"If children were not falsely educated to know all manner of evil," he mused, "what spiritual powers might they not develop in adult life, powers that are as yet not even imagined! But their primitive religious instinct is regarded by the worldly-wise parent as but a part of the infant existence, which must soon give place to the more solid and real beliefs and opinions which the world in general regards as established and conventional, even though their end is death. And so they teach their children to make evil real, even while admonishing them to protect themselves against it and eventually so to rise as to overcome it, little realizing that the carnal belief of the reality of evil which a child is taught to accept permeates its pure thought like an insidious poison, and becomes externalized in the conventional routine existence of mind in matter, soul in body, a few brief years of mingled good and evil, and then darkness—the end here certain; the future life a vague, impossible conjecture."

Jose determined that Carmen's education should be spiritual, largely because he knew, constituted as she was, it could not well be otherwise. And he resolved that from his teachings she should glean nothing but happiness, naught but good. With his own past as a continual warning, he vowed first that never should the mental germ of fear be planted within this child's mind. He himself had cringed like a coward before it all his desolate life. And so his conduct had been consistently slavish, specious, and his thought stamped with the brand of the counterfeit. He knew not how much longer he must struggle with it. But he knew that, if he would progress, the warfare must go on, until at length he should put it under his feet. His mind still bore the almost ineradicable mold of the fear deeply graven into it by the ignorant opinions, the worldly, material, unspiritual beliefs of his dear but unwise parents. His life had been hedged with baleful shadows because of it; and over every bright picture there hung its black draping. As he looked back over the path along which he had come, he could see every untoward event, every unhappiness and bitter disappointment, as the externalization of fear in some form, the germ of which had been early planted in the fertile soil of his plastic brain. Without it he might have risen to towering heights. Under its domination he had sunk until the swirling stream of life had eddied him upon the desolate shores of Simiti. In the hands of the less fearful he had been a puppet. In his own eyes he was a fear-shaped manikin, the shadow of God's real man. The fear germ had multiplied within him a billionfold, and in the abundant crop had yielded a mental depression and deep-seated melancholy that had utterly stifled his spirit and dried the marrow of his bones.

They were not pleasant, these thoughts. But now Jose could draw from them something salutary, something definite to shape and guide his work with Carmen. She, at least, should not grow up the slave of fearsome opinions and beliefs born of dense ignorance. Nor should the baseless figments of puerile religious systems find lodgment within her clear thought. The fear element, upon which so much of so-called Christian belief has been reared, and the damnable suggestions of hell and purgatory, of unpardonable sin and endless suffering, the stock-in-trade of poet, priest and prelate up to and overlapping our present brighter day, should remain forever a closed volume to this child, a book as wildly imaginative and as unacceptable as the fabled travels of Maundeville.

"I believe," he would murmur to himself, as he strolled alone in the dusk beside the limpid lake, "that if I could plant myself firmly on the Scriptural statement that God is love, that He is good; and if I could regard Him as infinite mind, while at the same time striving to recognize no reality, no intelligence or life in things material, I could eventually triumph over the whole false concept, and rise out of beliefs of sickness, discord, and death, into an unalterable consciousness of good only."

He had made a beginning when he strove to realize that man is not separated from God; that God is not a far-off abstraction; and that infinite mind is, as Carmen insisted, "everywhere."

"It is only the five physical senses that tell us evil is real," he reflected. "Indeed, without their testimony we would be utterly unconscious of evil! And I am convinced that their testimony is specious, and that we see, hear, and feel only in thought, or in belief. We think the sensations of seeing, hearing, and feeling come to us through the medium of these senses as outward, fleshly contrivances, which in some way communicate with the mind and bridge the gulf between the material and the mental. In reality, we do but see, hear and feel our own thoughts! The philosophers, many of them, said as much centuries ago. So did Jesus. But—the human mind has been mesmerized, simply mesmerized!"

These things he pondered day by day, and watched to see them wrought out in the life of Carmen. "Ah, yes," he would sometimes say, as spiritual ideas unfolded to him, "you evolve beautiful theories, my good Jose, and you say many brave things. But, when the day of judgment comes, as it did when Juan brought you the news of the revolution, then, alas! your theories fly to pieces, and you find yourself very human, very material, and your God hidden behind the distant clouds. When the test comes, you find you cannot prove your beliefs."

Yet the man did not often indulge in self-condemnation, for somehow he knew his ideas were right. When he realized the character and specious nature of evil, and realized, too, that "by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned," he knew that the stirring up of evil by good, and the shaking of the ancient foundations of carnal belief within his mentality, might mean fiery trials, still awaiting him. And yet, the crown was for him who should overcome. Overcome what? The false opinions of mankind, the ignorant beliefs in matter and evil. For what, after all, is responsible for all the evil in this world of ours? What but a false concept of God? "And if I keep my nose buried forever in matter, how can I hope to see God, who is Spirit? And how can I follow the Christ unless I think as he thought?" he said.

But it was in the classroom with Carmen that he always received his greatest stimulus.

"See, Padre dear," she said one day, "if I erase a wrong figure and then set down the right one instead, I get the right answer. And it is just like that when we think. If we always put good thoughts in the place of the bad ones, why, everything comes out right, doesn't it?"

Jose smiled at the apt comparison. "Of course, chiquita," he replied. "Only in your algebra you know which are the right figures to put down. But how do you know which thoughts are right?"

"I always know, Padre. I can't make even the least mistake about the thoughts. Why, it is easier to mistake with figures than it is with thoughts."

"How is that, little one?"

"Because, if you always think God first, you can never think wrong. Now can you? And if you think of other things first you are almost sure to think of the wrong thing, is it not so, Padre?"

The priest had to admit the force of her statement.

"And, you know, Padre dear," the girl went on, "when I understand the right rule in algebra, the answer just comes of itself. Well, it is so with everything when we understand that God is the right rule—you call Him principle, don't you?—well, when we know that He is the only rule for everything, then the answers to all our problems just come of themselves."

Aye, thought Jose, the healing works of the great Master were only the "signs following," the "answers" to the people's problems, the sure evidence that Jesus understood the Christ-principle.

"And when you say that God is the right rule for everything, just what do you mean, chiquita?"

"That He is everywhere," the girl replied.

"That He is infinite and omnipresent good, then?" the priest amplified.

"He is good—and everywhere," the child repeated firmly.

"And the necessary corollary of that is, that there is no evil," Jose added.

"I don't know what you mean by corollary, Padre dear. It's a big word, isn't it?"

"I mean—I think I know how you would put it, little one—if God is everywhere, then there is nothing bad. Is that right?"

"Yes, Padre. Don't you see?"

Assuredly he saw. He saw that a fact can have no real opposite; that any predicated opposite must be supposition. And evil is the supposition; whereas good is the fact. The latter is "plus," and the former "minus." No wonder the origin of evil has never been found, although humanity has struggled with the problem for untold ages! Jesus diagnosed evil as a lie. He gave it the minus sign, the sign of nothingness. The world has tried to make it positive, something. From the false sense of evil as a reality has come the equally false sense of man's estrangement from God, through some fictitious "fall"—a curse, truly, upon the human intellect, but not of God's infliction. For false belief always curses with a reign of discord, which endures until the belief becomes corrected by truth. From the beginning, the human race has vainly sought to postulate an equal and opposite to everything in the realm of both the spiritual and material. It has been hypnotized, obsessed, blinded, by this false zeal. The resultant belief in "dualism" has rendered hate the equal and opposite of Love, evil the equal and opposite of Good, and discord the eternal opponent of Harmony. To cope with evil as a reality is to render it immortal in our consciousness. To know its unreality is to master it.

"Throughout life," Jose mused, "every positive has its negative, every affirmation its denial. But the opposites never mingle. And, moreover, the positive always dispels the negative, thus proving the specious nature of the latter. Darkness flees before the light, and ignorance dissolves in the morning rays of knowledge. Both cannot be real. The positive alone bears the stamp of immortality. Carmen has but one fundamental rule: God is everywhere. This gives her a sense of immanent power, with which all things are possible."

