know—could you but realize—that the kingdom of heaven is within you, would not celestial melody flow from your lips, too?

Throughout the afternoon, while he labored with his willing helpers in the church building and his homely cottage, the child's song lingered in his brain, like the memory of a sweet perfume. His eyes followed her lithe, graceful form as she flitted about, and his mind was busy devising pretexts for keeping her near him. At times she would steal up close to him and put her little hand lovingly and confidingly into his own. Then as he looked down into her upturned face, wreathed with smiles of happiness, his breath would catch, and he would turn hurriedly away, that she might not see the tears which suffused his eyes.

When night crept down, unheralded, from the Sierras, the priest's house stood ready for its occupant. Cantar-las-horas had dedicated it by singing the Angelus at the front door, for the hour of six had overtaken him as he stood, with cocked head, peering curiously within. The dwelling, though pitifully bare, was nevertheless as clean as these humble folk with the primitive means at their command could render it. Instead of the customary hard macana palm strips for the bed, Rosendo had thoughtfully substituted a large piece of tough white canvas, fastened to a rectangular frame, which rested on posts well above the damp floor. On this lay a white sheet and a light blanket of red flannel. Rosendo had insisted that, for the present, Jose should take his meals with him. The priest's domestic arrangements, therefore, would be simple in the extreme; and Dona Maria quietly announced that these were in her charge. The church edifice would not be in order for some days yet, perhaps a week. But of this Jose was secretly glad, for he regarded with dread the necessity of discharging the priestly functions. And yet, upon that hinged his stay in Simiti.

"Simiti has two churches, you know, Padre," remarked Rosendo during the evening meal. "There is another old one near the eastern edge of town. If you wish, we can visit it while there is yet light."

Jose expressed his pleasure; and a few minutes later the two men, with Carmen dancing along happily beside them, were climbing the shaly eminence upon the summit of which stood the second church. On the way they passed the town cemetery.

"The Spanish cemetery never grows," commented Jose, stopping at the crumbling gateway and peering in. The place of sepulture was the epitome of utter desolation. A tumbled brick wall surrounded it, and there were a few broken brick vaults, in some of which whitening bones were visible. In a far corner was a heap of human bones and bits of decayed coffins.

"Their rent fell due, Padre," said Rosendo with a little laugh, indicating the bones. "The Church rents this ground to the people—it is consecrated, you know. And if the payments are not made, why, the bones come up and are thrown over there."

"Humph!" grunted Jose. "Worse than heathenish!"

"But you see, Padre, the Church is only concerned with souls. And it is better to pay the money to get souls out of purgatory than to rent a bit of ground for the body, is it not?"

Jose wisely vouchsafed no answer.

"Come, Padre," continued Rosendo. "I would not want to have to spend the night here. For, you know, if a man spends a night in a cemetery an evil spirit settles upon him—is it not so?"

Jose still kept silence before the old man's inbred superstition. A few minutes later they stood before the old church. It was in the Spanish mission style, but smaller than the one in the central plaza.

"This was built in the time of your great-grandfather, Padre, the father of Don Ignacio," offered Rosendo. "The Rincon family had many powerful enemies throughout the country, and those in Simiti even carried their ill feeling so far as to refuse to hear Mass in the church which your family built. So they erected this one. No one ever enters it now. Strange noises are sometimes heard inside, and the people are afraid to go in. You see there are no houses built near it. They say an angel of the devil lives here and thrashes around at times in terrible anger. There is a story that many years ago, when I was but a baby, the devil's angel came and entered this church one dark night, when there was a terrible storm and the waves of the lake were so strong that they tossed the crocodiles far up on the shore. And when the bad angel saw the candles burning on the altar before the sacred wafer he roared in anger and blew them out. But there was a beautiful painting of the Virgin on the wall, and when the lights went out she came down out of her picture and lighted the candles again. But the devil's angel blew them out once more. And then, they say, the Holy Virgin left the church in darkness and went out and locked the wicked angel in, where he has been ever since. That was to show her displeasure against the enemies of the great Rincons for erecting this church. The Cura died suddenly that night; and the church has never been used since The Virgin, you know, is the special guardian Saint of the Rincon family."

"But you do not believe the story, Rosendo?" Jose asked.

"Quien sabe?" was the noncommittal reply.

"Do you really think the Virgin could or would do such a thing, Rosendo?"

"Why not, Padre? She has the same power as God, has she not? The frame which held her picture"—reverting again to the story—"was found out in front of the church the next morning; but the picture itself was gone."

Jose glanced down at Carmen, who had been listening with a tense, rapt expression on her face. What impression did this strange story make upon her? She looked up at the priest with a little laugh.

"Let us go in, Padre," she said.

"No!" commanded Rosendo, seizing her hand.

"Are you afraid, Rosendo?" queried the amused Jose.

"I—I would—rather not," the old man replied hesitatingly. "The Virgin has sealed it." Physical danger was temperamental to this noble son of the jungle; yet the religious superstition which Spain had bequeathed to this oppressed land still shackled his limbs.

As they descended the hill Carmen seized an opportunity to speak to Jose alone. "Some day, Padre," she whispered, "you and I will open the door and let the bad angel out, won't we?"

Jose pressed her little hand. He knew that the door of his own mind had swung wide at her bidding in these few days, and many a bad angel had gone out forever.



CHAPTER 6

The dawn of a new day broke white and glistering upon the ancient pueblo. From their hard beds of palm, and their straw mats on the dirt floors, the provincial dwellers in this abandoned treasure house of Old Spain rose already dressed to resume the monotonous routine of their lowly life. The duties which confronted them were few, scarce extending beyond the procurement of their simple food. And for all, excepting the two or three families which constituted the shabby aristocracy of Simiti, this was limited in the extreme. Indian corn, panela, and coffee, with an occasional addition of platanos or rice, and now and then bits of bagre, the coarse fish yielded by the adjacent lake, constituted the staple diet of the average citizen of this decayed hamlet. A few might purchase a bit of lard at rare intervals; and this they hoarded like precious jewels. Some occasionally had wheat flour; but the long, difficult transportation, and its rapid deterioration in that hot, moist climate, where swarms of voracious insects burrow into everything not cased in tin or iron, made its cost all but prohibitive. A few had goats and chickens. Some possessed pigs. And the latter even exceeded in value the black, naked babes that played in the hot dust of the streets with them.

Jose was up at dawn. Standing in the warm, unadulterated sunlight in his doorway he watched the village awaken. At a door across the plaza a woman appeared, smoking a cigar, with the lighted end in her mouth. Jose viewed with astonishment this curious custom which prevails in the Tierra Caliente. He had observed that in Simiti nearly everybody of both sexes was addicted to the use of tobacco, and it was no uncommon sight to see children of tender age smoking heavy, black cigars with keen enjoyment. From another door issued two fishermen, who, seeing the priest, approached and asked his blessing on their day's work. Some moments later he heard a loud tattoo, and soon the Alcalde of the village appeared, marching pompously through the streets, preceded by his tall, black secretary, who was beating lustily upon a small drum. At each street intersection the little procession halted, while the Alcalde with great impressiveness sonorously read a proclamation just received from the central Government at Bogota to the effect that thereafter no cattle might be killed in the country without the payment of a tax as therein set forth. Groups of peones gathered slowly about the few little stores in the main street, or entered and inspected for the thousandth time the shabby stocks. Matrons with black, shining faces cheerily greeted one another from their doorways. Everywhere prevailed a gentle decorum of speech and manners. For, however lowly the station, however pinched the environment, the dwellers in this ancient town were ever gentle, courteous and dignified. Their conversation dealt with the simple affairs of their quiet life. They knew nothing of the complex problems, social, economic, or religious, which harassed their brethren of the North. No dubious aspirations or ambitions stirred their breasts. Nothing of the frenzied greed and lust of material accumulation touched their child-like minds. They dwelt upon a plane far, far removed, in whatever direction, from the mental state of their educated and civilized brothers of the great States, who from time to time undertake to advise them how to live, while ruthlessly exploiting them for material gain. And thus they have been exploited ever since the heavy hand of the Spaniard was laid upon them, four centuries ago. Thus they will continue to be, until that distant day when mankind shall have learned to find their own in another's good.

As his eyes swept his environment, the untutored folk, the old church, the dismally decrepit mud houses, with an air of desolation and utter abandon brooding over all; and as he reflected that his own complex nature, rather than any special malice of fortune, had brought this to him, Jose's heart began to sink under the sting of a condemning conscience. He turned back into his house. Its pitiful emptiness smote him sore. No books, no pictures, no furnishings, nothing that ministers to the comfort of a civilized and educated man! And yet, amid this barrenness he had resolved to live.

