"How readily you see these things, Carmen," he said, as he concluded the work for the day.

"See them, Padre? But not with my outside eyes."

The remark seemed to start a train of thought within her mentality. "Padre," she at length asked, "how do we see with our eyes?"

"It is very simple, chiquita," Jose replied. "Here, let me draw a picture of an eye."

He quickly sketched a rough outline of the human organ of sight. "Now," he began, "you know you cannot see in the dark, don't you?"

"Yes, Padre?"

"In order to see, we must have light."

"What is light, Padre dear?"

"Well—light is—is vibrations. That is, rapid movement."

"What moves?"

"A—a—a—well, nothing—that is, light is just vibrations. The pendulum of the old clock in Don Mario's store vibrates, you know—moves back and forth."

"And light does that?"

"Yes; light is that. Now that chair there, for example, reflects light, just as a mirror does. It reflects vibrations. And these are all of just a certain length, for vibrations of just that length and moving up and down just so fast make light. The light enters the eye, like this," tracing the rays on his sketch. "It makes a little picture of the chair on the back of the eye, where the optic nerve is fastened. Now the light makes the little ends of this nerve vibrate, too—move very rapidly. And that movement is carried along the nerve to some place in the brain—to what we call the center of sight. And there we see the chair."

The child studied the sketch long and seriously.

"But, Padre, is the picture of the chair carried on the nerve to the brain?"

"Oh, no, chiquita, only vibrations. It is as if the nerve moved just a little distance, but very, very fast, back and forth, or up and down."

"And no picture is carried to the brain?"

"No, there is just a vibration in the brain."

"And that vibration makes us see the chair?"

"Yes, little one."

A moment of silence. Then—

"Padre dear, I don't believe it."

"Why, chiquita!"

"Well, Padre, what is it that sees the chair, anyway?"

"The mind, dear."

"Is the mind up there in the brain?"

"Well—no, we can't say that it is."

"Where is it, then?"

"A—a—well, no place in particular—that is, it is right here all the time."

"Well, then, when the mind wants to see the chair does it have to climb up into the brain and watch that little nerve wiggle?"

The man was at a loss for an answer. Carmen suddenly crumpled the sketch in her small hand and smiled up at him.

"Padre dear, I don't believe our outside eyes see anything. We just think they do, don't we?"

Jose looked out through the open door. Carmen's weird heron was stalking in immense dignity past the house.

"I think Cantar-las-horas is getting ready to sing the Vespers, chiquita. And so Dona Maria probably needs you now. We will talk more about the eye to-morrow."

By the light of his sputtering candle that night Jose sat with elbows propped on the table, his head clasped in his hands, and a sketch of the human eye before him. In his confident attempt to explain to Carmen the process of cognition he had been completely baffled. Certainly, light coming from an object enters the eye and casts a picture upon the retina. He had often seen the photographic camera exhibit the same phenomenon. The law of the impenetrability of matter had to be set aside, of course—or else light must be pure vibration, without a material vibrating concomitant. Then, too, it was plain that the light in some way communicated its vibration to the little projecting ends of the optic nerve, which lie spread out over the rear inner surface of the eye. And equally patent that this vibration is in some way taken up by the optic nerve and transmitted to the center of sight in the brain. But after that—what? He laughed again at Carmen's pertinent question about the mind climbing up into the brain to see the vibrating nerve. But was it so silly a presumption, after all? Is the mind within the brain, awaiting in Stygian darkness the advent of the vibrations which shall give it pictures of the outside world? Or is the mind outside of the brain, but still slavishly forced to look at these vibrations of the optic nerve and then translate them into terms of things without? What could a vibrating nerve suggest to a well-ordered mind, anyway? He might as logically wave a piece of meat and expect thereby to see a world! He laughed aloud at the thought. Why does not the foolish mind leave the brain and look at the picture on the retina? Or why does it not throw off its shackles and look directly at the object to be cognized, instead of submitting to dependence upon so frail a thing as fleshly eyes and nerves?

As he mused and sketched, unmindful of the voracious mosquitoes or the blundering moths that momentarily threatened his light, it dawned slowly upon him that the mind's awareness of material objects could not possibly depend upon the vibrations of pieces of nerve tissue, so minute as to be almost invisible to the unaided sight. Still more absurd did it appear to him that his own mind, of which he might justly boast tremendous powers, could be prostituted to such a degree that its knowledge of things must be served to it on waving pieces of flesh.

And how about the other senses—touch, hearing? Did the ear hear, or the hand feel? He had always accepted the general belief that man is dependent absolutely upon the five physical senses for his knowledge of an outside world. And now a little thought showed that from these five senses man could not possibly receive anything more than a series of disconnected vibrations! And, going a step further, anything that the mind infers from these vibrations is unquestionably inferred without a particle of outside authority!

He rose and paced the floor. A tremendous idea seemed to be knocking at the portal of his mentality.

What can the mind know? Assuredly nothing but the contents of itself. But the contents of mind are thoughts, ideas, mental things. Do solid material objects enter the mind? Certainly not! Then the mind knows not things, but its thoughts of things. And instead of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling solid material objects, the mind sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels—what? The contents of itself! Its own thoughts and ideas! And the outer world? Is only what the mind believes it to be. But surely his mind saw an outer world through the medium of his eye! No. His mind saw only its own concepts of an outer world—and these concepts, being mental, might take on whatever hue and tinge his mind decreed. In other words, instead of seeing a world of matter, he was seeing only a mental picture of a world. And that picture was in his own mind, and formed by that mind!

The man seized his hat and hurried out into the night. He walked rapidly the full length of the town. His mind was wrestling with stupendous thoughts.

An hour later he returned to his house, and seizing a pencil, wrote rapidly: Matter is mental. We do not see or feel matter, but we think it. It is formed and held as a mental concept in every human mind. The material universe is but the human mind's concept of a universe, and can only be this mentality's translation to itself of infinite Mind's purely mental Creation.

"And so," he commented aloud, sitting back and regarding his writing, "all my miserable life I have been seeing only my own thoughts! And I have let them use me and color my whole outlook!"

He extinguished the candle and threw himself, fully dressed, upon his bed.



CHAPTER 10

Momentous changes, of far-reaching effect, had come swiftly upon Jose de Rincon during the last few days, changes which were destined after much vacillation and great mental struggle to leave a reversed outlook. But let no one think these changes fortuitous or casual, the chance result of a new throw of Fate's dice. Jose, seeing them dimly outlined, did not so regard them, but rather looked upon them as the working of great mental laws, still unknown, whose cumulative effect had begun a transformation in his soul. How often in his seminary days he had pondered the scripture, "He left not Himself without witness." How often he had tried to see the hopeless confusion of good and evil in the world about him as a witness to the One who is of purer eyes than to behold evil. And he had at last abandoned his efforts in despair. Yet that there must be something behind the complex phenomena which men call life, he knew. Call it what he would—law, force, mind, God, or even X, the great unknown quantity for which life's intricate equations must be solved—yet something there was in it all which endured in an eternal manifestation. But could that something endure in an expression both good and evil?

He had long since abandoned all study of the Bible. But in these last days there had begun to dawn upon him the conviction that within that strange book were locked mysteries which far transcended the wildest imaginings of the human mind. With it came also the certainty that Jesus had been in complete possession of those sacred mysteries. There could be no question now that his mission had been woefully misunderstood, often deliberately misinterpreted, and too frequently maliciously misused by mankind. His greatest sayings, teachings so pregnant with truth that, had they been rightfully appropriated by men, ere this would have dematerialized the universe and revealed the spiritual kingdom of God, had been warped by cunning minds into crude systems of theology and righteous shams, behind which the world's money-changers and sellers of doves still drove their wicked traffic and offered insults to Truth in the temple of the Most High.

Oh, how he now lamented the narrowness and the intellectual limitations with which his seminary training had been hedged about! The world's thought had been a closed book to him. Because of his morbid honesty, only such pages reached his eye as had passed the bigoted censorship of Holy Church. His religious instruction had been served to him with the seal of infallible authority. Of other systems of theology he had been permitted only the Vatican's biased interpretation, for the curse of Holy Church rested upon them. Of current philosophical thought, of Bible criticism and the results of independent scriptural research, he knew practically nothing—little beyond what the explorer had told him in their memorable talks a few weeks before in Cartagena. But, had he known it, these had unbarred the portals of his mind to the reception of the new ideas which, under a most powerful stimulus, were now flowing so steadily through them. That stimulus was Carmen.