Thus with study and meditation the days flowed past, with scarcely a ripple to break their quiet monotony. Rosendo came, and went again. He brought back at the end of his first month's labors on the newly discovered deposit some ninety pesos in gold. He had reached the bedrock, and the deposit was yielding its maximum; but the yield would continue for many months, he said. His exultation overleaped all bounds, and it was with difficulty that Jose could bring him to a consideration of the problems still confronting them.

"I think, Rosendo," said the priest, "that we will send, say, thirty pesos this month to Cartagena; the same next month; and then increase the amount slightly. This method is sure to have a beneficial effect upon the ecclesiastical authorities there."

"Fine!" ejaculated Rosendo. "And how will you send it, Padre?"

Jose pondered the situation. "We cannot send the gold direct to the Bishop, for that would excite suspicion. Masses, you know, are not paid for in gold dust and nuggets. And we have no money. Nor could we get the gold exchanged for bills here in Simiti, even if we dared run the risk of our discovery becoming known."

For the Alcalde was already nosing about in an effort to ascertain the source of the gold with which Rosendo had just cancelled his debt and purchased further supplies. Jose now saw that, under existing conditions, it would be utterly impossible for Rosendo to obtain titles to mineral properties through Don Mario. He spent hours seeking a solution of the involved problem. Then, just before Rosendo departed again for the mountains, Jose called him into the parish house.

"Rosendo, I think I see a way. Bring me one of the paper boxes of candles which you have just purchased from Don Mario."

"Carumba! Padre," queried the surprised Rosendo, as he returned with the box, "and what is this for?"

"I merely want to get the name of the firm which sold the candles. The Empresa Alemania, Barranquilla. Good! Now listen. I have a method that is roundabout, but certainly promises much. I will write to the firm, appointing them my agents while I pose as Jose Rincon, miner. The agency established, I will send them our gold each month, asking them to return to me its equivalent in bills, deducting, of course, their commission. Then I will send these bills, or such part as we deem wise, to Wenceslas. Each month Juan, who will be sworn to secrecy, will convey the gold to Bodega Central in time to meet Captain Julio's boat. The captain will both deliver the gold to the Empresa Alemania, and bring back the bills in exchange. Then, from Simiti, and in the regular manner, I will send the small packet of bills to Wenceslas as contributions from the parish. We thus throw Don Mario off the scent, and arouse no suspicion in any quarter. As I receive mail matter at various times, the Alcalde will not know but what I also receive consignments of money from my own sources. I think the plan will work out. Juan already belongs to us. What, then, is there to fear?"

And so, as it was arranged, it worked out. Juan reveled in the honor of such intimate relations with the priest and Rosendo, and especially in the thought that he was working in secret for the girl he adored. By the time Rosendo returned again from Guamoco, Jose had sent his first consignment of money to the Bishop, carefully directing it to Wenceslas, personally, and had received an acknowledgment in a letter which caused him deep thought.

"To further stimulate the piety of your communicants," it read, "and arouse them to more generous contributions to our glorious cause, you will inform them that, if their monetary contributions do not diminish in amount for the coming year, they will be made participants in the four solemn Novenas which will be offered by His Grace, the Bishop of Cartagena. Moreover, if their contributions increase, the names of the various contributors will be included in the one hundred Masses which are to be offered in December at the Shrine of Our Lady of Chiquinquia for their spiritual and temporal welfare. Contributors will also have a High Mass after death, offered by one of His Grace's assistants, as soon as the notification of death is received here. In addition to these, His Grace, always mindful of the former importance of the parish of Simiti, and acknowledging as its special patron the ever blessed Virgin, has arranged to bestow the episcopal blessing upon an image of the Sacred Heart, which will be shipped to his faithful children in Simiti when the amount of their contributions shall have met the expense thereof. Let us keep ever in mind the pious words of the Bl. Margaret Mary, who has conveyed to us the assurance which she received directly from Our Blessed Lord that He finds great joy in beholding His Sacred Heart visibly represented, that it may touch the hard hearts of mankind. Our blessed Saviour promised the gracious Margaret Mary that He would pour out abundantly of His rich treasure upon all who honor this image, and that it shall draw down from heaven every blessing upon those who adore and reverence it. Inform your parishioners that the recital of the offering, 'O, Sacred Heart of Jesus, may it be everywhere adored!' carries a hundred days' indulgence each time.

"You will bear in mind that the General Intention for this month is The Conversion of America. Though our Church is founded on the Rock, and is to last forever, so that the gates of hell shall never prevail against her, nevertheless she has been called upon to withstand many assaults from her enemies, the advocates of modernism, in the land of liberal thought to our north. These assaults, though painful to her, can never be fatal to her spiritual life, although they unfortunately are so to many of her dear children, who yield to the insidious persuasions of the heretics who do the work of Satan among the Lord's sheep. New and fantastic religions are springing up like noxious weeds in America of the north, and increasing infidelity is apparent on every hand. The Christ prayed that there might be one fold and one shepherd. It is for us this month to pray for the great day when they will be accomplished. But we must be united over the interests of the Sacred Heart. Therefore, liberal plenary indulgences will be granted to those of the faithful who contribute to this glorious cause, so dear to the heart of the blessed Saviour. We enclose leaflets indicating the three degrees, consisting of the Morning Offering, Our Father and ten Hail Marys daily, for the Pope and his interests, and the degree of reparation, by which a plenary indulgence may be gained.

"Stimulate your parishioners to compete joyfully for the statue of the Blessed Virgin, which we mentioned to you in our former communication. Teach them, especially, their entire dependence on Mary, on her prayers to God for their deliverance and welfare. Reveal to them her singularly powerful influence in the shaping of all great historical events of the world; how never has she refused our prayers to exert her mighty influence with her all-potent Son, when she has been appealed to in sincerity, for it rejoices the Sacred Heart of Jesus to yield to the requests of His Blessed Mother. Mary is omnipotent, for she can ask no favor of her Son that He will not grant. Competition for possession of this sacred image, which carries the potent blessing of His Holiness, should be regarded a privilege, and you will so impress it upon the minds of your parishioners.

"Finally, His Grace requests that you will immediately procure whatever information you may regarding the mineral resources of the district of Guamoco, and indicate upon a sketch the location of its various mines, old or new, as known to its inhabitants. Diligent and careful inquiry made by yourself among the people of the district will reveal many hidden facts regarding its resources, which should be made known to His Grace at the earliest possible moment, in view of the active preparations now in progress to forestall the precipitation of another political uprising with its consequent strain upon our Holy Church."

"Money! money! money!" cried Jose. "One would think the Christ had established his Church solely for gold!"

He folded the letter and looked out through the rear door to where Carmen sat, teaching Cucumbra a new trick. He realized then that never before had he been so far from the Holy Catholic faith as at that moment. And Carmen—

"Good God!" he muttered, as his eyes rested upon the child. "If the Church should get possession of Carmen, what would it do with her? Would it not set its forces to work to teach her that evil is a reality—that it is as powerful as good—that God formed man and the universe out of dust—that Jesus came down from a starry heaven that he might die to appease the wrath of a man-like Father—that Mary pleads with the Lord and Jesus, and by her powerful logic induces them to spare mankind and grant their foolish desires—all the dribble and rubbish of outlandish theology that has accumulated around the nucleus of pure Christianity like a gathering snowball throughout the ages! To make the great States up north dominantly Catholic, Rome must—simply must—have the children to educate, that she may saturate their absorbent minds with these puerile, undemonstrable, pagan beliefs before the child has developed its own independent thought. How wise is she—God, how worldly wise and cunning! And I still her priest—"

Carmen came bounding in, followed pellmell by Cucumbra. Cantar-las-horas stalked dignifiedly after her, and stopped at the threshold, where he stood with cocked head and blinking eyes, wondering what move his animated young mistress would make next.

"Padre!" she exclaimed, "the sun is down, and it is time for our walk!"