A song drifted to him through the pulsing heat of the morning air. It sifted through the mud walls of his poor dwelling, and poured into the open doorway, where it hovered, quivering, like the dust motes in the sunbeams. Instantly the man righted himself. It was Carmen, the child to whom his life now belonged. Resolutely he again set his wandering mind toward the great thing he would accomplish—the protection and training of this girl, even while, if might be, he found his life again in hers. Nothing on earth should shake him from that purpose! Doubt and uncertainty were powerless to dull the edge of his efforts. His bridges were burned behind him; and on the other side of the great gulf lay the dead self which he had abandoned forever.

A harsh medley of loud, angry growls, interspersed with shrill yelps, suddenly arose before his house, and Jose hastened to the door just in time to see Carmen rush into the street and fearlessly throw herself upon two fighting dogs.

"Cucumbra! Stop it instantly!" she exclaimed, dragging the angry brute from a thoroughly frightened puppy.

"Shame! shame! And after all I've talked to you about loving that puppy!"

The gaunt animal slunk down, with its tail between its legs.

"Did you ever gain anything at all by fighting? You know you never did! And right down in your heart you know you love that puppy. You've got to love him; you can't help it! And you might as well begin right now."

The beast whimpered at her little bare feet.

"Cucumbra, you let bad thoughts use you, didn't you? Yes, you did; and you're sorry for it now. Well, there's the puppy," pointing to the little dog, which stood hesitant some yards away. "Now go and play with him," she urged. "Play with him!" rousing the larger dog and pointing toward the puppy. "Play with him! You know you love him!"

Cucumbra hesitated, looking alternately at the small, resolute girl and the smaller dog. Her arm remained rigidly extended, and determination was written large in her set features. The puppy uttered a sharp bark, as if in forgiveness, and began to scamper playfully about. Cucumbra threw a final glance at the girl.

"Play with him!" she again commanded.

The large dog bounded after the puppy, and together they disappeared around the street corner.

The child turned and saw Jose, who had regarded the scene in mute astonishment.

"Muy buenos dias, Senor Padre," dropping a little courtesy. "But isn't Cucumbra foolish to have bad thoughts?"

"Why, yes—he certainly is," replied Jose slowly, hard pressed by the unusual question.

"He has just got to love that puppy, or else he will never be happy, will he, Padre?"

Why would this girl persist in ending her statements with an interrogation! How could he know whether Cucumbra's happiness would be imperfect if he failed in love toward the puppy?

"Because, you know, Padre," the child continued, coming up to him and slipping her hand into his, "padre Rosendo once told me that God was Love; and after that I knew we just had to love everything and everybody, or else He can't see us—can He, Padre?"

He can't see us—if we don't love everything and everybody! Well! Jose wondered what sort of interpretation the Vatican, with its fiery hatred of heretics, would put upon this remark.

"Can He, Padre?" insisted the girl.

"Dear child, in these matters you are teaching me; not I you," replied the noncommittal priest.

"But, Padre, you are going to teach the people in the church," the girl ventured quizzically.

Ah, so he was! And he had wondered what. In his hour of need the answer was vouchsafed him.

"Yes, dearest child—and I am going to teach them what I learn from you."

Carmen regarded him for a moment uncertainly. "But, padre Rosendo says you are to teach me," she averred.

"And so I am, little one," the priest replied; "but not one half as much as I shall learn from you."

Dona Maria's summons to breakfast interrupted the conversation. Throughout the repast Jose felt himself subjected to the closest scrutiny by Carmen. What was running through her thought, he could only vaguely surmise. But he instinctively felt that he was being weighed and appraised by this strange child, and that she was finding him wanting in her estimate of what manner of man a priest of God ought to be. And yet he knew that she embraced him in her great love. Oftentimes his quick glance at her would find her serious gaze bent upon him. But whenever their eyes met, her sweet face would instantly relax and glow with a smile of tenderest love—a love which, he felt, was somehow, in some way, destined to reconstruct his shattered life.

Jose's plans for educating the girl had gradually evolved into completion during the past two days. He explained them at length to Rosendo after the morning meal; and the latter, with dilating eyes, manifested his great joy by clasping the priest in his brawny arms.

"But remember, Rosendo," Jose said, "learning is not knowing. I can only teach her book-knowledge. But even now, an untutored child, she knows more that is real than I do."

"Ah, Padre, have I not told you many times that she is not like us? And now you know it!" exclaimed the emotional Rosendo, his eyes suffused with tears of joy as he beheld his cherished ideals and his longing of years at last at the point of realization. What he, too, had instinctively seen in the child was now to be summoned forth; and the vague, half-understood motive which had impelled him to take the abandoned babe from Badillo into the shelter of his own great heart would at length be revealed. The man's joy was ecstatic. With a final clasp of the priest's hand, he rushed from the house to plunge into the work in progress at the church.

Jose summoned Carmen into the quiet of his own dwelling. She came joyfully, bringing an ancient and obsolete arithmetic and a much tattered book, which Jose discovered to be a chronicle of the heroic deeds of the early Conquistadores.

"I'm through decimals!" she exclaimed with glistening eyes; "and I've read some of this, but I don't like it," making a little moue of disgust and holding aloft the battered history.

"Padre Rosendo told me to show it to you," she continued. "But it is all about murder, you know. And yet," with a little sigh, "he has nothing else to read, excepting old newspapers which the steamers sometimes leave at Bodega Central. And they are all about murder, and stealing, and bad things, too. Padre, why don't people write about good things?"

Jose gazed at her reverently, as of old the sculptor Phidias might have stood in awe before the vision which he saw in the unchiseled marble.

"Padre Rosendo helped me with the fractions," went on the girl, flitting lightly to another topic; "but I had to learn the decimals myself. He couldn't understand them. And they are so easy, aren't they? I just love arithmetic!" hugging the old book to her little bosom.

Both volumes, printed in Madrid, were reliques of Spanish colonial days.

"Read to me, Carmen," said Jose, handing her the history.

The child took the book and began to read, with clear enunciation, the narrative of Quesada's sanguinary expedition to Bogota, undertaken in the name of the gentle Christ. Jose wondered as he listened what interpretation this fresh young mind would put upon the motives of that renowned exploit. Suddenly she snapped the book shut.

"Tell me about Jesus," she demanded.

The precipitation with which the question had been propounded almost took his breath away. He raised his eyes to hers, and looked long and wonderingly into their infinite depths. And then the vastness of the problem enunciated by her demand loomed before him. What, after all, did he know about Jesus? Had he not arrived in Simiti in a state of agnosticism regarding religion? Had he not come there enveloped in confusion, baffled, beaten, hopeless? And then, after his wonderful talk with Rosendo, had he not agreed with him that the child's thought must be kept free and open—that her own instinctive religious ideas must be allowed to develop normally, unhampered and unfettered by the external warp and bias of human speculation? It was part of his plan that all reference to matters theological should be omitted from Carmen's educational scheme. Yet here was that name on her lips—the first time he had ever heard it voiced by her. And it smote him like a hammer. He made haste to divert further inquiry.

"Not now, little one," he said hastily. "I want to hear you read more from your book."

"No," she replied firmly, laying the volume upon the table. "I don't like it; and I shouldn't think you would, either. Besides, it isn't true; it never really happened."

"Why, of course it is true, child! It is history, the story of how the brave Spaniards came into this country long ago. We will read a great deal more about them later."

"No," with a decisive shake of her brown head; "not if it is like this. It isn't true; I told padre Rosendo it wasn't."

"Well, what do you mean, child?" asked the uncomprehending priest.

"It is only a lot of bad thoughts printed in a book," she replied slowly. "And it isn't true, because God is everywhere."

Clearly the man was encountering difficulties at the outset; and a part, at least, of his well-ordered curriculum stood in grave danger of repudiation at the hands of this earnest little maid.

The girl stood looking at him wistfully. Then her sober little face melted in smiles. With childish impulsiveness she clambered into his lap, and twining her arms about his neck, impressed a kiss upon his cheek.

"I love you, Padre," she murmured; "and you love me, don't you?"

He pressed her to him, startled though he was. "God knows I do, little one!" he exclaimed.

"Of course He does," she eagerly agreed; "and He knows you don't want to teach me anything that isn't true, doesn't He, Padre dear?"

Yea, and more; for Jose was realizing now, what he had not seen before, that it was beyond his power to teach her that which was not true. The magnitude and sacredness of his task impressed him as never before. His puzzled brain grappled feebly with the enormous problem. She had rebuked him for trying to teach her things which, if he accepted the immanence of God as fact, her logic had shown him were utterly false. Clearly the grooves in which this child's pure thought ran were not his own. And if she would not think as he did, what recourse was there left him but to accept the alternative and think with her? For he would not, even if he could, force upon her his own thought-processes.

"Then, Carmen," he finally ventured, "you do not wish to learn about people and what they have done and are doing in the big world about you?"

"Oh, yes, Padre; tell me all about the good things they did!"

"But they did many wicked things too, chiquita. And the good and the bad are all mixed up together."

"No," she shook her head vigorously; "there isn't any bad. There is only good, for God is everywhere—isn't He?"