To meet with a child of tender years who knows no evil is, after all, a not uncommon thing. For, did we but realize it, the world abounds in them. They are its glory, its radiance—until they are taught to heed the hiss of the serpent. Their pure knowledge of immanent good would endure—ah, who may say how long?—did not we who measure our wisdom by years forbid them with the fear-born mandate: "Thus far!" What manner of being was he who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not?" Oh, ye parents, who forbid your little ones to come to the Christ by hourly heaping up before them the limitations of fear and doubt, of faith in the power and reality of sin and evil, of false instruction, and withering material beliefs! Would not the Christ pray for you to-day, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?

When Jose met Carmen she was holding steadfastly to her vision—the immanence and allness of God. Each day she created the morrow; and she knew to a certainty that it would be happy. Would he, clanking his fetters of worldly beliefs, be the one to shatter her illusion, if illusion it be? Nay, rather should he seek to learn of her, if; haply she be in possession of that jewel for which he had searched a vain lifetime. Already from the stimulus which his intercourse with the child had given his mental processes there had come a sudden liberation of thought. Into his freer mentality the Christ-idea now flowed.

Mankind complain that they cannot "prove" God. But Paul long since declared emphatically that to prove Him the human mind must be transformed. In the light of the great ideas which had dawned upon him in the past few days—the nature of God as mind, unlimited, immanent, eternal, and good; and the specious character of the five physical senses, which from the beginning have deluded mankind into the false belief that through them comes a true knowledge of the cosmos—Jose's mentality was being formed anew.

Hegel, delving for truth in a world of illusion, summed up a lifetime of patient research in the pregnant statement, "The true knowledge of God begins when we know that things as they are have no truth in them." The testimony of the five physical senses constitutes "things as they are." But—if Jose's reasoning be not illogical—the human mind receives no testimony from these senses, which, at most, can offer but insensate and meaningless vibrations in a pulpy mass called the brain. The true knowledge of God, for which Jose had yearned and striven, begins only when men turn from the mesmeric deception of the physical senses, and learn that there is something, knowable and usable, behind them, and of whose existence they give not the slightest intimation.

It was Saturday. The church edifice was so far put in order that Jose found no reason for not holding service on the morrow. He therefore announced the fact, and told Carmen that he must devote the day to preparation. Their lessons must go over to Monday. Seeking the solitude of his house, Jose returned to his Bible.

He began with Genesis. "In the beginning—God." Not, as in the codes of men, God last, and after every material expedient has been exhausted—but "to begin with." Jose could not deny that for all that exists there is a cause. Nor can the human mind object to the implication that the cause of an existing universe must itself continue to exist. Even less can it deny that the framer of the worlds, bound together in infinite space by the unbreakable cables of infinite laws, must be omnipotent. And to retain its omnipotence, that cause must be perfect—absolutely good—every whit pure, sound, and harmonious; for evil is demonstrably self-destructive. And, lastly, what power could operate thus but an infinite intelligence, an all-inclusive mind?

Now let the human mentality continue its own reasoning, if so be that it hold fast to fact and employ logical processes. If "like produces like"—and from thistles figs do not grow—that which mind creates must be mental. And a good cause can produce only a good effect. So the ancient writer, "And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." The inspired scribe—inspired? Yes, mused Jose, for inspiration is but the flow of truth into one's mentality—stopped not until he had said, "So God created man in His own image"—

Wait! He will drive that home.

—"in the image of God"—not in the image of matter, not in the likeness of evil—"created He him." But what had now become of that man?

So Jesus, centuries later, "God is spirit," and, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Or, man—true man—expresses mind, God, and is His eternal and spiritual likeness and reflection. But, to make this still clearer to torpid minds, Paul wrote, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being." Then he added, "To be spiritually minded is life." As if he would say, True life is the consciousness of spiritual things only.

Is human life aught but a series of states of consciousness? And is consciousness aught but mental activity?—for when the mind's activity ceases, the man dies. But mental activity is the activity of thought.

"It is the activity of thought," said Jose aloud, "that makes us believe that fleshly eyes see and ears hear. We see only our thoughts; and in some way they become externalized as our environment."

His reasoning faculty went busily on. Thought builds images, or mental concepts, within the mind. These are the thought-objects which mankind believe they see as material things in an outer world. And so the world is within, not without. Jesus must have known this when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Did he not know the tremendous effects of thought when he said, "For as a man thinketh, so is he"? In other words, a man builds his own mental image of himself, and conveys it to the fellow-minds about him.

Jose again opened his Bible at random. His eye fell upon the warning of Jeremiah, "Hear, O earth, behold I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts!" Alas! he needed no warning to show him now the dire results of his own past wrong thinking. Evil is but wrong thinking wrought out in life experience. And so the chief of sins is the breaking of the very first Commandment, the belief in other powers than God, the infinite mind that framed the spiritual universe.

"But we simply can't help breaking the Commandment," cried Jose, "when we see nothing but evil about us! And yet—we are seeing only the thoughts in our own minds. True—but how came they there? And whence? From God?"

Jose was quite ready to concede a mental basis for everything; to believe that even sin is but the thought of sin, false thought regarding God and His Creation. But, if God is all-inclusive mind, He must be the only thinker. And so all thought must proceed from Him. All thought, both good and evil? No, for then were God maintaining a house divided against itself. And that would mean His ultimate dissolution.

Infinite, omnipotent mind is by very logic compelled to be perfect. Then the thoughts issuing from that mind must be good. So it must follow that evil thoughts come from another source. But if God is infinite, there is no other source, no other cause. Then there is but the single alternative left—evil thoughts must be unreal.

What was it that the explorer had said to him in regard to Spencer's definition of reality? "That which endures." But, for that matter, evil seems to be just as enduring as good, and to run its course as undeviatingly. After all, what is it that says there is evil? The five physical senses. But that again reduces to the thought of evil, for men see only their thoughts. These so-called senses say that the world is flat—that the sun circles the earth—that objects diminish in size with distance. They testify not to truth. Jesus said that evil, or the "devil," was "a liar and the father of lies." Then the testimony of the physical senses to evil—and there is no other testimony to its existence and power—is a lie. A lie is—what? Nothing. Reason has had to correct sense-testimony in the field of astronomy and show that the earth is not flat. Where, indeed, has reason not had to correct sense-testimony? For Jose could now see that all such testimony was essentially false. "Things as they are have no truth in them." In other words, sense-testimony is false belief. Again, a lie. And the habitat of a lie is—nowhere. Did the world by clinging to evil and trying to make something of it, to classify it and reduce it to definite rules and terms, thus tend to make it real? Assuredly so. And as long as the world held evil to be real, could evil be overcome? Again, no. A reality endures forever.

Jose arose from his study. He believed he was close to the discovery of that solid basis of truth on which to stand while teaching Carmen. At any rate, her faith, which he could no longer believe to be baseless illusion, would not be shattered by him.



CHAPTER 11

Two weeks after his arrival in Simiti Jose conducted his first services in the ancient church. After four years of silence, the rusty bell sent out its raucous call from the old tower that still morning and announced the revival of public worship.

As the priest stepped from the sacristy and approached the altar his heart experienced a sudden sinking. Before him his little flock bowed reverently and expectantly. Looking out at them, a lump rose in his throat. He was their pastor, and daily his love had grown for these kindly, simple folk. And now, what would he not have given could he have stretched forth his hands, as did the Master, to heal them of their ills and lift them out of the shadows of ignorance! Ah, if he could have thrown aside the mummery and pagan ceremonialism which he was there to conduct, and have sat down among them, as Jesus was wont to do on those still mornings in Galilee! Instead, he stood before them an apostate vassal of Rome, hypocritically using the Church to shield and maintain himself in Simiti while he reared away from her the child Carmen.

Yet, what could he do? He had heard the call; and he had answered, "Master, here am I." And now he was occupying, while waiting to be led, step by step, out of his cruelly anomalous position and into his rightful domain. A traitor to Holy Church? Nay, he thought he would have been a traitor to all that was best and holiest within himself had he done otherwise. In the name of the Church he would serve these humble people. Serving them, he honored the Master. And honoring Christ, he could not dishonor the Church.