She seized his hand and drew him out into the road. The play of her expression as she looked up and laughed into his face was like the dance of sunbeams on moving water. They turned down the narrow street which led to the lake. As was her wont, in every object about her, in every trifling event, the child discovered rich treasures of happiness. The pebbles which she tossed with her bare toes were mines of delight. The pigs, which turned up their snouts expectantly as she stooped to scratch their dusty backs—the matronly hens that followed clucking after her—the black babies that toddled out to greet the Cura—all yielded a wealth of delight and interest. She seemed to Jose to uncover joy by a means not unlike the divining rod, which points to hidden gold where to the eye there is naught but barren ground.

Near the margin of the lake they stopped at the door of a cottage, where they were awaited by the matron who displayed a finger wrapped in a bit of cloth. She greeted the priest courteously.

"Senor Padre," she said, "this morning I had the misfortune to cut my finger while peeling yuccas, and I am not sure whether a piece of the skin went into the pot or not. Bueno, the yuccas are all cooked; and now my man says he will not eat them, for this is Friday, and there may be meat with the yuccas. What shall I do? Was it wicked to cook the yuccas, not knowing if a bit of the skin from my finger had fallen into the pot?"

Jose stood dumfounded before such ignorant credulity. Then he shook his head and replied sadly, "No, senora, it was not wicked. Tell your man he may eat the yuccas."

The woman's face brightened, and she hastened into the house to apprise her spouse of the Cura's decision.

"God help us!" muttered Jose under his breath. "Two thousand years of Christianity, and still the world knows not what Jesus taught!"

"But you told me he had good thoughts, Padre dear," said the little voice at his side, as he walked slowly away with bended head. "And that is enough to know."

"Why do you say that, Carmen?" asked Jose, somewhat petulantly.

"Because, Padre, if he had good thoughts, he thought about God—didn't he? And if he thought about God, he always thought of something good. And if we always think about good—well, isn't that enough?"

Jose's eyes struggled with hers. She almost invariably framed her replies with an interrogation, and, whether he would or not, he must perforce give answers which he knew in his heart were right, and yet which the sight of his eyes all too frequently denied.

"Padre, you are not thinking about God now—are you?"

"I am, indeed, child!" he answered abruptly.

"Well—perhaps you are thinking about Him; but you are not thinking with Him—are you?—the way He thinks. You know, He sends us His thoughts, and we have to pick them out from all the others that aren't His, and then think them. If the senora and her man had been thinking God's thoughts, they wouldn't have been afraid to eat a piece of meat on Friday—would they?"

Cucumbra, forgetting his many months of instruction, suddenly yielded to the goad of animal instinct and started along the beach in mad pursuit of a squealing pig. Carmen dashed after him. As Jose watched her lithe, active little body bobbing over the shales behind the flying animals, she seemed to him like an animated sunbeam sporting among the shadows.

"Why should life," he murmured aloud, "beginning in radiance, proceed in ever deepening gloom, and end at last in black night? Why, but for the false education in evil which is inflicted upon us! The joys, the unbounded bliss of childhood, do indeed gush from its innocence—its innocence of the blighting belief in mixed good and evil—innocence of the false beliefs, the undemonstrable opinions, the mad worldly ambitions, the carnal lust, bloated pride, and black ignorance of men! It all comes from not knowing God, to know whom is life eternal! The struggle and mad strife of man—what does it all amount to, when 'in the end he shall be a fool'? Do we in this latest of the centuries, with all our boasted progress in knowledge, really know so much, after all? Alas! we know nothing—nothing!"

"Come, Padre," cried Carmen, returning to him, "we are going to just try now to have all the nice thoughts we can. Let's just look all around us and see if we can't think good thoughts about everything. And, do you know, Padre dear, I've tried it, and when I look at things and something tries to make me see if there could possibly be anything bad about them—why, I find there can't! Try it, and see for yourself."

Jose knew it. He knew that the minds of men are so profaned by constantly looking at evil that their thoughts are tinged with it. He was striving to look up. But in doing so he was combating a habit grown mighty by years of indulgence.

"When you always think good about a thing," the girl went on, "you never can tell what it will do. But good always comes from it. I know. I do it all the time. If things look bad, I just say, 'Why look, here's something trying to tell me that two and two are seven!' And then it goes away."

"Your purity and goodness resist evil involuntarily, little one," said Jose, more to himself than to the child.

"Why, Padre, what big words!"

"No, little one, it is just the meaning of the words that is big," he replied.

The girl was silent for some moments. Then:

"Padre dear, I never thought of it before—but it is true: we don't see the meaning of words with the same eyes that we see trees and stones and people, do we?"

Jose studied the question. "I don't quite understand what you mean, chiquita," he was finally forced to answer.

"Well," she resumed, "the meaning of a word isn't something that we can pick up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there."

"No, Carmen, the meaning is spiritual—mental; it is not physically tangible. It is not seen with the fleshly eyes."

"The meaning of a word is the inside of it, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is the inside, the soul, of the word."

"And we don't see the word, either, do we?" She shook her brown curls in vigorous negation.

"No, little one, we see only written or printed symbols; or hear only sounds that convey to us the words. But the words themselves are mental. We do not see them."

"No, we think them." She meditated a while. "But, Padre dear," she continued, "the inside, or soul, of everything is mental. We never see it. We have to think it."

"Yes, you are right. The things we think we see are only symbols. They stand for the real things."

"Padre, they don't stand for anything!" she replied abruptly.

Jose looked down at her in surprise. He waited.

"Padre, the real things are the things we don't see. And the things we think we see are not real at all!"

Jose had ere this learned not to deny her rugged statements, but to study them for their inner meaning, which the child often found too deep for her limited vocabulary to express.

"The things we think we see," he said, though he was addressing his own thought, "are called the physical. The things we do not see or cognize with the physical senses are called mental, or spiritual. Well?" he queried, looking down again into the serious little face.

"Padre, the very greatest things are those that we don't see at all!"

"True, chiquita. Love, life, joy, knowledge, wisdom, health, harmony—all these are spiritual ideas. The physical sometimes manifests them—and sometimes does not. And in the end, called death, it ceases altogether to manifest them."

"But—these things—the very greatest things there are—are the souls of everything—is it not so, Padre dear?"

"It must be, chiquita."

"And all these things came from God, and He is everywhere, and so He is the soul of everything, no?"

He made the same affirmative reply.

"Padre—don't you see it?—we are not seeing things all around us! We don't see real things that we call trees and stones and people! We see only what we think we see. We see things that are not there at all! We see—"

"Yes, we see only our thoughts. And we think we see them as objects all about us, as trees, and houses, and people. But in the final analysis we see only thoughts," he finished.

"But these thoughts do not come from God," she insisted.

"No," he replied slowly, "because they often manifest discord and error. I think I grasp what is struggling in your mind chiquita. God is—"

"Everywhere," she interrupted.

"He is everywhere, and therefore He is the soul—the inside—the heart and core—of everything. He is mind, and His thoughts are real, and are the only real thoughts there are. He is truth. The opposite of truth is a lie. But, in reality, truth cannot have an opposite. Therefore, a lie is a supposition. And so the thought that we seem to see externalized all about us, and that we call physical objects, is supposition only. And, a supposition being unreal, the whole physical universe, including material man, is unreal—is a supposition, a supposition of mixed good and evil, for it manifests both. It is the lie about God. And, since a lie has no real existence, this human concept of a universe and mankind composed of matter is utterly unreal, an image of thought, an illusion, existing in false thought only—a belief—a supposition pure and simple!"

As he talked he grew more and more animated. He seemed to forget the presence of the child, and appeared to be addressing only his own insistent questionings.

They walked along together in silence for some moments. Then the girl again took up the conversation.

"Padre," she said, "you know, you taught me to prove my problems in arithmetic and algebra. Well, I have proved something about thinking, too. If I think a thing, and just keep thinking it, pretty soon I see it—in some way—outside of me."

A light seemed to flash through Jose's mental chambers, and he recalled the words of the explorer in Cartagena. Yes, that was exactly what he had said—"every thought that comes into the mind tends to become externalized, either upon the body as a physical condition, or in the environment, or as an event, good or bad." It was a law, dimly perceived, but nevertheless sufficiently understood in its workings to indicate a tremendous field as yet all but unknown. The explorer had called it the law of the externalization of thought. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," said the Master, twenty centuries before. Did he recognize the law?