She raised up and looked squarely into the priest's eyes. Dissimulation, hypocrisy, quibble, cant—nothing but fearless truth could meet that gaze.

Suddenly a light broke in upon his clouded thought. This girl—this tender plant of God—why, she had shown it from the very beginning! And he, oh, blind that he was! he could not see nor accept it. The secret of her power, of her ecstasy of life—what was it but this?—she knew no evil!

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Oh, great God! It was the first—the very first—lesson which Thou didst teach Thy child, Israel, as the curtain rose upon the drama of human life! And the awful warning has rung down through the corridors of time from the mouths of the prophets, whom we slew lest they wake us from our mesmeric sleep! Israel forgot Thy words; and the world has forgotten them, long, long since. Daily we mix our perfumed draft of good and evil, and sink under its lethal influence! Hourly we eat of the forbidden tree, till the pangs of death encompass us!

And when at last the dark angel hovered over the sin-stricken earth and claimed it for his own, the great Master came to sound again the warning—"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!" But they would have none of him, and nailed him to a tree!

Oh, Jerusalem! Oh, ye incarnate human mind! Even the unique Son of God wept as he looked with yearning upon you! Why? Because of your stubborn clinging to false ways, false beliefs, false thoughts of God and man! Because ye would not be healed; ye would not be made whole! Ye loved evil—ye gave it life and power, and ye rolled it like a sweet morsel beneath your tongue—and so ye died! So came death into this fair world, through the heart, the brain, the mind of man, who sought to know what God could not!

"Padre dear, you are so quiet." The girl nestled closer to the awed priest. Aye! And so the multitude on Sinai had stood in awed quiet as they listened to the voice of God.

This child knew no evil! The man could not grasp the infinite import of the marvelous fact. And yet he had sought to teach her falsities—to teach her that evil did exist, as real and as potent as good, and that it was to be accepted and honored by mankind! But she had turned her back upon the temptation.

"Padre, are you going to tell me about Jesus?"

The priest roused from his deep meditation.

"Yes, yes—I want to know nothing else! I will get my Bible, and we will read about him!"

"Bible? What is that, Padre dear?"

"What! You don't know what the Bible is?" cried the astonished priest.

"No, Padre."

"But have you never—has your padre Rosendo never told you that it is the book that tells—?"

"No," the girl shook her head. "But," her face kindling, "he told me that Jesus was God's only son. But we are all His children, aren't we?"

"Yes—especially you, little one! But Jesus was the greatest—"

"Did Jesus write the Bible, Padre?" the girl asked earnestly.

"No—we don't know who did. People used to think God wrote it; but I guess He didn't."

"Then we will not read it, Padre."

The man bent reverently over the little brown head and prayed again for guidance. What could he do with this child, who dwelt with Jehovah—who saw His reflection in every flower and hill and fleecy cloud—who heard His voice in the sough of the wind, and the ripple of the waters on the pebbly shore! And, oh, that some one had bent over him and prayed for guidance when he was a tender lad and his heart burned with yearning for truth!

"God wrote the arithmetic—I mean, He told people how to write it, didn't He, Padre?"

Surely the priest could acquiesce in this, for mathematics is purely metaphysical, and without guile.

"Yes, chiquita. And we will go right through this little book. Then, if I can, I will send for others that will teach you wonderful things about what we call mathematics."

The child smiled her approval. The priest had now found the only path which she would tread with him, and he continued with enthusiasm.

"And God taught people how to talk, little one; but they don't all talk as we do. There is a great land up north of us, which we call the United States, and there the people would not understand us, for we speak Spanish. I must teach you their language, chiquita, and I must teach you others, too, for you will not always live in Simiti."

"I want to stay here always, Padre. I love Simiti." "No, Carmen; God has work for you out in His big world. You have something to tell His people some day, a message for them. But you and I have much work to do here first. And so we will begin with the arithmetic and English. Later we will study other languages, and we will talk them to each other until you speak them as fluently as your own. And meanwhile, I will tell you about the great countries of the world, and about the people that live in them. And we will study about the stars, and the rocks, and the animals; and we will read and work and read and work all day long, every day!" The priest's face was aglow with animation.

"But, Padre, when shall I have time to think?"

"Why, you will be thinking all the time, child!"

"No, you don't understand. I have to think about other things."

Jose looked at her with a puzzled expression. "What other things do you have to think about, chiquita?"

"About all the people here who are sick and unhappy, and who quarrel and don't love one another."

"Do you think about people when they are sick?" he asked with heightened curiosity.

"Yes, always!" she replied vigorously "When they are sick I go where nobody can find me and then just think that it isn't so."

"Hombre!" the priest ejaculated, his astonishment soaring Then—

"But when people are sick it is really so, isn't it, chiquita?"

"No!" emphatically. "It can't be—not if God is everywhere. Does He make them sick?" The child drove the heart-searching question straight into him.

"Why—no, I can't say that He does. And yet they somehow get sick."

"Because they think bad things, Padre. Because they don't think about God. They don't think He is here. And they don't care about Him—they don't love Him. And so they get sick," she explained succinctly.

Jose's mind reverted to what Rosendo had told him. When he lay tossing in delirium Carmen had said that he would not die. And yet that was perfectly logical, if she refused to admit the existence of evil.

"I thought lots about you last week, Padre."

The soft voice was close to his ear, and every breath swept over his heartstrings and made them vibrate.

"Every night when I went to sleep I told God I knew He would cure you."

The priest's head sank upon his breast.

Verily, I have not seen such faith, no, not in Israel! And the faith of this child had glorified her vision until she saw "the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

"Carmen"—the priest spoke reverently—"do the sick ones always get well when you think about them?"

There was not a shade of euphemism in the unhesitating reply—

"They are never really sick, Padre."

"But, by that you mean—"

"They only have bad thoughts."

"Sick thoughts, then?" he suggested by way of drawing out her full meaning.

"Yes, Padre—for God, you know, really is everywhere."

"Carmen!" cried the man. "What put such ideas into your little head? Who told you these things?"

Her brown eyes looked full into his own. "God, Padre dear."

God! Yes, of a verity she spoke truth. For nothing but her constant communion with Him could have filled her pure thought with a deeper, truer lore than man has ever quaffed at the world's great fountains of learning. He himself, trained by Holy Church, deeply versed in letters, science, and theology, grounded in all human learning, sat in humility at her feet, drinking in what his heart told him he had at length found—Truth.

He had one more question to ask. "Carmen, how do you know, how are you sure, that He told you?"

"Because it is true, Padre."

"But just how do you know that it is true?" he insisted.

"Why—it comes out that way; just like the answers to the problems in arithmetic. I used to try to see if by thinking only good thoughts to-day I would be better and happier to-morrow."

"Yes, and—?"

"Well, I always was, Padre. And so now I don't think anything but good thoughts."

"That is, you think only about God?"

"I always think about Him first, Padre."

He had no further need to question her proofs, for he knew she was taught by the Master himself.

"That will be all for this morning, Carmen," he said quietly, as he put her down. "Leave me now. I, too, have some thinking to do."

When Carmen left him, Jose lapsed into profound meditation. Musing over his life experiences, he at last summed them all up in the vain attempt to evolve an acceptable concept of God, an idea of Him that would satisfy. He had felt that in Christianity he had hold of something beneficent, something real; but he had never been able to formulate it, nor lift it above the shadows into the clear light of full comprehension. And the result of his futile efforts to this end had been agnosticism. His inability conscientiously to accept the mad reasoning of theologians and the impudent claims of Rome had been the stumbling block to his own and his family's dearest earthly hopes. He knew that popular Christianity was a disfigurement of truth. He knew that the theological claptrap which the Church, with such oracular assurance, such indubitable certainty and gross assumption of superhuman knowledge, handed out to a suffering world, was a travesty of the divinely simple teachings of Jesus, and that it had estranged mankind from their only visible source of salvation, the Bible. He saw more clearly than ever before that in the actual achievements of popular theology there had been ridiculously little that a seriously-minded man could accept as supports to its claims to be a divinely revealed scheme of salvation. Yet there was no vital question on which certainty was so little demanded, and seemingly of so little consequence, as this, even though the joints of the theologians' armor flapped wide to the assaults of unprejudiced criticism.

But if the slate were swept clean—if current theological dogma were overthrown, and the stage set anew—what could be reared in their stead? Is it true that the Bible is based upon propositions which can be verified by all? The explorer in Cartagena had given Jose a new thought in Arnold's concept of God as "the Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." And it was not to be denied that, from first to last, the Bible is a call to righteousness.

But what is righteousness? Ethical conduct? Assuredly something vastly more profound, for even that "misses the mark." No, righteousness was right conduct until the marvelous Jesus appeared. But he swept it at once from the material into the mental; from the outward into the inward; and defined it as right-thinking!