Jose's conduct of the Mass was perfunctory. Vainly he strove to hold in thought the symbolism of the service, the offering of Christ as a propitiation for the world's sins. But gradually the folly of Milton's extravagant, wild dream, which the poet clothed in such imperishable beauty, stole over him and blinded this vision. He saw the Holy Trinity sitting in solemn council in the courts of heaven. He heard their perplexed discussion of the ravages of Satan in the terrestrial paradise below. He heard the Father pronounce His awful curse upon mankind. And he beheld the Son rise and with celestial magnanimity offer himself as the sacrificial lamb, whose blood should wash away the serpent-stain of sin. How inept the whole drama!

And then he thought of Carmen. He had seen her, as he looked out over his people, sitting with Dona Maria, arrayed in a clean white frock, and swinging her plump bare legs beneath the bench, while wonder and amazement peered out from her big brown eyes as she followed his every move. What would such things mean to her, whose God was ever-present good? What did they mean to the priest himself, who was beginning to see Him as infinite, divine mind, knowing no evil—the One whose thoughts are not as ours?

He took up the holy water and sprinkled the assemblage. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." But how is the human mind purged of error? By giving it truth. And does the infinite mind purge the thought of men in any other way? His mind was full as he took up the Missal. "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison."

He hesitated. With a tug he pulled his mind back to the work before him. But why was he invoking clemency from One who knows no evil? Heretofore he had always thought that God knew evil, that He must recognize it, and that He strove Himself to overcome it. But if God knew evil, then evil were real and eternal! Dreamily he began to intone the Gloria in Excelsis Deo. All hail, thou infinite mind, whose measureless depths mortal man has not even begun to sound! His soul could echo that strain forever.

He turned to the Lesson and read: "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." He stopped a moment for thought. The Lord God! The mist of error watered the false thought—the one lie about God—and out of it formed the man of flesh, the false concept which is held in the minds of mortals. Aye, it was the lie, posing as the Lord of creation, which had formed its false man out of the dust of the ground, and had forced it upon the acceptance of mankind! Jose turned back and read the whole of the first chapter of Genesis, where he felt that he stood upon truth.

The tapers on the altar flickered fitfully. The disturbed bats blundered among the rafters overhead. Outside, the dusty roads burned with a white glare. Within, he and the people were worshiping God. Worship? This? "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." In Truth!

Jose recited the Nicene creed, with the thought that its man-made fetters had bound the Christian world for dreary centuries. Then, the Preface and Canon concluded, he pronounced the solemn words of consecration which turned the bread and wine before him into the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus. He looked at the wafer and the chalice long and earnestly. He—Jose de Rincon—mortal, human, a weakling among weaklings—could he command God by his "Hoc est enim corpus meum" to descend from heaven to this altar? Could he so invoke the power of the Christ as to change bread and wine into actual flesh and blood? And yet, with all the priestly powers which Holy Church had conferred upon him, he could not heal a single bodily ill, nor avert one human misfortune!

Ah, pagan Rome! Well have you avenged yourself upon those who wrought your fall, for in the death conflict you left the taint of your paganism upon them, and it endures in their sons even to this fair day!

Jose deferred his sermon until the close of the service. He wanted time to think over again what he could say to these simple people. They sat before him, dull, inert, yet impressionable—bare of feet, or wearing hempen sandals, and clad in cheap cottons and calicos, with here and there a flash of bright ribbon among the women, and occasionally a parasol of brilliant hue, which the owner fondly clasped, while impatiently awaiting the close of the service that she might proudly parade it. A few of the men wore starched linen shirts, but without collars. The Alcalde, with his numerous family, and the family of Don Felipe Alcozer, sat well in front. The former regarded Jose expectantly, as the priest turned to deliver his simple sermon.

"My children," Jose began, "when the good man whom we call the Saviour sent his disciples out into the world he told them to preach the gospel and heal the sick. We have no record that he asked them to do more, for that included his whole mission. I am here to do his work. And, as I believe myself to have been led to you, so I shall preach what I believe to be given me by the great Father of us all. I shall teach you the Christ as I comprehend him. I would I could heal the sick as well. But the gift of healing which Jesus bestowed has been lost to mankind." He paused and seemed to think deeply. Then he continued:

"I am your servant, and your friend. I want you to believe that whatever I do in your midst and whatever I say to you follows only after I have prayerfully considered your welfare. As time has passed I have seemed to see things in a clearer light than before. What I may see in the future I shall point out to you as you are able to understand me. To that end we must suffer many things to be as they are for the present, for I am learning with you. I shall give you a single thought to take with you to-day. Jesus once said, 'As a man thinketh, so is he.' I want you to remember that, if you would be well and happy and prosperous, you must think only about good things. Some day you will see why this is so. But go back now to your fincas and your fishing, to your little stores and your humble homes, firmly resolving never to think a bad thought, whether about yourself or your neighbor. And pray for yourselves and me—"

He looked off into the gloom overhead. Again he seemed to hear the Man of Galilee: "Ask and ye shall receive."

"And, my children—"

He thought suddenly of Carmen and her visits to the shales. His face shone for a moment with a new light.

"—let your prayers be no mere requests that God will bless us, but rather let them be statements that He is infinite good, and that He cannot do otherwise than give us all we need. No, I ask not that you intercede for me; nor shall I do so for you. But I do ask that you join with me in trying to realize that God is good; that He loves us as His dear children; and that He is daily, hourly pouring out His inexhaustible goodness upon us. We shall all see that goodness when we learn to think no evil."

His eyes rested upon Carmen as he spoke these last words. Then with a simple invocation he dismissed the congregation.

The Alcalde carried Jose off to dinner with him, much against the inclination of the priest, who preferred to be alone. But the Alcalde was the chief influence in the town, and it was policy to cultivate him.

"The blessed Virgin shows that she has not forgotten Simiti, Padre, by sending you here," said Don Mario, when they were seated in the shade of the ample patio.

Jose knew the Alcalde was sounding him. "Yes, friend," with just a trace of amusement in his voice. "It was doubtless because of the Virgin that I was directed here," he replied, thinking of Carmen.

"Excellent advice that you gave the people, Padre; but it is not likely they understood you, poor fools! Now if Padre Diego had been preaching he would have ranted like a windstorm; but he would have made an impression. I am afraid soft words will not sink into their thick skulls."

Dinner was served in the open, during which the Alcalde chattered volubly.

"Don Rosendo returns soon?" he finally ventured. Jose knew that for some time he had been edging toward the question.

"Quien sabe, senor!" replied the priest, with a careless shrug of his shoulders.

"But—Caramba! he is old to prospect for gold—and alone, too!" Don Mario eyed Jose sharply.

"Ah, you priests!" he burst out laughing. "You are all alike when it comes to money. Padre Diego was up to the same schemes; and before he left he had a hat full of titles to mines."

"But I am not seeking to acquire mineral property!" exclaimed Jose with some aspersion.

"No? Then you had nothing to do with Rosendo's trip?"

Jose kept silence.

"Na, Padre, let us be confidential," said the Alcalde, hitching his chair closer to the priest. "Look, I understand why Rosendo went into the Guamoco country—but you can trust me to say nothing about it. Only, Padre, if he should find the mine he will have trouble enough to hold it. But I can help you both. You know the denouncement papers must go through my hands, and I send them to Cartagena for registration."

He sat back in his chair with a knowing look.

"There is only one man here to be afraid of," he resumed; "and that is Don Felipe Alcozer; although he may never return to Simiti." He reflected a few moments. Then:

"Now, Padre, let us have some understanding about interests in the mine, should Rosendo find it. The mine will be useless to us unless we work it, for there is no one to buy it from us. To work it, we must have a stamp-mill, or arrastras. The Antioquanians are skilled in the making of wooden stamp-mills; but one would cost perhaps two thousand pesos oro. Nobody here can furnish so much money but Don Felipe. I will arrange with him for a suitable interest. And I will fix all the papers so that the title will be held by us three. Rosendo is only a peon. You can pay him for his trouble, and he need not have an interest."

Jose breathed easier while this recital was in progress. So Don Mario believed Rosendo to have gone in search of the lost mine, La Libertad! Good; for Cartagena would soon get the report, and his own tenure of the parish would be rendered doubly sure thereby. The monthly greasing of Wenceslas' palm with what Rosendo might extract from the Guamoco sands, coupled with the belief that Jose was maintaining a man in the field in search of Don Ignacio's lost mine, rendered Cartagena's interference a very remote contingency. He almost laughed as he replied:

"Rosendo will doubtless prospect for some months, Don Mario, and I am sure we shall have plenty of time to discuss any arrangement of interests later, should occasion arise. But this is the Sabbath day. So let us not talk business any further."