Jose's thought swept over his past. Had his own wrong thinking, or the wrong thought of others, been the cause of his unhappiness and acute mental suffering? But why personalize it? What difference whether it be called his, or the Archbishop's, or whose? Let it suffice that it was false thought, undirected by the Christ-principle, God, that had been externalized in the wreckage which he now called his past life.

He again stood face to face with the most momentous question ever propounded by a waiting world: the question of causation. And he knew now that causation was wholly spiritual.

"Padre dear, you said just now that God was mind. But, if that is true, there is only one mind, for God is everywhere."

"It must be so, chiquita," dreamily responded the priest.

"Then He is your mind and my mind, is it not so?"

"Yes—"

"Then, if He is my mind, there just isn't anything good that I can't do."

Twilight does not linger in the tropics, and already the shadows that stole down through the valley had wrapped the man and child in their mystic folds. Hand in hand they turned homeward.

"Padre, if God is my mind, He will do my thinking for me. And all I have to do is to keep the door open and let His thoughts come in."

Her sweet voice lingered on the still night air. There was a pensive gladness in the man's heart as he tightly held her little hand and led her to Rosendo's door.



CHAPTER 18

The next morning Jose read to Rosendo portions of the communication from Wenceslas.

"Chiquinquia," commented the latter. "I remember that Padre Diego collected much money from our people for Masses to be said at that shrine."

"But where is it, Rosendo?" asked Jose.

"You do not know the story?" queried Rosendo in surprise. "Why, there is not a shrine in the whole of Colombia that works so many cures as this one. Your grandfather, Don Ignacio, knew the place. And it was from him that my—that is, I learned the legend when I was only a boy. It is said that a poor, sick young girl in the little Indian village of Chiquinquia, north of Bogota, stood praying in her shabby little cottage before an old, torn picture of the blessed Virgin." He stopped and crossed himself devoutly. Then he resumed:

"Bueno, while the girl prayed, the picture suddenly rose up in the air; the torn places all closed; the faded colors came again as fresh as ever; and the girl was cured of her affliction. The people of the village immediately built a shrine, over which they hung the picture; and ever since then the most wonderful miracles have been performed by it there."

Jose laughed. "You don't believe that, do you, Rosendo?" he asked in banter.

"Hombre, yes!" exclaimed the latter a bit testily. "I know it! Did not Don Felipe go there when the doctor in Mompox told him the little white spot on his hand was leprosy? And he came back cured."

Leprosy! Jose started as if he had received a blow. He looked furtively at the scar on his own hand, the hand which the leper in Maganguey had lacerated that dreadful night, and which often burned and ached as if seared by a hot iron. He had never dared to voice the carking fear that tightened about his heart at times. But often in the depths of night, when dread anticipation sat like a spectre upon his bed, he had risen and gone out into the darkness to wrestle with his black thoughts. Leprosy! All the gladness and joy left his heart, and a pall of darkness settled over his thought. He turned back into his cottage and tried to find forgetfulness in the simple duties that lay at hand.

"Why is it," he asked himself, as he sat wearily down at his little table, "that I always think of evil first; while Carmen's first thought is invariably of God?"

He looked at the ugly scar on his hand. What thought was externalized in the loathsome experience which produced that? he wondered. Was it the summation of all the fear, the weakness, the wrong belief, that had filled his previous years? And now why was he finding it so difficult to practice what Carmen lived, even though he knew it was truth?

"Alas!" he murmured aloud, "it was the seminary that did it. For there my thought was educated away from the simple teachings of Jesus. To Carmen there is no mystery in godliness. Though she knows utterly nothing about Jesus, yet she hourly uses the Christ-principle. It is the children who grasp the simple truths of God; while the lack of spirituality which results from increasing years shrinks maturer minds until they no longer afford entrance to it. For godliness is broad; and the mind that receives it must be opened wide."

As he sat with his bowed head clasped in his hands, a sweet, airy voice greeted him.

"Why, Padre dear—ah, I caught you that time!—you were thinking that two and two are seven, weren't you?" She shook a rebuking finger at him.

Framed in the doorway like an old masterpiece, the sunlight bronzing her heavy brown curls, the olive-tinted skin of her bare arms and legs flushing with health, and her cheap calico gown held tightly about her, showing the contour of her full and shapely figure, the girl appeared to Jose like a vision from the realm of enchantment. And he knew that she did dwell in the land of spiritual enchantment, where happiness is not at the mercy of physical sense.

"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

"The Lord our God is a right-thinking God, and right-thinking is what He desires in His people."

Jose thought of this as he looked at Carmen. This barefoot girl, who walked humbly, trustingly, with her God, had she not supplied him with a working formula for his every problem, even to the casting out of the corroding fear planted in his heart by that awful experience in Maganguey? Though he had suffered much, yet much had been done for him. The brusque logic of the explorer had swept his mind clear of its last vestige of theological superstition, and prepared it for the truth which, under the benign stimulus of this clear-minded child, would remake his life, if he could now yield himself utterly to it. He must—he would—ceaselessly strive, even though he fell daily, to make his life a pattern of hers, wherein there was no knowledge of evil!

The girl came to the priest and leaned fondly against him. Then a little sigh escaped her lips, as she looked down into his face with pitying affection.

"Padre dear," she said, in a tone that echoed a strain of sadness, "I—I don't believe—you love God very much."

The man was startled, and resentment began to well in his heart. "What a thing to say, Carmen!" he answered reprovingly.

The girl looked up at him with great, wondering eyes. "But, Padre," she protested, "were you not thinking of things that are not true when I came in?"

"No—I was—I was thinking of the future—of—well, chiquita, I was thinking of something that might happen some day, that is all." He stumbled through it with difficulty, for he knew he must not lie to the child. Would she ever trust him again if he did?

"And, Padre, were you afraid?"

"Afraid? Yes, chiquita, I was." He hung his head.

Carmen looked at him reproachfully. "Then, Padre, I was right—for, if you loved God, you would trust Him—and then you couldn't be afraid of anything—could you? People who love Him are not afraid."

He turned his head away. "Ah, child," he murmured, "you will find that out in the world people don't love God in this day and generation. At least they don't love Him that way."

"They don't love Him enough to trust him?" she asked wistfully.

"No." He shook his head sadly. "Nobody trusts Him, not even the preachers themselves. When things happen, they rush for a doctor, or some other human being to help them out of their difficulty. They don't turn to Him any more. They seldom speak His name."

"Have—they—forgotten Him?" she asked slowly, her voice sinking to a whisper.

"Absolutely!" He again buried his head in his hands.

The child stood in silence for some moments. Then:

"What made them forget Him, Padre?"

"I guess, chiquita, they turned from Him because He didn't answer their prayers. I used to pray to Him, too. I prayed hours at a time. But nothing seemed to come of it. And so I stopped." He spoke bitterly.

"You prayed! You mean—"

"I asked Him for things—to help me out of trouble—I asked Him to give me—"

"Why, Padre! Why—that's the very reason!"

He looked up at her blankly. "What is the very reason? What are you trying to tell me, child?"

"Why, He is everywhere, and He is right here all the time. And so there couldn't be any real trouble for Him to help you out of; and He couldn't give you anything, for He has already done that, long ago. We are in Him, don't you know? Just like the little fishes in the lake. And so when you asked Him for things it showed that you didn't believe He had already given them to you. And—you know what you said last night about thinking, and that when we think things, we see them? Well, He has given you everything; but you thought He hadn't, and so you saw it that way—isn't it so?"

She paused for breath. She had talked rapidly and with animation. But before he could reply she resumed:

"Padre dear, you know you told me that Jesus was the best man that ever lived, and that it was because he never had a bad thought—isn't that so?"

"Yes," he murmured.

"Well, did he pray—did he ask God for things?"

"Of course he did, child!" the priest exclaimed. "He always asked Him for things. Why, he was always praying—the New Testament is full of it!"