"Righteousness!" murmured Jose, sitting with head buried in his hands. "Aye, the whole scheme of salvation is held in that one word! And the wreck of my life has been caused by my blind ignorance of its tremendous meaning! For righteousness is salvation. But Carmen, wise little soul, divined it instinctively; for, if there is one thing that is patent, it is that if a thing is evil it does not exist for her. Righteousness! Of course it means thinking no evil! Jesus lived his thorough understanding of it. And so does Carmen. And so would the world, but for the withering influence of priestly authority!"

At that moment Carmen reappeared to summon him to lunch.

"Come here, little girl," said Jose, drawing her to him. "You asked me to tell you about Jesus. He was the greatest and best man that ever lived. And it was because he never had a bad thought."

"Did he know that God was everywhere?" The little face turned lovingly up to his.

"He did, sweet child. And so do I—now; for I have found Him even in desolate Simiti."



CHAPTER 7

Carmen's studies began in earnest that afternoon. In the quiet of his humble cottage Jose, now "a prisoner of the Lord," opened the door of his mental storehouse and carefully selected those first bits of knowledge for the foundation stones on which to rear for her, little by little, a broad education.

He found her a facile learner; her thorough ease in the rudiments of arithmetic and in the handling of her own language delighted him. His plan of tutelage, although the result of long contemplation, and involving many radical ideas regarding the training of children, ideas which had been slowly developing in his mind for years, he nevertheless felt in her case to be tentative. For he was dealing with no ordinary child; and so the usual methods of instruction were here wholly out of the question.

But on several points he was already firmly resolved. First, he would get well below the surface of this child's mind, and he would endeavor to train her to live in a depth of thought far, far beneath the froth and superficiality of the every-day thinking of mankind. Fortunately, she had had no previous bad training to be counteracted now. Nature had been her only tutor; and Rosendo's canny wisdom had kept out all human interference. Her associates in Simiti were few. Her unusual and mature thought had set up an intellectual barrier between herself and the playmates she might have had. Fortunately, too, Jose had now to deal with a child who all her life had thought vigorously—and, he was forced to conclude, correctly. Habits of accurate observation and quick and correct interpretation would not be difficult to form in such a mind. Moreover, to this end he would aim to maintain her interest at the point of intensity in every subject undertaken; yet without forcing, and without sacrifice of the joys of childhood. He would be, not teacher only, but fellow-student. He would strive to learn with her to conceive the ideal without losing sight of the fact that it was a human world in which they dwelt. When she wished to play, he would play with her. But he would contrive and direct their amusements so as to carry instruction, to elucidate and exemplify it, to point morals, and steadily to contribute to her store of knowledge. His plan was ideal, he knew. But he could not know then that Nature—if we may thus call it—had anticipated him, and that the child, long since started upon the quest for truth, would quickly outstrip him in the matter of conceiving the ideal and living in this world of relative fact with an eye single to the truth which shines so dimly through it.

Jose knew, as he studied Carmen and planned her training, that whatever instruction he offered her must be without taint of evil, so far as he might prevent. And yet, the thought of any attempt to withhold from her a knowledge of evil brought a sardonic smile to his lips. She had as yet everything to learn of the world about her. Could such learning be imparted to her free from error or hypothesis, and apart from the fiat of the speculative human mind? It must be; for he knew from experience that she would accept his teaching only as he presented every apparent fact, every object, every event, as a reflection in some degree of her immanent God, and subject to rigid demonstration. Where historical events externalized only the evil motives of the carnal mind, he must contrive to omit them entirely, or else present them as unreality, the result of "bad thoughts" and forgetfulness of God. In other words, only as he assumed to be the channel through which God spoke to her could he hope for success. To impart to her a knowledge of both good and evil was, at least at present, impossible. To force it upon her later would be criminal. Moreover, why not try the audacious experiment of permitting and aiding this child to grow up without a knowledge of evil?—that is, in her present conviction that only good is real, potent and permanent, while evil is impotent illusion and to be met and overcome on that basis. Would the resultant training make of her a tower of strength—or would it render her incapable of resisting the onslaughts of evil when at length she faced the world? His own heart sanctioned the plan; and—well, the final judgment should be left to Carmen herself.

The work proceeded joyously. At times Cucumbra interrupted by bounding in, as if impatient of the attention his little mistress was giving her tutor. Frequently the inquisitive Cantar-las-horas stalked through the room, displaying a most dignified and laudable interest in the proceedings. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was low, Bosendo appeared at the door. As he stood listening to Jose's narrative of men and places in the outside world, his eyes bulged. At length his untutored mind became strained to its elastic limit.

"Is that true, Padre?" he could not refrain from interrupting, when Jose had spoken of the fast trains of England. "Why, the Simiti trail to Tachi is one hundred and fifty miles long; and it always took me six days to walk it. And do you say there are trains that travel that distance in as many hours?"

"There are trains, Rosendo, that traverse the distance in three hours."

"Na, Padre, it can't be done!" cried the incredulous Rosendo, shaking his head.

"Leave us, unbeliever!" laughed Jose, motioning him away. "I have more pliable material here to handle than you."

But Rosendo remained; and it was evident to the priest that he had come on an errand of importance. Moreover, the supper hour was at hand, and perhaps Dona Maria needed Carmen's help. So, dismissing the child, Jose turned to Rosendo.

"You were right," he began, as if taking up the thread of a broken discourse. "Carmen was left on the river bank by the angels."

"Then you do think it was a miracle!" said Rosendo in a voice of awe, as he sank into a chair.

The priest smiled. "Everything is a miracle, friend; for a miracle is simply a sign of God's presence. And finding Carmen in this musty, forgotten place is one of the greatest. For where she is, He is."

"Yes, Padre, that is true," assented Rosendo gravely.

"I was led here," continued Jose; "I see it now. Rosendo, all my life I have regarded evil as just as real and powerful as good. And my life has been one of bitterness and woe. Carmen sees only the good God everywhere. And she dwells in heaven. What is the logical inference? Simply that my mental attitude has been all wrong, my views erroneous, my thinking bad. I have tried to know both good and evil, to eat of the forbidden tree. And for so doing I was banished from paradise. Do you understand me?"

"Why—well, no, Padre—that is, I—" The honest fellow was becoming confused.

"Well, just this, then," explained the priest with animation. "I haven't gotten anywhere in life, and neither have you, because we have limited ourselves and crippled our efforts by yielding to fear, pride, ignorance, and the belief in evil as a real power opposed to good."

"I have often wondered myself, Padre, how there could be a devil if God is almighty. For in that case He would have had to make the devil, wouldn't He?"

"Just so!" cried Jose enthusiastically. "And as He did make everything, then either He made the devil, or else there isn't any."

"But that is pretty hard to see, Padre," replied the puzzled Rosendo. "Something makes us do wicked things."

"Simply the belief that there is a power apart from God."

"But doesn't that belief come from the devil?"

"Surely—the devil of imagination! Listen, Rosendo: Carmen is daily putting into practice her instinctive knowledge of a mighty fact. She will reveal it all to us in due time. Let us patiently watch her, and try to see and understand and believe as she does. But in the meantime, let us guard our minds as we would a treasure house, and strive never to let a thought of evil get inside! My past life should serve as a perpetual warning."

Rosendo did not reply at once, but sat staring vacantly at the ground. Jose knew that his thoughts were with his wayward daughter. Then, as if suddenly remembering the object of his call, he took from his wallet two letters, which he handed to Jose with the comment: "Juan brought them up from Bodega Central this morning."

Jose took them with quickening pulse. One was from Spain, from his uncle. He devoured it eagerly. It was six weeks old when it arrived in Simiti, and had been written before the news of his removal from Cartagena had reached Seville. His mother was well; and her hopes for her son's preferment were steadily reviving, after the cruel blow which his disgrace in Rome had given them. For his uncle's part, he hoped that Jose had now seen the futility of opposition to Holy Church, and that, yielding humbly to her gentle chastisement for the great injury he had inflicted upon her, he would now make amends and merit the favors which she was sure to bestow upon him in due season. To this end the uncle would bring to bear his own influence and that of His Eminence, the Archbishop of Seville. The letter closed with an invocation to the Saints and the ever-blessed Virgin.