When the afternoon heat began to wane, Jose left the Alcalde and returned to his cottage. Since the service of the morning he had been fighting a constantly deepening sense of depression. An awful loneliness now gripped his heart, and dank gloom was again sweeping through the corridors of his soul. God, what a sacrifice, to remain buried in that dismal town! His continuance in the priesthood of an abjured faith was violative of every principle of honesty! The time would come when the mask of hypocrisy would have to be raised, and the resultant exposure would be worse then than open apostasy now!

He entered his dreary little abode and threw himself upon a chair. There had been no reaction like this for days. He looked out into the deserted street. Mud hovels; ragged, thatched roofs; lowly peones drowsing away life's little hour within! There was scarcely a book in the town. Few of its inhabitants could even read or write. Culture, education, refinement—all wanting. Nothing but primal existence—the barest necessities of real life. He could not stand it! He had been a fool all his years! He would throw everything to the winds and go out into the world to live his life as it had been intended he should live it. He would send his resignation to the Bishop to-morrow. Then he would hire Juan to take him to Bodega Central; and the few pesos he had left would get him to Barranquilla. There he would work until he had earned enough for his passage to the great States up north, of which the explorer had told such wonderful tales. Once there, he could teach, or—

His thought turned to Rosendo. He saw him, bent with age, and wearied with toil, alone in the awful solitude of the jungle, standing knee deep in the cold mountain water, while from early dawn till sunset he incessantly swung the heavy batea to concentrate the few flakes of precious gold it might contain. And the old man was facing years of just such loneliness and heavy toil—facing them gladly.

He thought of Carmen. Was she worth such sacrifice as he and Rosendo were making? God forgive him! Yes—a thousand times yes! If he betrayed Rosendo's confidence and fled like a coward now, leaving her to fall into the sooty hands of men like Padre Diego, to be crushed, warped, and squeezed into the molds of Holy Church, could he ever again face his fellow-men?

He jumped to his feet. "Get thee behind me, Satan!" he cried in a voice that echoed through the barren rooms. He smote his chest and paced the floor. Then he stopped still. He heard Carmen's voice again. It was the same simple melody she had sung the day he awoke from his fever. He stood listening. His eyes filled. Then—

"Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might, Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight."



CHAPTER 12

In the days that followed, while at times Jose still struggled desperately against the depression of his primal environment, and against its insidious suggestions of license, Carmen moved before him like the shechinah of Israel, symbolizing the divine presence. When the dark hours came and his pronounced egoism bade fair to overwhelm him; when his self-centered thought clung with the tenacity of a limpet to his dreary surroundings and his unfilled longings; when self-condemnation and self-pity rived his soul, and despair of solving life's intricate problems settled again like a pall upon him, he turned to her. Under the soft influence of her instinct for primitive good, he was learning, even if slowly, to jettison his heavily laden soul, and day by day to ride the tossing waves of his stormy thought with a lighter cargo. Her simple faith in immanent good was working upon his mind like a spiritual catharsis, to purge it of its clogging beliefs. Her unselfed love flowed over him like heavenly balm, salving the bleeding wounds of the spiritual mayhem which he had suffered at the violent hands of Holy Church's worldly agents.

Carmen's days were filled to the brim with a measure of joy that constantly overflowed upon all among whom she moved. Her slight dependence upon her impoverished material environment, her contempt of its ennui, were constant reminders to Jose that heaven is but a state of mind. Even in desolate Simiti, life to her was an endless series of delightful experiences, of wonderful surprises in the discovery of God's presence everywhere. Her enthusiasms were always ardent and inexhaustible. Sparkling animation and abounding vitality characterized her every movement. Her thought was free, unstrained, natural, and untrammeled by those inherited and educated beliefs in evil in which Jose had early been so completely swamped. In worldly knowledge she was the purest novice; and the engaging naivete with which she met the priest's explanations of historical events and the motives from which they sprang charmed him beyond measure, and made his work with her a constant delight. Her sense of humor was keen, and her merriment when his recitals touched her risibility was extravagant. She laughed at danger, laughed at the weaknesses and foibles of men, when he told of the political and social ambitions which stirred mankind in the outside world. But he knew that her merriment proceeded not from an ephemeral sense of the ludicrous, but from a righteous appraisal of the folly and littleness of those things for which the world so sorely strives.

And daily the little maid wrapped herself about his heart. Daily her wondrous love coiled its soft folds tighter around him, squeezing from his atrabilious soul, drop by drop, its sad taciturnity and inherent morbidness, that it might later fill his empty life with a spiritual richness which he had never known before.

On the day following the opening of the church Carmen had asked many questions. It was the first religious service she had ever voluntarily attended. To her former queries regarding the function of the church edifice, Rosendo had vouchsafed but one reply: it was the house of God, and in it the people used to gather to learn of Him. But she protested that she had no need of the musty, ramshackle, barn-like old building as a locus in which to center her thought upon God. She walked with Him, and she much preferred the bright, sunlit out-of-doors in which to commune with Him. Jose explained the need of a central gathering place as a shelter from the hot sun. But the images—the pictures of Saints and Virgin—and the Mass itself?

"They are what the people are accustomed to, dear child, to direct their thought toward God," he explained. "And we will use them until we can teach them something better." He had omitted from the church service as far as possible the collects and all invocations addressed to the Virgin and the Saints, and had rendered it short and extremely simple. Carmen seemed satisfied with his explanation, and with his insistence that, for the sake of appearance, she attend the Sunday services. He would trust her God to guide them both.

The days sped by silently and swiftly. Jose and the child dwelt together apart from the world, in a universe purely mental. As he taught her, she hung upon his every word, and seized the proffered tutelage with avidity. Often, after the day's work, Jose, in his customary strolls about the little town, would come across the girl in the doorway of a neighboring house, with a group of wide-eyed youngsters about her, relating again the wonder-tales which she had gathered from him. Marvelous tales they were, too, of knight and hidalgo, of court and camp, of fairies, pyxies, gnomes and sprites, of mossy legend and historic fact, bubbling from the girl's childish lips with an engaging naivete of interpretation that held the man enchanted. Even the schoolmaster, who had besought Jose in vain to turn Carmen over to him, was often a spellbound listener at these little gatherings.

The result was that in a short time a delegation, headed by the Alcalde himself, waited upon Jose and begged him to lecture to the people of Simiti in the church building at least two or three evenings a week upon places and people he had seen in the great world of which they knew nothing. Jose's eyes were moist as he looked at the great, brawny men, stout of heart, but simple as children. He grieved to give up his evenings, for he had formed the habit of late of devoting them to the study of his Bible, and to meditation on those ideas which had so recently come to him. But the appeal from these innocent, untutored people again quenched the thought of self, and he bade them be assured that their request was granted.

The new ideas which had found entrance into Jose's liberated mentality in the past few days had formed a basis on which he was not afraid to stand while teaching Carmen; and his entire instruction was thenceforth colored by them. He knew not why, in all the preceding years, such ideas had not come to him before. But he was to learn, some day, that his previous tenacious clinging to evil as a reality, together with his material beliefs and his worldly intellectuality, had stood as barriers at the portals of his thought, and kept the truth from entering. His mind had been already full—but its contents were unbelief, fear, the conviction of evil as real and operative, and the failure to know God as immanent, omnipotent and perfect mind, to whom evil is forever unknown and unreal. Pride, egoism, and his morbid sense of honesty had added their portion to the already impassable obstruction at the gateway of his thought. And so the error had been kept within, the good without. The "power of the Lord" had not been absent; but it had remained unapplied. Thus he had wandered through the desolate wilderness; but yet sustained and kept alive, that he should not go down to the pit.

Jose's days were now so crowded that he was forced to borrow heavily from the night. The Alcalde continued his unctuous flattery, and the priest, in turn, cultivated him assiduously. To that official's query as to the restitution of the confessional in the church, the priest replied that he could spare time to hear only such confessions from his flock as might be necessary to elicit from him the advice or assistance requisite for their needs. He was there to help them solve their life problems, not to pry into their sacred secrets; and their confessions must relate only to their necessities.

The Alcalde went away with a puzzled look. Of a truth a new sort of priest had now to be reckoned with in Simiti—a very different sort from Padre Diego.