Acting on a sudden impulse, he rose and went into the sleeping room to get his Bible. The child's face took on an expression of disappointment as she heard his words. Her brow knotted, and a troubled look came into her brown eyes.

Jose returned with his Bible and seated himself again at the table. Opening the book, his eyes fell upon a verse of Mark's Gospel. He stopped to read it; and then read it again. Suddenly he looked up at the waiting girl.

"What is it, Padre? What does it say?"

He hesitated. He read the verse again; then he scanned the child closely, as if he would read a mystery hidden within her bodily presence. Abruptly he turned to the book and read aloud:

"'Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'"

The girl drew a long breath, almost a sigh, as if a weight had been removed from her mind. "Did Jesus say that?" she asked in glad, eager tones.

"Yes—at least it is so reported here," he answered absently.

"Well—he knew, didn't he?"

"Knew what, child?"

"Why, Padre, he told the people to know—just know—that they already had everything—that God had given them everything good—and that if they would know it, they would see it."

Externalization of thought? Yes; or rather, the externalization of truth. Jose fell into abstraction, his eyes glued to the page. There it stood—the words almost shouted it at him! And there it had stood for nearly two thousand years, while priest and prelate, scribe and commentator had gone over it again and again through the ages, without even guessing its true meaning—without even the remotest idea of the infinite riches it held for mankind!

He turned reflectively to Matthew; and then to John. He remembered the passages well—in the past he had spent hours of mortal agony poring over them and wondering bitterly why God had failed to keep the promises they contain.

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

All things—when ye ask believing! But that Greek word surely held vastly more than the translators have drawn from it. Nay, not believing only, but understanding the allness of God as good, and the consequent nothingness of evil, all that seems to oppose Him! How could the translators have so completely missed the mark! And Carmen—had never seen a Bible until he came into her life; yet she knew, knew instinctively, that a good God who was "everywhere" could not possibly withhold anything good from His children. It was the simplest kind of logic.

But, thought Jose again, if the promises are kept, why have we fallen so woefully short of their realization? Then he read again, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." The promise carries a condition—abiding in his words—obeying his commands—keeping the very first Commandment, which is that "Ye shall have no other gods before me"—no gods of evil, sickness, chance, or death. The promises are fulfilled only on the condition of righteousness—right-thinking about God and His infinite, spiritual manifestation.

He turned to Carmen. "Chiquita," he said tenderly, "you never ask God to give you things, do you?"

"Why, no, Padre; why should I? He gives me everything I need, doesn't He?"

"Yes—when you go out to the shales, you—"

"I don't ask Him for things, Padre dear. I just tell Him I know He is everywhere."

"I see—yes, you told me that long ago—I understand, chiquita." His spirit bowed in humble reverence before such divine faith. This untutored, unlearned girl, isolated upon these burning shales, far, far from the haunts of men of pride and power and worldly lore—this barefoot child whose coffers held of material riches scarce more than the little calico dress upon her back—this lowly being knew that which all the fabled wealth of Ind could never buy! Her prayers were not the selfish pleadings that spring from narrow souls, the souls that "ask amiss"—not the frenzied yearnings wrung from suffering, ignorant hearts—nor were they the inflated instructions addressed to the Almighty by a smug, complacent clergy, the self-constituted press-bureau of infinite Wisdom. Her prayers, which so often drifted like sweetest incense about those steaming shales, were not petitions, but affirmations. They did not limit God. She did not plead with Him. She simply knew that He had already met her needs. And that righteousness—right-thinking—became externalized in her consciousness in the good she sought. Jesus did the same thing, over and over again; but the poor, stupid minds of the people were so full of wrong beliefs about his infinite Father that they could not understand, no, not even when he called Lazarus from the tomb.

"Ask in my name," urged the patient Jesus. But the poor fishermen thought he meant his human name to be a talisman, a sort of "Open Sesame," when he was striving all the time, by precept and deed, to show them that they must ask in his character, must be like him, to whom, though of himself he could do nothing, yet all things were possible.

Jose's heart began to echo the Master's words: "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." He put his arm about Carmen and drew her to him.

"Little one," he murmured, "how much has happened in these past few weeks!"

Carmen looked up at him with an enigmatical glance and laughed. "Well, Padre dear, I don't think anything ever really happens, do you?"

"Why not?" he asked.

"Mistakes happen, as in solving my algebra problems. But good things never happen, any more than the answers to my problems happen. You know, there are rules for getting the answers; but there are no rules for making mistakes—are there? But when anything comes out according to the rule, it doesn't happen. And the mistakes, which have no rules, are not real—the answers are real, but the mistakes are not—and so nothing ever really happens. Don't you see, Padre dear?"

"Surely, I see," he acquiesced. Then, while he held the girl close to him, he reflected: Good is never fortuitous. It results from the application of the Principle of all things. The answer to a mathematical problem is a form of good, and it results from the application of the principle of mathematics. Mistakes, and the various things which "happen" when we solve mathematical problems, do not have rules, or principles. They result from ignorance of them, or their misapplication. And so in life; for chance, fate, luck, accident and the merely casual, come, not from the application of principles, but from not applying them, or from ignorance of their use. The human mind or consciousness, which is a mental activity, an activity of thought, is concerned with mixed thoughts of good and evil. But it operates without any principle whatsoever. For, if God is infinite good, then the beliefs of evil which the human mind holds must be false beliefs, illusions, suppositions. A supposition has no principle, no rule. And so, it is only the unreal that happens. And even that sort of "happening" can be prevented by knowing and using the principle of all good, God. A knowledge of evil is not knowledge at all. Evil has no rules. Has an accident a principle? He laughed aloud at the idea.

"What is it, Padre?" asked Carmen.

"Nothing, child—and everything! But we are neglecting our work," he hastily added, as he roused himself. "What are the lessons for to-day? Come! come! We have much to do!" And arranging his papers, and bidding Carmen draw up to the table, he began the morning session of his very select little school.

* * * * *

More than six months had elapsed since Jose first set foot upon the hot shales of Simiti. In that time his mentality had been turned over like a fallow field beneath the plowshare. After peace had been established in the country he had often thought to consecrate himself to the task of collecting the fragmentary ideas which had been evolved in his mind during these past weeks of strange and almost weird experience, and trying to formulate them into definite statements of truth. Then he would enter upon the task of establishing them by actual demonstration, regardless of the years that might be required to do so. He realized now that the explorer had done a great work in clearing his mind of many of its darker shadows. But it was to Carmen's purer, more spiritual influence that he knew his debt was heaviest.

Let it not seem strange that mature manhood and extensive travel had never before brought to this man's mind the truths, many of which have been current almost since the curtain first arose on the melodrama of mundane existence. Well nigh impassable limitations had been set to them by his own natal characteristics; by his acutely morbid sense of filial love which bound him, at whatever cost, to observe the bigoted, selfish wishes of his parents; and by the strictness with which his mind had been hedged about both in the seminary and in the ecclesiastical office where he subsequently labored. The first rays of mental freedom did not dawn upon his darkened thought until he was sent as an outcast to the New World. Then, when his greater latitude in Cartagena, and his still more expanded sense of freedom in Simiti, had lowered the bars, there had rushed into his mentality such a flood of ideas that he was all but swept away in the swirling current.

It is not strange that he rose and fell, to-day strong in the conviction of the immanence of infinite good, to-morrow sunken in mortal despair of ever demonstrating the truth of the ideas which were swelling his shrunken mind. His line of progress in truth was an undulating curve, slowly advancing toward the distant goal to which Carmen seemed to move in a straight, undeviating line. What though Emerson had said that Mind was "the only reality of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors"? Jose was unaware of the sage's mighty deduction. What though Plato had said that we move as shadows in a world of ideas? Even if Jose had known of it, it had meant nothing to him. What though the Transcendentalists called the universe "a metaphore of the human mind"? Jose's thought was too firmly clutched by his self-centered, material beliefs to grasp it. Doubt of the reality of things material succumbed to the evidence of the physical senses and the ridicule of his seminary preceptors. True, he believed with Paul, that the "things that are seen are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." But this pregnant utterance conveyed nothing more to him than a belief of a material heaven to follow his exit from a world of matter. It had never occurred to him that the world of matter might be the product of those same delusive physical senses, through which he believed he gained his knowledge of it. It is true that while in the seminary, and before, he had insisted upon a more spiritual interpretation of the mission of Jesus—had insisted that Christian priests should obey the Master's injunction, and heal the sick as well as preach the gospel. But with the advent of the troubles which filled the intervening years, these things had gradually faded; and the mounting sun that dawned upon him six months before, as he lay on the damp floor of his little cell in the ecclesiastical dormitory in Cartagena, awaiting the Bishop's summons, illumined only a shell, in which agnosticism sat enthroned upon a stool of black despair.