Jose opened the second letter. It was nominally from the Bishop of Cartagena, although written, he well knew, by Wenceslas. His Reverence regretted that Jose had not come to him again before leaving Cartagena. He deplored exceedingly the necessity of assigning him to so lowly a parish; but it was discipline. His tenure of the parish would be a matter of probation. Assuming a penitent desire on the part of the priest to make reparation for past indiscretions, His Grace extended assurances of his support and tender consideration. And, regarding him still as a faithful son, he was setting forth herewith certain instructions which Jose would zealously carry out, to the glory of the sacred Mother Church and the blessed Virgin, and to his own edification, to wit: In the matter of the confessional he must be unremittingly zealous, not failing to put such questions to the people of Simiti as would draw out their most secret thoughts. In the present crisis it was especially necessary to learn their political views. Likewise, he must not fail to impress upon them the sin of concealing wealth, and of withholding contributions to the support of the glorious Mother. He, as priest of the parish, would be held personally responsible for the collection of an adequate "Peter's Pence," which must be sent to Cartagena at frequent intervals for subsequent shipment to Rome. For all contributions he was to allow liberal plenary indulgences. In the matter of inciting zeal for the salvation of those unfortunate souls lingering in the torments of purgatory, Jose must be unflagging. Each family in the parish should be constantly admonished and threatened, if necessary, to have Masses said for their deceased members; and he must forward the proceeds from such Masses at once to Cartagena. No less important, he must keep constantly before him the great fact that the hope of the blessed Mother lay in her young. To this end he must see that all children in his parish were in due time confirmed, and every effort made to have the females sent to the convent of Mompox. To encourage his parishioners, he might assure them of His Reverence's tender regard for them as his beloved children, and that he had certain special favors to grant to them in due time. Also, that a statue of the Virgin, which had arrived from Rome, and which carried the most potent blessing of the Holy Father, was to be bestowed upon that church in the diocese which within the next twelve months should contribute the largest amount of Peter's Pence in proportion to population. This plan should be especially attractive to the people of Simiti, as the town lay on the confines of a district renowned in the ancient annals for its mineral wealth. Herein, too, lay a great opportunity for the priest; and His Reverence rejoiced in the certain knowledge that he would embrace it. Invoking the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Ever-Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, His Grace awaited with interest the priest's first report from the parish of Simiti.

The letter fell like a wet blanket upon Jose, chilling him to the marrow, for it revived with cruel poignancy the fact that he was still a servant of Rome. In the past few happy days he had dwelt apart from the world in the consciousness of a new heaven and a new earth, revealed by Carmen. This sudden call to duty was like a summons from Mephistopheles to the fulfillment of a forgotten pact.

He carefully read the letter again. Beneath the specious kindliness of Wenceslas lay sinister motives, he knew. Among them, greed, of course. But—a darker thought—did Wenceslas know of Carmen's existence? Could Cartagena have received any intimation of his plans for her? Refusal to comply with these instructions meant—he dared not think what! On the other hand, strict compliance with them certainly was out of the question.

As for Peter's Pence, what could the impoverished folk of this decrepit town furnish! And yet, if a reasonable sum could only be contributed at frequent intervals, would not the vampire Wenceslas rest content, at least for a while? Oh, for a fortune of his own, that he might dump it all into the yawning maw of Holy Church, and thus gain a few years' respite for himself and Carmen!

"Bad news, Padre?" Rosendo inquired, anxiously regarding the priest's strained features.

What could the man do or say, limited, hounded, and without resources? Could he force these simple people to buy Masses? Could he take their money on a pretext which he felt to be utterly false? Yet Cartagena must be kept quiet at any hazard!

"Rosendo," he asked earnestly, "when you had a priest in Simiti, did the people have Masses offered for their dead?"

"Na, Padre, we have little money for Masses," replied Rosendo sadly.

"But you have bought them?"

"At times—long ago—for my first wife, when she died without a priest, up in the Tigui country. But not when Padre Diego was here. I couldn't see how Masses said by that drunken priest could please God, or make Him release souls from purgatory—and Padre Diego was drunk most of the time."

Jose became desperate. "Rosendo, we must send money to the Bishop in Cartagena. I must stay here—I must! And I can stay only by satisfying Wenceslas! If I can send him money he will think me too valuable to remove. It is not the Church, Rosendo, but Wenceslas who is persecuting me. It is he who has placed me here. He is using the Church for his own evil ends. It is he who must be placated. But I—I can't make these poor people buy Masses! And—but here, read his letter," thrusting it into Rosendo's hand.

Rosendo shook his head thoughtfully, and a cloud had gathered over his strong face when he returned the Bishop's letter to Jose.

"Padre, we will be hard pressed to support the church and you, without buying Masses. There are about two hundred people here, perhaps fifty families. But they are very, very poor. Only a few can afford to pay even a peso oro a month to the schoolmaster to have their children taught. They may be able to give twenty pesos a month to support you and the church. But hardly more."

It seemed to Jose that his soul must burst under its limitations.

"Rosendo, let us take Carmen and flee!" he cried wildly.

"How far would we get, Padre? Have you money?"

No, Jose had nothing. He lapsed into silence-shrouded despair.

The sun dropped below the wooded hills, and Cantar-las-horas had sung his weird vesper song. Dusk was thickening into night, though upon the distant Sierras a mellow glow still illumined the frosted peaks. Moments crept slowly through the enveloping silence.

Then the mental gloom parted, and through it arose the great soul of the black-faced man sitting beside the despairing priest.

"Padre"—Rosendo spoke slowly and with deep emotion. Tears trickled down his swart cheeks—"I am no longer young. More than sixty years of hardship and heavy toil rest upon me. My parents—I have not told you this—were slaves. They worked in the mines of Guamoco, under hard masters. They lived in bamboo huts, and slept on the damp ground. At four each morning, year after year, they were driven from their hard beds and sent out to toil under the lash fourteen hours a day, washing gold from the streams. The gold went to the building of Cartagena's walls, and to her Bishop, to buy idleness and luxury for him and his fat priests. When the war came it lasted thirteen years; but we drove the Christian Spaniards into the sea! Then my father and mother went back to Guamoco; and there I was born. When I was old enough to use a batea I, too, washed gold in the Tigui, and in the little streams so numerous in that region. But they had been pretty well washed out under the Spaniards; and so my father came down here and made a little hacienda on the hills across the lake from Simiti. Then he and my poor mother lay down and died, worn out with their long years of toil for their cruel masters."

He brushed the tears from his eyes; then resumed: "The district of Guamoco gradually became deserted. Revolution after revolution broke out in this unhappy country, sometimes stirred up by the priests, sometimes by political agitators who tried to get control of the Government. The men and boys went to the wars, and were killed off. Guamoco was again swallowed up by the forest—"

He stopped abruptly, and sat some moments silent.

"I have been back there many times since, and often I have washed gold again along the beautiful Tigui," he continued. "But the awful loneliness of the jungle, and the memories of those gloomy days when I toiled there as a boy, and the thoughts of my poor parents' sufferings under the Spaniards, made me so sad that I could not stay. And then I got too old for that kind of work, standing bent over in the cold mountain water all day long, swinging a batea heavy with gravel."

He paused again, and seemed to lose himself in the memory of those dark days.

"But there is still gold in the Tigui. I can find it. It means hard work—but I can do it. Padre, I will go back there and wash out gold for you to send to the Bishop of Cartagena, that you may stay here and protect and teach the little Carmen. Perhaps in time I can wash enough to get you both out of the country; but it will take many months, it may be, years."

O, you, whose path in life winds among pleasant places, where roses nod in the scented breeze and fountains play, picture to yourself, if you may, the self-immolation of this sweet-souled man, who, in the winter of life, the shadows of eternity fast gathering about him, bends his black shoulders again to the burden which Love would lay upon them. Aye, Love, into which all else merged—Love for the unknown babe, left helpless and alone on the great river's bank—Love for the radiant child, whose white soul the agents of carnal greed and lust would prostitute to their iniquitous system.

Night fell. By the light of their single candle the priest and Rosendo ate their simple fare in silence. Carmen was asleep, and the angels watched over her lowly bed.

The meal ended, Rosendo took up the candle, and Jose followed him into the bedroom. Reverently the two men approached the sleeping child and looked down upon her. The priest's hand again sought Rosendo's in a grasp which sealed anew the pact between them.



CHAPTER 8

Like the great Exemplar in the days of his preparation, Jose was early driven by the spirit into the wilderness, where temptation smote him sore. But his soul had been saved—"yet so as by fire." Slowly old beliefs and faiths crumbled into dust, while the new remained still unrevealed. The drift toward atheism which had set in during his long incarceration in the convent of Palazzola had not made him yield to the temptation to raise the mask of hypocrisy and plunge into the pleasures of the world, nor accept the specious proffer of ecclesiastical preferment in exchange for his honest convictions. Honor, however bigoted the sense, bound him to his oath, or at least to a compromising observance of it harmless to the Church. Pride contributed to hold him from the degradation of a renegade and apostate priest. And both rested primarily on an unshaken basis of maternal affection, which fell little short of obsession, leaving him without the strength to say, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"

But, though atheism in belief leads almost inevitably to disintegration of morals, Jose had kept himself untainted. For his vital problems he had now, after many days, found "grace sufficient." In what he had regarded as the contemptible tricks of fate, he was beginning to discern the guiding hand of a wisdom greater than the world's. The danger threatened by Cartagena was, temporarily, at least, averted by Rosendo's magnificent spirit. Under the spur of that sacrifice his own courage rose mightily to second it.