In the first days of Jose's incumbency he found many serious matters to adjust. He had learned from Rosendo that not half the residents of Simiti were married to the consorts with whom they lived, and that many of the children who played in the streets did not know who their fathers were. So prevalent was this evil condition that the custom among the men of having their initials embroidered upon the bosoms of their shirts was extended to include the initial of the mother's family name. Jose had questioned Rosendo as to the meaning of the letters R. A. S. upon his shirt.

"The S, Padre, is the initial of my mother's family name. I am Rosendo Ariza, son of the daughter of Saurez. My parents were married by a priest. But half the people of Simiti have never been really married."

Jose sought the cause of this dereliction. Fidel Avila was living with a woman, by whom he had three children. The priest summoned him to the parish house.

"Fidel," he questioned sternly, "Jacinta, the woman you live with, is your wife?"

"Yes, Senor Padre."

"And you were married by the Church?"

"No, Padre."

"But was there a priest here when you began to live with Jacinta?"

"Yes, Padre. The Cura, Don Diego Polo, was here."

"Then why were you not married by him? Do you not know how wicked it is to live as you are doing? Think of your children!"

"Yes, Padre, and I asked the Cura, Don Diego, to marry us. But he charged twenty pesos oro for doing it; and I could not afford it. I loved Jacinta. And so we decided to live together without the marriage."

"But—!" Jose stopped. He knew that the Church recognized no marriage unless it were performed by a priest. The civil magistrate had no jurisdiction in such a case. And a former priest's rapacity had resulted in forcing illegitimacy upon half the children of this benighted hamlet, because of their parents' inability to afford the luxury of a canonical marriage.

"Fidel, were your father and mother married?" he asked in kinder tones.

"I do not know, Padre. Only a few people in Guamoco can afford to pay to be married. The men and women live together, perhaps for all time, perhaps for only a few months. If a man wishes to leave his woman and live with another, he does so. If there are children, the woman always has to keep and care for them."

"And could you leave Jacinta if you wished, and live with another woman?"

"Yes, Padre."

"And she would have to lake care of your children?"

"Yes."

"And all because you are not married?"

"I think so, Padre."

"Hombre! But that will do, Fidel."

Oh, the sordid greed of those who abuse their sacred commission! What punishment is mete for such as exploit these lowly folk in the name of religion! Jose strode off to consult the Alcalde.

"Don Mario, the men in Simiti who are living with women have got to be married to them! It is shameful! I shall make a canvass of the town at once!"

The Alcalde laughed. "Costumbre, Padre. You can't change it."

Costumbre del pais! It is a final answer all through South America. No matter how unreasonable a thing may be, if it is the custom of the country it is a Medean law.

"But you know this is subversive of Church discipline!" Jose retorted warmly. "Look you, Don Mario," he added suggestively, "you and I are to work together, are we not?"

The Alcalde blinked his pig eyes, but thought hard about La Libertad. "Cierto, Senor Padre!" he hastened to exclaim.

"Then I demand that you summon before me every man and woman who are living together unmarried."

With a thought single to his own future advantage, the wary Alcalde complied. Within the week following this interview Jose married twenty couples, and without charge. Some offered him a few pesos. These he took and immediately turned over to Don Mario as treasurer of the parish. Those couples who refused to be married were forced by the Alcalde to separate. But of these there were few. Among them was one Julio Gomez. Packing his few household effects upon his back, and muttering imprecations against the priest, Gomez set out for the hills, still followed by his woman, with a babe slung over her shoulders and two naked children toddling at her bare heels.

Verily, the ancient town was being profoundly stirred by the man who had sought to find his tomb there. Gradually the people lost their suspicions and distrust, bred of former bitter experience with priests, and joined heartily with Jose to ameliorate the social status of the place. His sincere love for them, and his utter selflessness, secured their confidence, and ere his first month among them closed, he had won them, almost to a man.

Meantime, six weeks had passed since Rosendo had departed to take up his lonely task of self-renouncing love. Then one day he returned, worn and emaciated, his great frame shaking like a withered leaf in a chill blast.

"It is the terciana, Padre," he said, as he sank shuddering upon his bed. "It comes every third day. I went as far as Tachi—fifty leagues from Simiti—and there the fever overtook me. I have been eight days coming back; and day before yesterday I ran out of food. Last evening I found a wild melon at the side of the trail. A coral snake struck at me when I reached for it, but he hit my machete instead. Caramba!"

Jose pressed his wet hand, while Dona Maria laid damp cloths upon his burning forehead.

"The streams are washed out, Padre," Rosendo continued sadly. "I worked at Colorado, Popales, and Tambora. But I got no more than five pesos worth. And that will not pay for half of my supplies. It is there in a little bag," pointing to his soaked and muddy kit.

Jose's heart was wrung by the suffering and disappointment of the old man. Sadly he carried the little handful of gold flakes to Don Mario, and then returned to the exhausted Rosendo.

All through the night the sick man tossed and moaned. By morning he was delirious. Then Jose and Dona Maria became genuinely alarmed. The toil and exposure had been too much for Rosendo at his advanced age. In his delirium he talked brokenly of the swamps through which he had floundered, for he had taken the trail in the wet season, and fully half of its one hundred and fifty miles of length was oozy and all but impassable bog.

By afternoon the fever had greatly increased. Don Mario shook his head as he stood over him.

"I have seen many in that condition, Padre, and they didn't wake up! If we had quinine, perhaps he might be saved. But there isn't a flake in the town."

"Then send Juan to Bodega Central at once for it!" cried Jose, wild with apprehension.

"I doubt if he would find it there either, Padre. But we can try. However, Juan cannot make the trip in less than two days. And I fear Rosendo will not last that long."

Dona Maria sat by the bedside, dumb with grief. Jose wrung his hands in despair. The day drew slowly to a close. The Alcalde had dispatched Juan down to the river to signal any steamer that he should meet, if perchance he might purchase a few grains of the only drug that could save the sick man. Carmen had absented herself during the day; but she returned in time to assist Dona Maria with the evening meal, after which she went at once to her bed.

Late at night, when the sympathizing townsmen had sorrowfully departed and Jose had induced Dona Maria to seek a few moments rest on her petate in the living room, Carmen climbed quietly out of her bed and came to where the priest sat alone with the unconscious Rosendo.

Jose was bending over the delirious man. "Oh, if Jesus were only here now!" he murmured.

"Padre dear."

Jose looked down into the little face beside him.

"People don't die, you know. They don't really die." The little head shook as if to emphasize the words.

Jose was startled. But he put his arm about the child and drew her to him. "Chiquita, why do you say that?" he asked sorrowfully.

"Because God doesn't die, you know," she quickly replied. "And we are like Him, Padre, aren't we?"

"But He calls us to Him, chiquita. And—I guess—He is—is calling your padre Rosendo now."

Does God kill mankind in order to give them life? Is that His way? Death denies God, eternal Life. And—

"Why, no, Padre," returned the innocent child. "He is always here; and we are always with Him, you know. He can not call people away from where He is, can He?"

Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. The Christ-principle, the saving truth about God and man, is ever present in an uncomprehending world.

Jose knew that there was no material dependence now. Something told him that Rosendo lay dying. There was no physician, no drug, in the isolated little town. There was none but God to save. And He—

But only sinners are taught by priests and preachers to look to God for help. The sick are not so taught. How much more deplorable, then, is their condition than that of the wicked!

"I told God out on the shales this afternoon that I just knew padre Rosendo wouldn't die!" The soft, sweet voice hovered on the silence like celestial melody.

If ye ask anything in my name—in my character—it shall be given you. Carmen asked in the character of the sinless Christ, for her asking was an assertion of what she instinctively knew to be truth, despite the evidence of the physical senses. Her petitions were affirmations of Immanuel—God with us.

"Carmen," whispered the priest hoarsely, "go back to your bed, and know, just know that God is here! Know that He did not make padre Rosendo sick, and that He will not let him die! Know it for him—and for me!"

"Why, Padre, I know that now!" The child looked up into the priest's face with her luminous eyes radiating unshaken trust—a trust that seemed born of understanding. Yea, she knew that all good was there, for God is omnipotent. They had but to stretch forth their hands to touch the robe of His Christ. The healing principle which cleansed the lepers and raised the dead was even with them there in that quiet room. Jose had only to realize it, nothing doubting. Carmen had done her work, and her mind now was stayed on Him. Infinite Intelligence did not know Rosendo as Jose was trying to know him, sick and dying. God is Life—and there is no death!