Then Carmen entered his life. And her beautiful love, which enfolded him like a garment, and her sublime faith, which moved before him like the Bethlehem star to where the Christ-principle lay, were, little by little, dissolving the mist and revealing the majesty of the great God.

In assuming to teach the child, Jose early found that the outer world meant nothing to her until he had purged it of its carnal elements. Often in days past, when he had launched out upon the dramatic recital of some important historical event, wherein crime and bloodshed had shaped the incident, the girl would start hastily from her chair and put her little hand over his mouth.

"Don't, Padre dear! It is not true!" she would exclaim. "God didn't do it, and it isn't so!"

And thereby he learned to differentiate more closely between those historical events which sprang from good motives, and those which manifested only human passion, selfish ambition, and the primitive question, "Who shall be greatest?" Moreover, he had found it best in his frequent talks to the people in the church during the week to omit all reference to the evil methods of mankind in their dealings one with another, and to pass over in silence the criminal aims and low motives, and their externalization, which have marked the unfolding of the human mind, and which the world preserves in its annals as historical fact. The child seemed to divine the great truth that history is but the record of human conduct, conduct manifesting the mortal mind of man, a mind utterly opposed to the mind that is God, and therefore unreal, supposititious, and bearing the "minus" sign. Carmen would have none of it that did not reflect good. She refused utterly to turn her mental gaze toward recorded evil.

"Padre," she once protested, "when I want to see the sun rise, I don't look toward the west. And if you want to see the good come up, why do you look at these stories of bad men and their bad thoughts?"

Jose admitted that they were records of the mortal mind—and the mind that is mortal is no mind.

"I am learning," he frequently said to himself, after Carmen had left at the close of their day's work. "But my real education did not commence until I began to see, even though faintly, that the Creator is mind and infinite good, and that there is nothing real to the belief in evil; that the five physical senses give us no testimony of any nature whatsoever; and that real man never could, never did, fall."

Thus the days glided swiftly past, and Jose completed his first year amid the drowsy influences of this little town, slumbering peacefully in its sequestered nook at the feet of the green Cordilleras. No further event ruffled its archaic civilization; and only with rare frequency did fugitive bits of news steal in from the outer world, which, to the untraveled thought of this primitive folk, remained always a realm vague and mysterious. Quietly the people followed the routine of their colorless existence. Each morn broke softly over the limpid lake; each evening left the blush of its roseate sunset on the glassy waters; each night wound its velvety arms gently about the nodding town, while the stars beamed like jewels through the clear, soft atmosphere above, or the yellow moonbeams stole noiselessly down the old, sunken trail to dream on the lake's invisible waves.

Each month, with unvarying regularity, Rosendo came and went. At times Jose thought he detected traces of weariness, insidious and persistently lurking, in the old man's demeanor. At times his limbs trembled, and his step seemed heavy. Once Jose had found him, seated back of his cottage, rubbing the knotted muscles of his legs, and groaning aloud. But when he became aware of Jose presence, the groans ceased, and the old man sprang to his feet with a look of such grim determination written across his face that the priest smothered his apprehensions and forbore to speak. Rosendo was immolating himself upon his love for the child. Jose knew it; but he would not, if he could, prevent the sacrifice.

Each month their contributions were sent to Cartagena; and as regularly came a message from Wenceslas, admonishing them to greater efforts. With the money that was sent to the Bishop went also a smaller packet to the two women who were caring for the unfortunate Maria's little babe. The sources of Jose's remittances to Cartagena were never questioned by Wenceslas. But Simiti slowly awakened to the mysterious monthly trips of Rosendo; and Don Mario's suspicion became conviction. He bribed men to follow Rosendo secretly. They came back, footsore and angry. Rosendo had thrown them completely off the scent. Then Don Mario outfitted and sent his paid emissary after the old man. He wasted two full months in vain search along the Guamoco trail. But the fever came upon him, and he refused to continue the hunt. The Alcalde counted the cost, then loudly cursed himself and Rosendo for the many good pesos so ruthlessly squandered. Then he began to ply Jose and Rosendo with skillfully framed questions. He worried the citizens of the village with his suggestions. Finally he bethought himself to apprise the Bishop of his suspicions. But second consideration disclosed that plan as likely to yield him nothing but loss. He knew Rosendo was getting gold from some source. But, too, he was driving a good trade with the old man on supplies. He settled back upon his fat haunches at last, determined to keep his own counsel and let well-enough alone for the present, while he awaited events.

Rosendo's vivid interest in Carmen's progress was almost pathetic. When in Simiti he hung over the child in rapt absorption as she worked out her problems, or recited her lessons to Jose. Often he shook his head in witness of his utter lack of comprehension. But Carmen understood, and that sufficed. His admiration for the priest's learning was deep and reverential. He was a silent worshiper, this great-hearted man, at the shrine of intellect; but, alas! he himself knew only the rudiments, which he had acquired by years of patient, struggling effort, through long days and nights filled with toil. His particular passion was his Castilian mother-tongue; and the precision with which he at times used it, his careful selection of words, and his wide vocabulary, occasioned Jose no little astonishment. One day, after returning from the hills, he approached Jose as the latter was hearing Carmen's lessons, and, with considerable embarrassment, offered him a bit of paper on which were written in his ample hand several verses. Jose read them, and then looked up wonderingly at the old man.

"Why, Rosendo, these are beautiful! Where did you get them?"

"I—they are mine, Padre," replied Rosendo, his face glowing with pleasure.

"Yours! Do you mean that you wrote them?" Jose queried in astonishment.

"Yes, Padre. Nights, up in Guamoco, when I had finished my work, and when I was so lonely, I would sometimes light my candle and try to write out the thoughts that came to me."

Jose could not keep back the tears. He turned his head, that Rosendo might not see them. Of the three little poems, two were indited to the Virgin Mary, and one to Carmen. He lingered over one of the verses of the latter, for it awoke responsive echoes in his own soul:

"Without you, the world—a desert of sadness; But with you, sweet child—a vale of delight; You laugh, like the sunbeam—my gloom becomes gladness; You sing—from my heart flee the shadows of night."

"I—I have written a good deal of poetry during my life, Padre. I will show you some of it, if you wish," Rosendo advanced, encouraged by Jose's approbation.

"Decidedly, I would!" returned Jose with animation. "And to think, without instruction, without training! What a lesson!"

"Yes, Padre, when I think of the blessed Virgin or the little Carmen, my thoughts seem to come in poetry." He stooped over the girl and kissed her. The child reached up and clasped her arms about his black neck.

"Padre Rosendo," she said sweetly, "you are a poem, a big one, a beautiful one."

"Aye," seconded Jose, and there was a hitch in his voice, "you are an epic—and the world is the poorer that it cannot read you!"

But, though showing such laudable curiosity regarding the elements which entered into their simple life in Simiti, Rosendo seldom spoke of matters pertaining to religion. Yet Jose knew that the old faith held him, and that he would never, on this plane of existence, break away from it. He clung to his escapulario; he prostrated himself before the statue of the Virgin; he invoked the aid of Virgin and Saints when in distress; and, unlike most of the male inhabitants of the town, he scrupulously prayed his rosary every night, whether at home, or on the lonely margins of the Tigui. He had once said to Jose that he was glad Padre Diego had baptised the little Carmen—he felt safer to have it so. And yet he would not have her brought up in the Holy Catholic faith. Let her choose or formulate her own religious beliefs, they should not be influenced by him or others.