Rosendo spent the day in preparation for his journey into the Guamoco country. He had discussed with Jose, long and earnestly, its probable effect upon the people of Simiti, and especially upon Don Mario, the Alcalde; but it was decided that no further explanation should be made than that he was again going to prospect in the mineral districts already so familiar to him. As Rosendo had said, this venture, together with the unannounced and unsolicited presence of the priest in the town, could not but excite extreme curiosity and raise the most lively conjectures, which might, in time, reach Wenceslas. On the other hand, if success attended his efforts, it was more than probable that Cartagena would remain quiet, as long as her itching palm was brightened with the yellow metal which he hoped to wrest from the sands of Guamoco. "It is only a chance, Padre," Rosendo said dubiously. "In the days of the Spaniards the river sands of Guamoco produced from two to ten reales a day to each slave. But the rivers have been almost washed out."

Jose made a quick mental calculation. A Spanish real was equivalent to half a franc. Then ten reales would amount to five francs, the very best he could hope for as a day's yield.

"And my supplies and the support of the senora and Carmen must come out of that," Rosendo added. "Besides, I must pay Juan for working the hacienda across the lake for me while I am away."

Possibly ten pesos oro, or forty francs, might remain at the end of each month for them to send to Cartagena. Jose sighed heavily as he busied himself with the preparations.

"I got these supplies from Don Mario on credit, Padre," explained Rosendo. "I thought best to buy from him to prevent making him angry. I have coffee, panela, rice, beans, and tobacco for a month. He was very willing to let me have them—but do you know why? He wants me to go up there and fail. Then he will have me in his debt, and I become his peon—and I would never be anything after that but his slave, for never again would he let me get out of debt to him."

Jose shuddered at the thought of the awful system of peonage prevalent in these Latin countries, an inhuman custom only a degree removed from the slavery of colonial times. This venture was, without doubt, a desperate risk. But it was for Carmen—and its expediency could not be questioned.

Jose penned a letter to the Bishop of Cartagena that morning, and sent it by Juan to Bodega Central to await the next down-river steamer. He did not know that Juan carried another letter for the Bishop, and addressed in the flowing hand of the Alcalde. Jose briefly acknowledged the Bishop's communication, and replied that he would labor unflaggingly to uplift his people and further their spiritual development. As to the Bishop's instructions, he would endeavor to make Simiti's contribution to the support of Holy Church, both material and spiritual, fully commensurate with the population. He did not touch on the other instructions, but closed with fervent assurances of his intention to serve his little flock with an undivided heart. Carmen received no lesson that day, and her rapidly flowing questions anent the unusual activity in the household were met with the single explanation that her padre Rosendo had found it necessary to go up to the Tigui river, a journey which some day she might perhaps take with him.

During the afternoon Jose wrote two more letters, one to his uncle, briefly announcing his appointment to the parish of Simiti, and his already lively interest in his new field; the other to his beloved mother, in which he only hinted at the new-found hope which served as his pillow at night. He did not mention Carmen, for fear that his letter might be opened ere it left Cartagena. But in tenderest expressions of affection, and regret that he had been the unwitting cause of his mother's sorrow, he begged her to believe that his life had received a stimulus which could not but result in great happiness for them both, for he was convinced that he had at last found his metier, even though among a lowly people and in a sequestered part of the world. He hoped again to be reunited to her—possibly she might some day meet him in Cartagena. And until then he would always hold her in tenderest love and the brightest and purest thought.

He brushed aside the tears as he folded this letter; and, lest regret and self-condemnation seize him again, hurried forth in search of Carmen, whose radiance always dispelled his gloom as the rushing dawn shatters the night.

She was not in Rosendo's house, and Dona Maria said she had seen the child some time before going in the direction of the "shales." These were broad beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be impassable. Thither Jose bent his steps, and at length came upon the girl sitting in the shade of a stunted algarroba tree some distance from the usual trail.

"Well, what are you doing here, little one?" he inquired in surprise.

The child looked up visibly embarrassed. "I was thinking, Padre," she made slow reply.

"But do you have to go away from home to think?" he queried.

"I wanted to be alone; and there was so much going on in the house that I came out here."

"And what have you been thinking about, Carmen?" pursued Jose, suspecting that her presence in the hot shale beds held some deeper significance than she had as yet revealed.

"I—I was just thinking that God is everywhere," she faltered.

"Yes, chiquita. And—?"

"That He is where padre Rosendo is going, and that He will take care of him up there, and bring him back to Simiti again."

"And were you asking Him to do it, little one?"

"No, Padre; I was just knowing that He would."

The little lip quivered, and the brown eyes were wet with tears. But Jose could see that faith had conquered, whatever the struggle might have been. The child evidently had sought solitude, that she might most forcibly bring her trust in God to bear upon the little problem confronting her—that she might make the certainty of His immanence and goodness destroy in her thought every dark suggestion of fear or doubt.

"God will take care of him, won't He, Padre?"

Jose had taken her hand and was leading her back to the house.

"You have said it, child; and I believe you are a law unto yourself," was the priest's low, earnest reply. The child smiled up at him; and Jose knew he had spoken truth.

That evening, the preparations for departure completed, Rosendo and Jose took their chairs out before the house, where they sat late, each loath to separate lest some final word be left unsaid. The tepid evening melted into night, which died away in a deep silence that hung wraith-like over the old town. Myriad stars rained their shimmering lustre out of the unfathomable vault above.

"Un canasto de flores," mused Rosendo, looking off into the infinite blue.

"A basket of flowers, indeed," responded Jose reverently.

"Padre—" Rosendo's brain seemed to struggle with a tremendous thought—"I often try to think of what is beyond the stars; and I cannot. Where is the end?"

"There is none, Rosendo."

"But, if we could get out to the last star—what then?"

"Still no end, no limit," replied Jose.

"And they are very far away—how far, Padre?"

"You would not comprehend, even if I could tell you, Rosendo. But—how shall I say it? Some are millions of miles from us. Others so far that their light reaches us only after the lapse of centuries."

"Their light!" returned Rosendo quizzically.

"Yes. Light from those stars above us travels nearly two hundred thousand miles a second—"

"Hombre!" ejaculated the uncomprehending Rosendo.

"And yet, even at that awful rate of speed, it is probable that there are many stars whose light has not yet reached the earth since it became inhabited by men."

"Caramba!"

"You may well say so, friend."

"But, Padre—does the light never stop? When does it reach an end—a stopping-place?"

"There is no stopping-place, Rosendo. There is no solid sky above us. Go whichever way you will, you can never reach an end."

Rosendo's brow knotted with puzzled wonder: Even Jose's own mind staggered anew at its concept of the immeasurable depths of space.

"But, Padre, if we could go far enough up we would get to heaven, wouldn't we?" pursued Rosendo. "And if we went far enough down we would reach purgatory, and then hell, is it not so?"

Restraint fell upon the priest. He dared not answer lest he reveal his own paucity of ideas regarding these things. Happily the loquacious Rosendo continued without waiting for reply.

"Padre Simon used to say when I was a child that the red we saw in the sky at sunset was the reflection of the flames of hell; so I have always thought that hell was below us—perhaps in the center of the earth."

For a time his simple mind mused over this puerile idea. Then—

"What do you suppose God looks like, Padre?"

Jose's thought flew back to the galleries and chapels of Europe, where the masters have so often portrayed their ideas of God in the shape of an old, gray-haired man, partly bald, and with long, flowing beard. Alas! how pitifully crude, how lamentably impotent such childish concepts. For they saw in God only their own frailties infinitely magnified. Small wonder that they lived and died in spiritual gloom!

"Padre," Rosendo went on, "if there is no limit to the universe, then it is—"

"Infinite in extent, Rosendo," finished Jose.

"Then whoever made it is infinite, too," Rosendo added hypothetically.

"An infinite effect implies an infinite cause—yes, certainly," Jose answered.

"So, if God made the universe, He is infinite, is He not, Padre?"

"Yes."

"Then He can't be at all like us," was the logical conclusion.

Jose was thinking hard. The universe stands as something created. And scientists agree that it is infinite in extent. Its creator therefore must be infinite in extent. And as the universe continues to exist, that which called it into being, and still maintains it, must likewise continue to exist. Hence, God is.

"Padre, what holds the stars in place?" Rosendo's questions were as persistent as a child's.

"They are held in place by laws, Rosendo," the priest replied evasively. But as he made answer he revolved in his own mind that the laws by which an infinite universe is created and maintained must themselves be infinite.

"And God made those laws?"

"Yes, Rosendo."

But, the priest mused, a power great enough to frame infinite laws must be itself all-powerful. And if it has ever been all-powerful, it could never cease to be so, for there could be nothing to deprive it of its power. Omnipotence excludes everything else. Or, what is the same thing, is all-inclusive.

But laws originate, even as among human beings, in mind, for a law is a mental thing. So the infinite laws which bind the stars together, and by which the universe was designed and is still maintained, could have originated only in a mind, and that one infinite.

"Then God surely must know everything," commented Rosendo, by way of simple and satisfying conclusion.