Carmen was again asleep. Jose sat alone, his open Bible before him and his thought with his God.

Oh, for even a slight conception of Him who is Life! Moses worked "as seeing Him who is invisible." Carmen lived with her eyes on Him, despite her dreary mundane encompassment. And Jose, as he sat there throughout the watches of the night, facing the black terror, was striving to pierce the mist which had gone up from the face of the ground and was separating him from his God. Through the long, dark hours, with the quiet of death upon the desolate chamber, he sat mute before the veil that was "still untaken away."

What was it that kept telling him that Rosendo lay dying before him? Does matter talk? Did the serpent talk to Eve? Do fleshly nerves and frail bodily organs converse with men? Can the externalization of thought report back to the thought itself? Nay, the report came to him from the physical senses—naught else. And they reported—nothing! He was seeing but his own thoughts of mixed good and evil. And they were false, because they testified against God.

Surely God knew Rosendo. But not as the physical senses were trying to make Jose know him, sick and dying. Surely the subjective determines the objective; for as we think, so are we—the Christ said that. From his human standpoint Jose was seeing his thoughts of a dying mortal. And now he was trying to know that those thoughts did not come from God—that they had no authority back of them—that they were children of the "one lie" about God—that they were false, false as hell, and therefore impotent and unreal.

What, then, had he to fear? Nothing, for truth is beyond the reach of personal sense. So God and His ideas, reflected by the real Rosendo, were beyond the reach of evil.

If this were true, then he must clear his own mentality—even as he now knew Carmen had done out on the shales that afternoon. He was no longer dealing with a material Rosendo, but with false beliefs about a son of God. He was handling mental concepts. And to the serpent, error, he was trying to say: "What is your authority?"

If man lives, he never dies. If man is, then he always has been. And he was never born—and never passes into oblivion. A fact never changes. If two and two make four to-day, they always have done so, and always will.

Can good produce evil? Then evil can have no creator. Rosendo, when moved by good, had gone into the wilds of Guamoco on a mission of love. Did evil have power to smite him for his noble sacrifice?

What is this human life of ours? Real existence? No, but a sense of existence—and a false sense, for it postulates a god of evil opposed to the one supreme Creator of all that really is. Then the testimony that said Rosendo must die was cruelly false. And, more, it was powerless—unless Jose himself gave it power.

Did Carmen know that? Had she so reasoned? Assuredly no! But she knew God as Jose had never known Him. And, despite the testimony of the fleshly eyes, she had turned from physical sense to Him.

"It is not practicable!" the world cries in startled protest.

But, behold her life!

Jose had begun to see that discord was the result of unrighteousness, false thought. He began to understand why it was that Jesus always linked disease with sin. His own paradoxical career had furnished ample proof of that. Yet his numberless tribulations were not due solely to his own wrong thinking, but likewise to the wrong thought of others with respect to him, thought which he knew not how to neutralize. And the channels for this false, malicious, carnal thought had been his beloved parents, his uncle, the Archbishop, his tutors, and, in fact, all with whom he had been associated until he came to Simiti. There he had found Carmen. And there the false thought had met a check, a reversal. The evil had begun to destroy itself. And he was slowly awaking to find nothing but good.

The night hours flitted through the heavy gloom like spectral acolytes. Rosendo sank into a deep sleep. The steady roll of the frogs in the lake at length died away. A flush stole timidly across the eastern sky.

"Padre dear, he will not die."

It was Carmen's voice that awoke the slumbering priest. The child stood at his side, and her little hand clasped his. Rosendo slept. His chest rose and fell with the rhythmic breathing. Jose looked down upon him. A great lump came into his throat, and his voice trembled as he spoke.

"You are right, chiquita. Go, call your madre Maria now, and I will go home to rest."



CHAPTER 13

That day Rosendo left his bed. Two days later he again set out for Guamoco.

"There is gold there, and I must, I will find it!" he repeatedly exclaimed as he pushed his preparations.

The courage of the man was magnificent. On its rebound it carried him over the protest of Dona Maria and the gloomy forebodings of his fellow-townsmen, and launched him again on the desolate trail.

But Jose had uttered no protest. He moved about wrapped in undefinable awe. For he believed he had seen Rosendo lifted from the bed of death. And no one might tell him that it was not by the same power that long ago had raised the dead man of Nain. Carmen had not spoken of the incident again; and something laid a restraint upon Jose's lips.

The eyes of the Alcalde bulged with astonishment when Rosendo entered his store that morning in quest of further supplies.

"Caramba! Go back to your bed, compadre!" he exclaimed, bounding from his chair. "You are walking in your delirium!"

"Na, amigo," replied Rosendo with a smile, "the fever has left me. And now I must have another month's supplies, for I go back to Guamoco as soon as my legs tremble less."

"Caramba! caramba!"

The Alcalde acted as if he were in the presence of a ghost. But at length becoming convinced that Rosendo was there on matters of business, and in his right mind, he checked further expression of wonder and, with a shrug of his fat shoulders, assumed his wonted air of a man of large affairs.

"I can allow you five pesos oro on account of the gold which the Cura brought me yesterday," he said severely. "But that leaves you still owing ten pesos for your first supplies; and thirty if I give you what you ask for now. If you cannot pay this amount when you return, you will have to work it out for me."

His little eyes grew steely and cold. Rosendo well knew what the threat implied. But he did not falter.

"Bien, compadre," he quietly replied, "it will be as you say."

Late that afternoon Juan returned from Bodega Central with a half ounce of quinine. He had made the trip with astonishing celerity, and had arrived at the riverine town just as a large steamer was docking. The purser supplied him with the drug, and he immediately started on his return.

The Alcalde set out to deliver the drug to Rosendo; but not finding him at home, looked in at the parish house. Jose and Carmen were deep in their studies.

"A thousand pardons, Senor Padre, but I have the medicine you ordered for Rosendo," placing the small package upon the table.

"You may set it down against me, Don Mario," said Jose.

"No!" exclaimed the Alcalde, "this must not be charged to the parish!"

"I said to me, amigo," replied the priest firmly.

"It is the same thing, Padre!" blurted the petty merchant.

The priest's anger began to rise, but he restrained it. "Padre Diego is no longer here, you must remember," he said quietly.

"But the parish pays your debts; and it would not pay the full value of this and Juan's trip," was the coarse retort.

"Very well, then, Don Mario," answered Jose. "You may charge it to Rosendo. But tell me first how much you will place against him for it."

The Alcalde reflected a moment. "The quinine will be five pesos oro, and Juan's trip three additional. Is it not worth it?" he demanded, blustering before Jose's steady gaze. "If Rosendo had been really sick it would have saved his life!"

"Then you do not believe he was dangerously ill?" asked Jose with some curiosity.

"He couldn't have been really sick and be around to-day—could he?" the Alcalde demanded.

The priest glanced at Carmen. She met the look with a smile.

"No," he said slowly, "not really sick." Then he quickly added:

"If you charge Rosendo eight pesos for that bit of quinine, Don Mario, you and I are no longer working together, for I do not take base advantage of any man's necessities."

The Alcalde became confused. He was going too far. "Na, Senor Padre," he said hastily, with a sheepish grin. "I will leave the quinine with you, and do you settle the account with Juan." With which he beat a disordered retreat.

Jose was thankful that, for a few months, at least, he would have a powerful hold on this man through his rapacity. What would happen when the Alcalde at length learned that Rosendo was not searching for Don Ignacio's lost mine, he did not care to conjecture. That matter was in other hands than his, and he was glad to leave it there. He asked now only to see each single step as he progressed.

"Did Don Mario say that stuff would cure padre Rosendo?" asked Carmen, pointing to the quinine.

"Yes, chiquita."

"Why did he say so, Padre?"

"Because he really believed it, carita."

"But what is it, Padre—and how can it cure sick people?"

"It is the bark of a certain tree, little one, that people take as medicine. It is a sort of poison which people take to counteract another poison. A great school of medicine is founded upon that principle, Carmen," he added. And then he fell to wondering if it really was a principle, after all. If so, it was evil overcoming evil. But would the world believe that both he and Rosendo had been cured by—what? Faith? True prayer? By the operation of a great, almost unknown principle? Or would it scoff at such an idea?

But what cared he for that? He saw himself and Rosendo restored, and that was enough. He turned to the child. "They think the quinine cures fever, little one," he resumed.