"You can never make me believe, Padre," he would sometimes say to the priest, "that the little Carmen was not left by the angels on the river bank."

"But, Rosendo, how foolish!" remonstrated Jose. "You have Escolastico's account, and the boat captain's."

"Well, and what then? Even the blessed Saviour was born of a woman; and yet he came from heaven. The angels brought him, guarded him as he lay in the manger, protected him all his life, and then took him back to heaven again. And I tell you, Padre, the angels brought Carmen, and they are always with her!"

Jose ceased to dispute the old man's contentions. For, had he been pressed, he would have been forced to admit that there was in the child's pure presence a haunting spell of mystery—perhaps the mystery of godliness—but yet an undefinable something that always made him approach her with a feeling akin to awe.

And in the calm, untroubled seclusion of Simiti, in its mediaeval atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a nature that communed incessantly with her God, and that read His name in every trivial incident, in every stone and flower, in the sunbeams, the stars, and the whispering breeze. In that ancient town, crumbling into the final stages of decrepitude, she dwelt in heaven. To her, the rude adobe huts were marble castles; the shabby rawhide chairs and hard wooden beds were softest down; the coarse food was richer than a king's spiced viands; and over it all she cast a mantle of love that was rich enough, great enough, to transform with the grace of fresh and heavenly beauty the ruins and squalor of her earthly environment.

"Can a child like Carmen live a sinless life, and still be human?" Jose often mused, as he watched her flitting through the sunlit hours. "It is recorded that Jesus did. Ah, yes; but he was born of a virgin, spotless herself. And Carmen? Is she any less a child of God?" Jose often wondered, wondered deeply, as he gazed at her absorbed in her tasks. And yet—how was she born? Might he not, in the absence of definite knowledge, accept Rosendo's belief—accept it because of its beautiful, haunting mystery—that she, too, was miraculously born of a virgin, and "left by the angels on the river bank"? For, as far as he might judge, her life was sinless. It was true, she did at rare intervals display little outbursts of childish temper; she sometimes forgot and spoke sharply to her few playmates, and even to Dona Maria; and he had seen her cry for sheer vexation. And yet, these were but tiny shadows that were cast at rarest intervals, melting quickly when they came into the glorious sunlight of her radiant nature.

But the mystery shrouding the child's parentage, however he might regard it, often roused within his mind thoughts dark and apprehensive. Only one communication had come from Padre Diego, and that some four months after his precipitous flight. He had gained the Guamoco trail, it said, and finally arrived at Remedios. He purposed returning to Banco ultimately; and, until then, must leave the little Carmen in the care of those in whom he had immovable confidence, and to whom he would some day try, however feebly, to repay in an appropriate manner his infinite debt of gratitude.

"Caramba!" muttered Rosendo, on reading the note. "Does the villain think we are fools?"

But none the less could the old man quiet the fear that haunted him, nor still the apprehension that some day Diego would make capital of his claim. What that claim might accomplish if laid before Wenceslas, he shuddered to think. And so he kept the girl at his side when in Simiti, and bound Jose and the faithful Juan to redoubled vigilance when he was again obliged to return to the mountains.

Time passed. The care-free children of this tropic realm drowsed through the long, hot days and gossiped and danced in the soft airs of night. Rosendo held his unremitting, lonely vigil of toil in the ghastly solitudes of Guamoco. Jose, exiled and outcast, clung desperately to the child's hand, and strove to rise into the spiritual consciousness in which she dwelt. And thus the year fell softly into the yawning arms of the past and became a memory.

Then one day Simiti awoke from its lethargy in terror, with the spectre of pestilence stalking through her narrow streets.



CHAPTER 19

Feliz Gomez, who had been sent to Bodega Central for merchandise which Don Mario was awaiting from the coast, had collapsed as he stepped from his boat on his return to Simiti. When he regained consciousness he called wildly for the priest.

"Padre!" he cried, when Jose arrived, "it is la plaga! Ah, Santisima Virgen—I am dying!—dying!" He writhed in agony on the ground.

The priest bent over him, his heart throbbing with apprehension.

"Padre—" The lad strove to raise his head. "The innkeeper at Bodega Central—he told me I might sleep in an empty house back of the inn. Dios mio! There was an old cot there—I slept on it two nights—Caramba! Padre, they told me then—Ah, Bendita Virgen! Don't let me die, Padre! Carisima Virgen, don't let me die! Ah, Dios—!"

His body twisted in convulsions. Jose lifted him and dragged him to the nearby shed where the lad had been living alone. A terror-stricken concourse gathered quickly about the doorway and peered in wide-eyed horror through the narrow window.

"Feliz, what did they tell you?" cried Jose, laying the sufferer upon the bed and chafing his cold hands. The boy rallied.

"They told me—a Turk, bound for Zaragoza on the Nechi river—had taken the wrong boat—in Maganguey. He had been sick—terribly sick there. Ah, Dios! It is coming again, Padre—the pain! Caramba! Dios mio! Save me, Padre, save me!"

"Jacinta! Rosa! I must have help!" cried Jose, turning to the stunned people. "Bring cloths—hot water—and send for Don Mario. Dona Lucia, prepare an olla of your herb tea at once!"

"Padre"—the boy had become quieter—"when the Turk learned that he was on the wrong boat—he asked to be put off at the next town—which was Bodega Central. The innkeeper put him in the empty house—and he—Dios! he died—on that bed where I slept!"

"Well?" said Jose.

"Padre, he died—the day before I arrived there—and—ah, Santisima Virgen! they said—he died—of—of—la colera!"

"Cholera!" cried the priest, starting up. At the mention of the disease a loud murmur arose from the people, and they fell back from the shed.

"Padre!—ah, Dios, how I suffer! Give me the sacrament—I cannot live—! Padre—let me confess—now. Ah, Padre, shall I go—to heaven? Tell me—!"

Jose's blood froze. He stood with eyes riveted in horror upon the tormented lad.

"Padre"—the boy's voice grew weaker—"I fell sick that day—I started for Simiti—I died a thousand times in the cano—ah, caramba! But, Padre—promise to get me out of purgatory—I have no money for Masses. Caramba! I cannot stand it! Oh, Dios! Padre—quick—I have not been very wicked—but I stole—Dios, how I suffer!—I stole two pesos from the innkeeper at Bodega Central—he thought he lost them—but I took them out of the drawer—Padre, pay him for me—then I will not go to hell! Dios!"

Rosendo at that moment entered the house.

"Don't come in here!" cried Jose, turning upon him in wild apprehension. "Keep away, for God's sake, keep away!"

In sullen silence Rosendo disregarded the priest's frenzied appeal. His eyes widened when he saw the boy torn with convulsions, but he did not flinch. Only when he saw Carmen approaching, attracted by the great crowd, he hastily bade one of the women turn her back home.

Hour after hour the poor sufferer tossed and writhed. Again and again he lapsed into unconsciousness, from which he would emerge to piteously beg the priest to save him. "Ah! Dios, Padre!" he pleaded, extending his trembling arms to Jose, "can you do nothing? Can you not help me? Santisima Virgen, how I suffer!"

Then, when the evening shadows were gathering, the final convulsions seized him and wrenched his poor soul loose. Jose and Rosendo were alone with him when the end came. The people had early fled from the stricken lad, and were gathering in little groups before their homes and on the corners, discussing in low, strained tones the advent of the scourge. Those who had been close to the sick boy were now cold with fear. Women wept, and children clung whimpering to their skirts. The men talked excitedly in hoarse whispers, or lapsed into a state of terrified dullness.

Jose went from the death-bed to the Alcalde. Don Mario saw him coming, and fled into the house, securing the door after him. "Go away, Padre!" he shouted through the shutters. "For the love of the Virgin do not come here! Caramba!"

"But, Don Mario, the lad is dead!" cried Jose in desperation. "And what shall we do? We must face the situation. Come, you are the Alcalde. Let us talk about—"

"Caramba! Do what you want to! I shall get out! Nombre de Dios! If I live through the night I shall go to the mountains to-morrow!"

"But we must have a coffin to bury the lad! You must let us have one!"