Certainly the creator of an infinite universe—a universe, moreover, which reveals intelligence and knowledge on the part of its cause—the originator of infinite laws, which reveal omnipotence in their maker—must have all knowledge, all wisdom, at his command. But, on the other hand, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, are ever mental things. What could embrace these things, and by them create an infinite universe, but an infinite mind?

Jose's thought reverted to Cardinal Newman's reference to God as "an initial principle." Surely the history of the universe reveals the patent fact that, despite the mutations of time, despite growth, maturity, and decay, despite "the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds," something endures. What is it—law? Yes, but more. Ideas? Still more. Mind? Yes, the mind which is the anima mundi, the principle, of all things.

"But if He is so great, Padre, and knows everything, I don't see why He made the devil," continued Rosendo; "for the devil fights against Him all the time."

Ah, simple-hearted child of nature! A mind so pure as yours should give no heed to thoughts of Satan. And the man at your side is now too deeply buried in the channels which run below the superficiality of the world's thought to hear your childish question. Wait. The cause of an infinite effect must itself be infinite. The framer of infinite laws must be an infinite mind. And an infinite mind must contain all knowledge, and have all power. But were it to contain any seeds or germs of decay, or any elements of discord—in a word, any evil—it must disintegrate. Then it would cease to be omnipotent. Verily, to be eternal and perfect it must be wholly good! "And so," the priest mused aloud, "we call it God."

But, he continued to reflect, when we accept the conclusion that the universe is the product of an infinite mind, we are driven to certain other inevitable conclusions, if we would be logical. The minds of men manifest themselves continually, and the manifestation is in mental processes and things. Mental activity results in the unfolding of ideas. Does the activity of an infinite mind differ in this respect? And, if not, can the universe be other than a mental thing? For, if an infinite mind created a universe, it must have done so by the unfolding of its own ideas! And, remaining infinite, filling all space, this mind must ever continue to contain those ideas. And the universe—the creation—is mental.

The burden of thought oppressed the priest, and he got up from his chair and paced back and forth before the house. But still his searching mind burrowed incessantly, as if it would unearth a living thing that had been buried since the beginning.

In order to fully express itself, an infinite mind would have to unfold an infinite number and variety of ideas. And this unfolding would go on forever, since an infinite number is never reached. This is "creation," and it could never terminate.

"Rosendo," said Jose, returning to his chair, "you have asked what God looks like. I cannot say, for God must be mind, unlimited mind. He has all knowledge and wisdom, as well as all power. He is necessarily eternal—has always existed, and always will, for He is entirely perfect and harmonious, without the slightest trace or taint of discord or evil."

"Then you think He does not look like us?" queried the simple Rosendo.

"Mind does not look like a human body, Rosendo. And an infinite cause can be infinite only by being mind, not body. Moreover, He is unchanging—for He could not change and remain eternal. Carmen insists that He is everywhere. To be always present He must be what the Bible says He is spirit. Or, what is the same thing, mind. Rosendo, He manifests Himself everywhere and in everything—there is no other conclusion admissible. And to be eternal He has got to be absolutely good!"

"But, Padre," persisted Rosendo, "who made the devil?"

"There is no devil!"

"But there is wickedness—"

"No!" interrupted Jose emphatically. "God is infinite good, and there can be no real evil."

"But how do you know that, Padre?"

"I can't say how I know it—it reasons out that way logically. I think I begin to see the light. Can you not see that for some reason Carmen doesn't admit the existence of evil? And you know, and I know, that she is on the right track. I have followed the opposite path all my life; and it led right into the slough of despond. Now I have turned, and am trying to follow her. And do you put the thought of Satan out of your mentality and do likewise."

"But, the Virgin Mary—she has power with God?" Rosendo's primitive ideas were in a hopeless tangle.

"Good friend, forget the Virgin Mary," said Jose gently, laying his hand on Rosendo's arm.

"Forget her! Hombre! Why—she has all power—she works miracles every hour—she directs the angels—gives commands to God himself! Padre Simon said she was the absolute mistress of heaven and earth, and that men and animals, the plants, the winds, all health, sickness, life and death, depended upon her will! He said she did not die as we must, but that she was taken up into heaven, and that her body was not allowed to decay and return to dust, as ours will. Hombre! She is in heaven now, praying for us. What would become of us but for her?—for she prays to God for us—she—!"

"No, Rosendo, she does nothing of the kind. God is infinite, unchanging. He could not be moved or influenced by the Virgin Mary or any one else. He is unlimited good. He is not angry with us—He couldn't be, for He could not know anger. Did not Jesus say that God was Love? Love does not afflict—Love does not need to be importuned or prayed to. I see it now. I see something of what Carmen sees. We suffer when we sin, because we 'miss the mark.' But the punishment lasts only as long as the sin continues. And we suffer only until we know that God is infinite good, and that there is no evil. That is the truth, I feel sure, which Jesus came to teach, and which he said would make us free. Free from what? From the awful beliefs that use us, and to which we are now subject, until we learn the facts about God and His creation. Don't you see that infinite good could never create evil, nor ever permit evil to be created, nor allow it to really exist?"

"Well, then, what is evil? And where did it come from?"

"That we must wait to learn, Rosendo, little by little. You know, the Spanish proverb says, 'Step by step goes a great way.' But meantime, let us go forward, clinging to this great truth: God is infinite good—He is love—we are His dear children—and evil was not made by Him, and does not have His sanction. It therefore cannot be real. It must be illusion. And, being such, it can be overcome, as Jesus said it could."

"Na, Padre—"

"Wait, Rosendo!" Jose held up his hand. "Carmen is doing just what I am advising you to do—is she not?"

"Yes, Padre."

"Do you think she is mistaken?"

"Padre, she knows God better than she knows me," the man whispered.

"It was you who first told her that God was everywhere, was it not?"

"Yes, Padre."

And the mind of the child, keenly sensitive and receptive to truth, had eagerly grasped this dictum and made it the motif of her life. She knew nothing of Jesus, nothing of current theology. Divine Wisdom had used Rosendo, credulous and superstitious though he himself was, to guard this girl's mind against the entrance of errors which were taught him as a child, and which in manhood held him shackled in chains which he might not break.

"Rosendo," Jose spoke low and reverently, "I believe now that you and I have both been guided by that great mind which I am calling God. I believe we are being used for some beneficent purpose, and that it has to do with Carmen. That purpose will be unfolded to us as we bow to His will. Every way closed against me, excepting the one that led to Simiti. Here I found her. And now there seems to be but one way open to you—to go back to Guamoco. And you go, forgetful of self, thinking only that you serve her. Ah, friend, you are serving Him whom you reflect in love to His beautiful child."

"Yes, Padre."

"But, while we accept our tasks gratefully, I feel that we shall be tried—and we may not live to see the results of our labors. There are influences abroad which threaten danger to Carmen and to us. Perhaps we shall not avert them. But we have given ourselves to her, and through her to the great purpose with which I feel she is concerned."

Rosendo slowly rose, and his great height and magnificent physique cast the shadow of a Brobdignan in the light as he stood in the doorway.

"Padre," he replied, "I am an old man, and I have but few years left. But however many they be, they are hers. And had I a thousand, I would drag them all through the fires of hell for the child! I cannot follow you when you talk about God. My mind gets weary. But this I know, the One who brought me here and then went away will some day call for me—and I am always ready."

He turned into the house and sought his hard bed. The great soul knew not that he reflected the light of divine Love with a radiance unknown to many a boasting "vicar of Christ."



CHAPTER 9

At the first faint flush of morn Rosendo departed for the hills. The emerald coronels of the giant ceibas on the far lake verge burned softly with a ruddy glow. From the water's dimpling surface downy vapors rose languidly in delicate tints and drew slowly out in nebulous bands across the dawn sky. The smiling softness of the velvety hills beckoned him, and the pungent odor of moist earth dilated his nostrils. He laughed aloud as the joyousness of youth surged again through his veins. The village still slumbered, and no one saw him as he smote his great chest and strode to the boat, where Juan had disposed his outfit and was waiting to pole him across. Only the faithful Dona Maria had softly called a final "adioscito" to him when he left his house. A half hour later, when the dugout poked its blunt nose into the ooze of the opposite shore, he leaped out and hurriedly divested himself of his clothing. Then he lifted his chair with its supplies to his shoulders, and Juan strapped it securely to his back, drawing the heavy band tightly across his forehead. With a farewell wave of his hand to the lad, the man turned and plunged into the Guamoco trail, and was quickly lost in the dense thicket. Six days later, if no accident befell, he would reach his destination, the singing waters of the crystal Tigui.