"And does it?" The little face wore an anxious look as she put the question.

"They think it does, chiquita," replied the priest, wondering what he should say.

"But it is just because they think so that they get well, isn't it?" the girl continued.

"I guess it is, child."

"And if they thought right they would be cured without this—is it not so, Padre dear?"

"I am sure of it—now," replied the priest. "In fact, if they always kept their thoughts right I am sure they would never be sick."

"You mean, if they always thought about God," the child amended.

"Yes—I mean just that. If they knew, really knew, that God is everywhere, that He is good, and that He never makes people sick, they would always be well."

"Of course, Padre. It is only their bad thoughts that make them sick. And even then they are not really sick," the child concluded. "They think they are, and they think they die—and then they wake up and find it isn't so at all."

Had the child made this remark to him a few weeks before, he had crushed it with the dull, lifeless, conventional formulae of human belief. To-day in penitent humility he was trying to walk hand in hand with her the path she trod. For he was learning from her that righteousness is salvation. A few weeks ago he had lain at death's door, yearning to pass the portal. Yesterday he believed he had again seen the dark angel, hovering over the stricken Rosendo. But in each case something had intervened. Perhaps that "something not ourselves that makes for righteousness," the unknown, almost unacknowledged force that ceases not to combat evil in the human consciousness. Clinging to his petty egoisms; hugging close his shabby convictions of an evil power opposed to God; stuffed with worldly learning and pride of race and intellect, in due season, as he sank under the burden of his imaginings, the veil had been drawn aside for a fleeting moment—and his soul had frozen with awe at what it beheld!

For, back of the density of the human concept, the fleeting, inexplicable medley of good and evil which constitutes the phenomenon of mortal existence, he had seen God! He had seen Him as all-inclusive mind, omnipotent, immanent, perfect, eternal. He had caught a moment's glimpse of the tremendous Presence which holds all wisdom, all knowledge, yet knows no evil. He had seen a blinding flash of that "something" toward which his life had strained and yearned. With it had come a dim perception of the falsity of the testimony of physical sense, and the human life that is reared upon it. And though he counted not himself to have apprehended as yet, he was struggling, even with thanksgiving, up out of his bondage, toward the gleam. The shafts of error hissed about him, and black doubt and chill despair still felled him with their awful blows. But he walked with Carmen. With his hand in hers, he knew he was journeying toward God.

On the afternoon before his departure Rosendo entered the parish house in apprehension. "I have lost my escapulario, Padre!" he exclaimed. "The string caught in the brush, and the whole thing was torn from my neck. I—I don't like to go back without one," he added dubiously.

"Ah, then you have nothing left but Christ," replied Jose with fine irony. "Well, it is of no consequence."

"But, Padre, it had been blessed by the Bishop!"

"Well, don't worry. Why, the Holy Father himself once blessed this republic of ours, and now it is about the most unfortunate country in the whole world! But you are a good Catholic, Rosendo, so you need not fear."

Rosendo was, indeed, a good Catholic. He accepted the faith of his fathers without reserve. He had never known any other. Simple, superstitious, and great of heart, he held with rigid credulity to all that had been taught him in the name of religion. But until Jose's advent he had feared and hated priests. Nevertheless, his faith in signs and miracles and the healing power of blessed images was child-like. Once when he saw in the store of Don Mario a colored chromo of Venus and Cupid, a cheap print that had come with goods imported from abroad, he had devoutly crossed himself, believing it to be the Virgin Mary with the Christ-child.

"But I will fix you up, Rosendo," said Jose, noting the man's genuine anxiety. "Have Dona Maria cut out a cloth heart and fasten it to a stout cord. I will take it to the church altar and bless it before the image of the Virgin. You told me once that the Virgin was the Rincon family's patron, you know."

"Bueno!" ejaculated the pleased Rosendo, as he hastened off to execute the commission.

Several times before Rosendo went back to Guamoco Jose had sought to draw him into conversation about his illness, and to get his view of the probable cause of his rapid recovery. But the old man seemed loath to dwell on the topic, and Jose could get little from him. At any mention of the episode a troubled look would come over his face, and he would fall silent, or would find an excuse to leave the presence of the priest.

"Rosendo," Jose abruptly remarked to him as he was busy with his pack late the night before his departure, "will you take with you the quinine that Juan brought?"

Rosendo looked up quickly. "I can not, Padre."

"And why?"

"On account of Carmen."

"But what has she to do with it, amigo?" Jose asked in surprise.

Rosendo looked embarrassed. "I—Bien, Padre, I promised her I would not."

"When?"

"To-day, Padre."

Jose reflected on the child's unusual request. Then:

"But if you fell sick up in Guamoco, Rosendo, what could you do?"

"Quien sabe, Padre! Perhaps I could gather herbs and make a tea—I don't know. She didn't say anything about that." He looked at Jose and laughed. Then, in an anxious tone:

"Padre, what can I do? The little Carmen asks me not to take the quinine, and I can not refuse her. But I may get sick. I—I have always taken medicine when I needed it and could get it. But the only medicine we have in Simiti is the stuff that some of the women make—teas and drinks brewed from roots and bark. I have never seen a doctor here, nor any real medicines but quinine. And even that is hard to get, as you know. I used to make a salve out of the livers of mapina snakes—it was for the rheumatism—I suffered terribly when I worked in the cold waters in Guamoco. I think the salve helped me. But if I should get the disease now, would Carmen let me make the salve again?"

He bent over his outfit for some moments. "She says if I trust God I will not get sick," he at length resumed. "She says I must not think about it. Caramba! What has that to do with it? People get sick whether they think about it or not. Do you believe, Padre, this new escapulario will protect me?"

The man's words reflected the strange mixture of mature and childish thought typical of these untutored jungle folk, in which longing for the good is so heavily overshadowed by an educated belief in the power of evil.

"Rosendo," said Jose, finding at last his opportunity, "tell me, do you think you were seriously ill day before yesterday?"

"Quien sabe, Padre! Perhaps it was only the terciana, after all."

"Well, then," pursuing another tack, "do you think I was very sick that day when I rushed to the lake—?"

"Caramba, Padre! But you were turning cold—you hardly breathed—we all thought you must die—all but Carmen!"

"And what cured me, Rosendo?" the priest asked in a low, steady voice.

"Why—Padre, I can not say."

"Nor can I, positively, my friend. But I do know that the little Carmen said I should not die. And she said the same of you when, as I would swear, you were in the fell clutches of the death angel himself."

"Padre—" Rosendo's eyes were large, and his voice trembled in awesome whisper—"is she—the little Carmen—is she—an hada?"

"A witch? Hombre! No!" cried Jose, bursting into a laugh at the perturbed features of the older man. "No, amigo, she is not an hada! Let us say, rather, as you first expressed it to me, she is an angel—and let us appreciate her as such.

"But," he continued, "I tell you in all seriousness, there are things that such as you and I, with our limited outlook, have never dreamed of; and that child seems to have penetrated the veil that hides spiritual things from the material vision of men like us. Let us wait, and if we value that 'something' which she seems to possess and know how to use, let us cut off our right hands before we yield to the temptation to place any obstacle in the way of her development along the lines which she has chosen, or which some unseen Power has chosen for her. It is for you and me, Rosendo, to stand aside and watch, while we protect her, if haply we may be privileged some day to learn her secret in full. You and I are the unlearned, while she is filled with wisdom. The world would say otherwise, and would condemn us as fools. Thank God we are out of the world here in Simiti!"

He choked back the inrush of memories and brushed away a tear.

"Rosendo," he concluded, "be advised. If Carmen told you not to think of sickness while in Guamoco, then follow her instructions. It is not the child, but a mighty Power that is speaking through her. Of that I have long been thoroughly convinced. And I am as thoroughly convinced that that same Power has appointed you and me her protectors and her followers. You and I have a mighty compact—"

"Hombre!" interrupted Rosendo, clasping the priest's hand, "my life is hers—you know it—she has only to speak, and I obey! Is it not so?"

"Assuredly, Rosendo," returned Jose. "And now a final word. Let us keep solely to ourselves what we have learned of her. Our plans are well formulated. Let us adhere to them in strict silence. I know not whither we are being led. But we are in the hands of that 'something' that speaks and works through her—and we are satisfied. Are we not?"

They clasped hands again. The next morning Rosendo set his face once more toward the emerald hills of Guamoco.

As the days passed, Jose became more silent and thoughtful. But it was a silence bred of wonder and reverence, as he dwelt upon the things that had been revealed to him. Who and what was this unusual child, so human, and yet so strangely removed from the world's plane of thought? A child who understood the language of the birds, and heard the grass grow—a child whom Torquemada would have burnt as a witch, and yet with whom he could not doubt the Christ dwelt.

Jose often studied her features while she bent over her work. He spent hours, too, poring over the little locket which had been found among her mother's few effects. The portrait of the man was dim and soiled. Jose wondered if the poor woman's kisses and tears had blurred it. The people of Badillo said she had died with it pressed to her lips. But its condition rendered futile all speculation in regard to its original. That of the mother, however, was still fresh and clear. Jose conjectured that she must have been either wholly Spanish, or one of the more refined and cultured women of Colombia. And she had doubtless been very young and beautiful when the portrait was made. With what dark tragedy was that little locket associated? Would it ever yield its secret?

But Carmen's brown curls and light skin—whence came they? Were they wholly Latin? Jose had grave doubts. And her keen mind, and deep religious instinct? Who knew? He could only be sure that they had come from a source far, far above her present lowly environment. With that much he must for the present be content.

* * * * *

Another month unfolded its length in quiet days, and Rosendo again returned. Not ill this time, nor even much exhausted. Nor did the little leathern pouch contain more than a few pesos in gold dust. But determination was written grim and trenchant upon his black face as he strode into the parish house and extended his great hand to the priest.

"I have only come for more supplies, Padre," he said. "I have some three pesos worth of gold. Most of this I got around Culata, near Don Felipe's quartz vein, the Andandodias. Caramba, what veins in those hills! If we had money to build a mill, and knew how to catch the gold, we would not need to wash the river sands that have been gone over again and again for hundreds of years!"

But Jose's thoughts were of the Alcalde. He determined to send for him at once, while Rosendo was removing the soil of travel.

Don Mario came and estimated the weight of the gold by his hand. Then he coolly remarked: "Bien, Senor Padre, I will send Rosendo to my hacienda to-morrow to cut cane and make panela."

"And how is that, Don Mario?" inquired Jose.

The Alcalde began to bluster. "He owes me thirty pesos oro, less this, if you wish me to keep it. I see no likelihood that he can ever repay me. And so he must now work out his debt."

"How long will that take him, amigo?"

"Quien sabe? Senor Padre," the Alcalde replied, his eyes narrowing.

The priest braced himself, and his face assumed an expression that it had not worn before he came to Simiti. "Look you now, my friend," he began in tones pregnant with meaning. "I have made some inquiries regarding your system of peonage. I find that you pay your peones from twenty to thirty cents a day for their hard labor, and at the same time charge them as much a day for food. Or you force them to buy from you tobacco and rum at prices which keep them always in your debt. Is it not so?"

"Na, Padre, you have been misinformed," the Alcalde demurred, with a deprecating gesture.

"I have not. Lazaro Ortiz is now working for you on that system. And daily he becomes more deeply indebted to you, is it not so?"

"But, Padre—"

"It is useless for you to deny it, Don Mario, for I have facts. Now listen to me. Let us understand each other clearly, nor attempt to dissimulate. That iniquitous system of peonage has got to cease in my parish!"

"Caramba, but Padre Diego had peones!" the Alcalde exploded.

"And he was a wicked man," added Jose. Then he continued:

"I know not what information you may have from the Bishop regarding me, yet this I tell you: I shall report you to Bogota, and I will band the citizens of Simiti together to drive you out of town, if you do not at once release Lazaro, and put an end to this wicked practice. The people will follow if I lead!"

It was a bold stroke, and the priest knew that he was standing upon shaky ground. But the man before him was superstitious, untutored and child-like. A show of courage, backed by an assertion of authority, might produce the desired effect. Moreover, Jose knew that he was in the right. And right must prevail!

Don Mario glared at him, while an ugly look spread over his coarse features. The priest went on:

"Lazaro has long since worked out his debt, and you shall release him at once. As to Rosendo, he must have the supplies he needs to return to Guamoco. You understand?"

"Caramba!" Don Mario's face was purple with rage. "You think you can tell me what to do—me, the Alcalde!" he volleyed. "You think you can make us change our customs! Caramba! You are no better than the priest Diego, whom you try to make me believe so wicked! Hombre, you were driven out of Cartagena yourself! A nice sort to be teaching a little girl—!"

"Stop, man!" thundered Jose, striding toward him with upraised arm.

Don Mario fell back in his chair and quailed before the mountainous wrath of the priest.

A shadow fell across the open doorway. Glancing up, Jose saw Carmen. For a moment the girl stood looking in wonder at the angry men. Then she went quickly to the priest and slipped a hand into his. A feeling of shame swept over him, and he went back to his chair. Carmen leaned against him, but she appeared to be confused. Silence fell upon them all.

"Cucumbra doesn't fight any more, Padre," the girl at length began in hesitation. "He and the puppy play together all the time now. He has learned a lot, and now he loves the puppy."

So had the priest learned much. He recalled the lesson. "Bien," he said in soft tones, "I think we became a bit too earnest, Don Mario. We are good friends, is it not so? And we are working together for the good of Simiti. But to have good come to us, we must do good to others."

He went to his trunk and took out a wallet. "Here are twenty pesos, Don Mario." It was all he had in the world, but he did not tell the Alcalde so. "Take them on Rosendo's account. Let him have the new supplies he needs, and I will be his surety. And, friend, you are going to let me prove to you with time that the report you have from Cartagena regarding me is false."

Don Mario's features relaxed somewhat when his hand closed over the grimy bills.

"Do not forget, amigo," added Jose, assuming an air of mystery as he pursued the advantage, "that you and I are associated in various business matters, is it not so?"

The Alcalde's mouth twitched, but finally extended in an unctuous grin. After all, the priest was a descendant of the famous Don Ignacio, and—who knew?—he might have resources of which the Alcalde little dreamed.

"Cierto, Padre!" he cried, rising to depart. "And we will yet uncover La Libertad! You guarantee Rosendo's debt? Bien, he shall have the supplies. But I think he should take another man with him. Lazaro might do, no?"

It was a gracious and unlooked for condescension.

"Send Lazaro to me, Don Mario," said Jose. "We will find use for him, I think."

And thus Rosendo was enabled to depart a third time to the solitudes of Guamoco.



CHAPTER 14

With Rosendo again on the trail, Jose and Carmen bent once more to their work. Within a few days the grateful Lazaro was sent to Rosendo's hacienda, biding the time when the priest should have a larger commission to bestow upon him. With the advent of the dry season, peace settled over the sequestered town, while its artless folk drowsed away the long, hot days and danced at night in the silvery moonlight to the twang of the guitar and the drone of the amorous canzonet. Jose was deeply grateful for these days of unbroken quiet, and for the opportunity they afforded him to probe the child's thought and develop his own. Day after day he taught her. Night after night he visited the members of his little parish, getting better acquainted with them, administering to their simple needs, talking to them in the church edifice on the marvels of the outside world, and then returning to his little cottage to prepare by the feeble rays of his flickering candle Carmen's lessons for the following day. He had no texts, save the battered little arithmetic; and even that was abandoned as soon as Carmen had mastered the decimal system. Thereafter he wrote out each lesson for her, carefully wording it that it might contain nothing to shock her acute sense of the allness of God, and omitting from the vocabulary every reference to evil, to failure, disaster, sin and death. In mathematics he was sure of his ground, for there he dealt wholly with the metaphysical. But history caused him many an hour of perplexity in his efforts to purge it of the dross of human thought. If Carmen were some day to go out into the world she must know the story of its past. And yet, as Jose faced her in the classroom and looked down into her unfathomable eyes, in whose liquid depths there seemed to dwell a soul of unexampled purity, he could not bring himself even to mention the sordid events in the development of the human race which manifested the darker elements of the carnal mind. Perhaps, after all, she might never go out into the world. He had not the faintest idea how such a thing could be accomplished. And so under his tutelage the child grew to know a world of naught but brightness and beauty, where love and happiness dwelt ever with men, and wicked thoughts were seen as powerless and transient, harmless to the one who knew God to be "everywhere." The man taught the child with the sad remembrance of his own seminary training always before him, and with a desire, amounting almost to frenzy, to keep from her every limiting influence and benumbing belief of the carnal mind.