His heart leaped as he strode, though none knew better than he what hardships those six days held for him—days of plunging through fever-laden bogs; staggering in withering heat across open savannas; now scaling the slippery slopes of great mountains; now swimming the chill waters of rushing streams; making his bed where night overtook him, among the softly pattering forest denizens and the swarming insect life of the dripping woods. His black skin glistened with perspiration and the heavy dew wiped from the close-growing bush. With one hand he leaned upon a young sapling cut for a staff. With the other he incessantly swung his machete to clear the dim trail. His eyes were held fixed to the ground, to escape tripping over low vines, and to avoid contact with crawling creatures of the jungle, whose sting, inflicted without provocation, might so easily prove fatal. His active mind sported the while among the fresh thoughts stimulated by. his journey, though back of all, as through a veil, the vision of Carmen rose like the pillar of cloud which guided the wandering Israel. Toil and danger fled its presence; and from it radiated a warm glow which suffused his soul with light.

When Jose arose that morning he was still puzzling over the logical conclusions drawn from his premise of the evening before, and trying to reconcile them with common sense and prevalent belief. In a way, he seemed to be an explorer, carving a path to hidden wonders. Dona Maria greeted him at the breakfast table with the simple announcement of Rosendo's early departure. No sign of sorrow ruffled her quiet and dignified demeanor. Nor did Carmen, who bounded into his arms, fresh as a new-blown rose, manifest the slightest indication of anxiety regarding Rosendo's welfare. Jose might not divine the thoughts which the woman's placid exterior concealed. But for the child, he well knew that her problem had been met and solved, and that she had laid it aside with a trust in immanent good which he did not believe all the worldly argument of pedant or philosopher could shake.

"Now to business once more!" cried Jose joyously, the meal finished. "Just a look-in at the church, to get the boys started; and then to devote the day to you, senorita!" The child laughed at the appellation.

Returning from the church some moments later, Jose found Carmen bending over the fireplace, struggling to remove a heavy kettle from the hot stones.

"Careful, child!" he cried in apprehension, hurrying to her assistance. "You will burn your fingers, or hurt yourself!"

"Not unless you make me, Padre," Carmen quickly replied, rising and confronting the priest with a demeanor whose every element spelled rebuke.

"Well, I certainly shall not make you!" the man exclaimed in surprise.

"No, Padre. God will not let you. He does not burn or hurt people."

"Certainly not! But—"

"And nothing else can, for He is everywhere—isn't He?"

"Well—perhaps so," the priest retorted impatiently. "But somehow people get burnt and hurt just the same, and it is well to be careful."

The child studied him for a moment. Then she said quietly—

"I guess people burn and hurt themselves because they are afraid—don't they? And I am not afraid."

She tossed her brown curls as if in defiance of the thought of fear. Yet Jose somehow felt that she never really defied evil, but rather met its suggestions with a firm conviction of its impotence in the presence of immanent good. He checked the impulse to further conversation. Bidding the child come to him as soon as possible to begin the day's work, he went back to his own abode to reflect.

He had previously said that this child should be brought up to know no evil. And yet, was he not suggesting evil to her at every turn? Did not his insistence upon the likelihood of hurting or burning herself emphasize his own stalwart belief in evil as an immanent power and contingency? Was he thus always to maintain a house divided against itself? But some day she must know, whether by instruction or dire experience, that evil is a fact to be reckoned with! And as her protector, it was his duty to—But he had not the heart to shatter such beautiful confidence!

Then he fell to wondering how long that pure faith could endure. Certainly not long if she were subjected to the sort of instruction which the children of this world receive. But was it not his duty with proper tutelage to make it last as long as possible? Was it not even now so firmly grounded that it never could be shaken?

He dwelt on the fact that nearly all children at some period early in life commune with their concept of God. He had, himself. As a very young child he had even felt himself on such terms of familiarity with God that he could not sleep without first bidding Him good night. As a young child, too, he had known no evil. Nor do any children, until their perfect confidence in good is chilled by the false instruction of parents and teachers, who parade evil before them in all its hideous garb.

Alas! for the baneful belief that years bring wisdom. How pitiable, and how cruelly detrimental to the child are an ignorant parent's assumptions of superiority! How tremendous the responsibility that now lay at his own door! Yet no greater than that which lies at the door of every parent throughout the world.

It is sadly true, he reflected, that children are educated almost entirely along material lines. Even in the imparting of religious instruction, the spiritual is so tainted with materialism, and its concomitants of fear and limitation, that the preponderance of faith is always on the material side. Jose had believed that as he had grown older in years he had lost faith. Far from it! The quantity of his faith remained fixed; but the quality had changed, through education, from faith in good to faith in evil. And though trained as a priest of God, in reality he had been taught wholly to distrust spiritual power.

But how could a parent rely on spiritual power to save a child about to fall into the fire? Must not children be warned, and taught to protect themselves from accident and disaster, as far as may be? True—yet, what causes accident and disaster? Has the parent's thought aught to do with it? Has the world's thought? Can it be traced to the universal acceptance of evil as a power, real and operative? Does mankind's woeful lack of faith in good manifest itself in accident, sickness, and death?

A cry roused Jose from his revery. It came from back of the house. Hastening to the rear door he saw Dona Maria standing petrified, looking in wide-eyed horror toward the lake. Jose followed her gaze, and his blood froze. Carmen had been sent to meet the canoe that daily supplied fresh water to the village from the Juncal river, which flowed into the lake at the far north end. It had not yet arrived, and she had sat down beside her jar at the water's edge, and was lost in dreams as she looked out over the shimmering expanse. A huge crocodile which had been lying in the shadow of a shale ledge had marked the child, and was steadily creeping up behind her. The reptile was but a few feet from her when Dona Maria, wondering at her delay, had gone to the rear door and witnessed her peril.

In a flash Jose recalled the tale related to him but a few days before by Fidel Avila, who was working in the church.

"Padre," Fidel had said, "as soon as the church is ready I shall offer a candle to good Santa Catalina for protecting my sister."

"How was that, my son?" inquired Jose.

"She protected her from a crocodile a year ago, Padre. The girl had gone to the lake to get water to wash our clothes, and as she sat in the stern of the boat dipping the water, a great crocodile rose and seized her arm. I heard her scream, and I was saying the rosary at the time. And so I prayed to Santa Catalina not to let the crocodile eat her, and she didn't."

"Then your sister was saved?"

"The crocodile pulled her under the water, Padre, and she was drowned. But he did not eat her; and we got her body and buried her here in the cemetery. We were very grateful."

Sancta simplicitas! That such childish credulity might be turned into proper channels!

But there were times when fish were scarce in the lake. Then the crocodiles became bold; and many babes had been seized and dragged off by them, never to return. The fishing this season had been very poor. And more than one fisherman had asked Jose to invoke the Virgin in his behalf.

Nearer crept the monster toward the unsuspecting girl. Suddenly she turned and looked squarely at it. She might almost have touched it with her hand. For Jose it was one of those crises that "crowd eternity into an hour." The child and the reptile might have been painted against that wondrous tropic background. The great brute stood bolt upright on its squat legs, its hideous jaws partly open. The girl made no motion, but seemed to hold it with her steady gaze. Then—the creature dropped; its jaws snapped shut; and it scampered into the water.

"God above!" cried Jose, as he rushed to the girl and clasped her in his arms. "Forgive me if I ever doubted the miracles of Jesus!"

Dona Maria turned and quietly resumed her work; but the man was completely unstrung.

"What is it, Padre?" Carmen asked in unfeigned surprise. "I am not afraid of crocodiles—are you? You couldn't be, if you knew that God is everywhere."

"But don't you know, child, that crocodiles have carried off—"

He checked himself. No—he would not say it. He had had his lesson.

"What, Padre?"

"Nothing—nothing—I forgot—that's all. A—a—come, let us begin our lessons now."

But his mind refused to be held to the work. Finally he had to ask—he could not help it.

"Carmen, what did you do? Did you talk to the crocodile?"

"Why, no, Padre—crocodiles don't talk!" And throwing her little head back she laughed heartily at the absurd idea.

"But—you did something! What was it? Tell me."

"No, Padre, I did nothing," the child persisted.

He saw he must reach her thought in another way. "Why did the crocodile come up to you, Carmen?" he asked.

"Why—I guess because it loved me—I don't know."

"And did you love it as you sat looking at it?"

"Of course, Padre. We have just got to love everything. Don't you know that?"

"Y—yes—that is so, chiquita. I—I just thought I would ask you. Now let us begin the arithmetic lesson."

The child loved the hideous saurian! And "perfect love casteth out fear." What turned the monster from the girl and drove it into the lake? Love, again, before which evil falls in sheer impotence? Had she worked a miracle? Certainly not! Had God interposed in her behalf? Again, no. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." And would divine Love always protect her? There could be no question about it, as long as she knew no evil.

The morning hours sped past. From arithmetic, they turned to the English lesson. Next to perfection in her own Castilian, Jose felt that this language was most important for her. And she delighted in it, although her odd little pronunciations, and her vain attempts to manipulate words to conform to her own ideas of enunciation brought many a hearty laugh, in which she joined with enthusiasm. The afternoon, as was his plan for future work, was devoted to narratives of men and events, and to descriptions of places. It was a ceaseless wonder to Jose how her mind absorbed his instruction.