"No! You cannot enter here, Padre!" shrilled Don Mario, jumping up and down in his excitement. "Bury him in a blanket—anything—but keep away from my house!"

Jose turned sadly away and passed through the deserted streets back to the lonely shed. Rosendo met him at the door. "Bien, Padre," he said quietly, "we are exiled."

"Have you been home yet?" asked Jose.

"Hombre, no! I cannot go home now. I might carry the disease to the senora and the little Carmen. I must stay here. And," he added, "you too, Padre."

Jose's heart turned to lead. "But, the boy?" he exclaimed, pointing toward the bed.

"When it is dark, Padre," replied Rosendo, "we will take him out through the back door and bury him beyond the shales. Hombre! I must see now if I can find a shovel."

Jose sank down upon the threshold, a prey to corroding despair, while Rosendo went out in search of the implement. The streets were dead, and few lights shone from the latticed windows. The pall of fear had settled thick upon the stricken town. Those who were standing before their houses as Rosendo approached hastily turned in and closed their doors. Jose, in the presence of death in a terrible form, sat mute. In an hour Rosendo returned.

"No shovel, Padre," he announced. "But I crept up back of my house and got this bar which I had left standing there when I came back from the mountains. I can scrape up the loose earth with my hands. Come now."

Jose wearily rose. He was but a tool in the hands of a man to whom physical danger was but a matter of temperament. He absently helped Rosendo wrap the black, distorted corpse in the frayed blanket; and then together they passed out into the night with their grewsome burden.

"Why not to the cemetery, Rosendo?" asked Jose, as the old man took an opposite course.

"Hombre, no!" cried Rosendo. "The cemetery is on shale, and I could not dig through it in time. We must get the body under ground at once. Caramba! If we put it in one of the bovedas in the cemetery the buzzards will eat it and scatter the plague all over the town. The bovedas are broken, and have no longer any doors, you remember."

So beyond the shales they went, stumbling through the darkness, their minds freighted with a burden of apprehension more terrible than the thing they bore in their arms. The shales crossed, Rosendo left the trail, cutting a way through the bush with his machete a distance of several hundred feet. Then, by the weird yellow light of a single candle, he opened the moist earth and laid the hideous, twisted thing within. Jose watched the procedure in dull apathy.

"And now, Padre," said Rosendo, at length breaking the awful silence, "where will you sleep to-night? I cannot let you go back to your house. It is too near the senora and Carmen. No man in town will let you stay in his house, since you have handled the plague. Will you sleep in the shed where the lad died? Or out on the shales with me? I called to the senora when I went after the bar, and she will lay two blankets out in the plaza for us. And in the morning she will put food where we can get it. What say you?"

Jose stood dazed. His mind had congealed with the horror of the situation. Rosendo took him by the arm. "Come, Padre," he said gently. "The hill up back of the second church is high, and no one lives near. I will get the blankets and we will pass the night out there."

"But, Rosendo!" Jose found his voice. "What is it? Is it—la colera?"

"Quien sabe? Padre," returned Rosendo. "There has been plague here—these people, some of them, still remember it—but it was long ago. There have been cases along the river—and brought, I doubt not, by Turks, like this one."

"And do you think that it is now all along the river? That Bodega Central is being ravaged by the scourge? That it will sweep through the country?"

"Quien sabe? Padre. All I do know is that the people of Simiti are terribly frightened, and the pestilence may wipe away the town before it leaves."

"But—good God! what can we do, Rosendo?"

"Nothing, Padre—but stay and meet it," the man replied quietly.

They reached the hill in silence. Then Rosendo wrapped himself in one of the blankets which he had picked up as he passed through the plaza, and lay down upon the shale.

But Jose slept not that night. The warm, sluggish air lay about him, mephitic in its touch. The great vampire bats that soughed through it symbolized the "pestilence that walketh in darkness." Lonely calls drifted across the warm lake waters from the dripping jungle like the hollow echoes of lost souls. Rosendo tossed fitfully, and now and then uttered deep groans. The atmosphere was prescient with horror. He struggled to his feet and paced gloomily back and forth along the brow of the hill. The second church stood near, deserted, gloomy, no longer a temple of God, but a charnel house of fear and black superstition. In the distance the ghostly white walls of the Rincon church glowed faintly in the feeble light that dripped from the yellow stars. There was now no thought of God—no thought of divine aid. Jose was riding again the mountainous billows of fear and unbelief; nor did he look for the Master to come to him through the thick night across the heaving waters.

The tardy dawn brought Dona Maria to the foot of the hill, where she deposited food, and held distant converse with the exiles. Don Mario had just departed, taking the direction across the lake toward San Lucas. He had compelled his wife to remain in Simiti to watch over the little store, while he fled with two boatmen and abundant supplies. Others likewise were preparing to flee, some to the Boque river, some up the Guamoco trail. Dona Maria was keeping Carmen closely, nor would she permit her to as much as venture from the house.

"Why should not the senora take Carmen and go to Boque, Rosendo?" asked Jose. "Then you and I could occupy our own houses until we knew what the future had in store for us."

Rosendo agreed at once. Carmen would be safe in the protecting care of Don Nicolas. Dona Maria yielded only after much persuasion. From the hilltop Jose could descry the Alcalde's boat slowly wending its way across the lake toward the Juncal. Rosendo, having finished his morning meal, prepared to meet the day.

"Bien, Padre," he said, "when the sun gets high we cannot stay here. We must seek shade—but where?" He looked about dubiously.

"Why not in the old church, Rosendo?"

"Caramba, never!" cried Rosendo. "Hombre! that old church is haunted!"

Jose could never understand the nature of this man, so brave in the face of physical danger, yet so permeated with superstitious dread of those imaginary inhabitants of the invisible realm.

"Padre," suggested Rosendo at length. "We will go down there, nearer the lake, to the old shack where the blacksmith had his forge. He died two years ago, and the place has since been empty."

"Go then, Rosendo, and I will follow later," assented Jose, who now craved solitude for the struggle for self-mastery which he saw impending.

While Rosendo moved off toward the deserted shack, the priest continued his restless pacing along the crest of the hill. The morning was glorious—but for the blighting thoughts of men. The vivid green of the dewy hills shone like new-laid color. The lake lay like a diamond set in emeralds. The dead town glowed brilliantly white in the mounting sun. Jose knew that the heat would soon drive him from the hill. He glanced questioningly at the old church. He walked toward it; then mounted the broken steps. The hinges, rusted and broken, had let the heavy door, now bored through and through by comejen ants, slip to one side. Through the opening thus afforded, Jose could peer into the cavernous blackness within. The sun shot its terrific heat at him, and the stone steps burned his sandaled feet. He pushed against the door. It yielded. Then through the opening he entered the dusty, ill-smelling old edifice.

When his eyes had become accustomed to the dimness within, he saw that the interior was like that of the other church, only in a more dilapidated state. There were but few benches; and the brick altar, poorer in construction, had crumbled away at one side. Dust, mold, and cobwebs covered everything; but the air was gratefully cool. Jose brushed the thick dust from one of the benches. Then he lay down upon it, and was soon sunk in heavy sleep.

* * * * *

The sun had just crossed the meridian. Jose awoke, conscious that he was not alone. The weird legend that hung about the old church filtered slowly through his dazed brain. Rosendo had said that an angel of some kind dwelt in the place. And surely a presence sat on the bench in the twilight before him! He roused up, rubbed his sleepy eyes, and peered at it. A soft laugh echoed through the stillness.

"I looked all around for the bad angel that padre Rosendo said lived here, and I didn't find anything but you."

"Carmen, child! What are you doing here? Don't come near me!" cried Jose, drawing away.

"Why, Padre—what is it? Why must I keep away from you? First, madre Maria tells me I must go to Boque with her. And now you will not let me come near you. And I love you so—" Tears choked her voice, and she sat looking in mute appeal at the priest.

Jose's wit seemed hopelessly scattered. He passed his hand dully across his brow as if to brush the mist from his befogged brain.

"Padre dear." The pathetic little voice wrung his heart. "Padre dear, when madre Maria told me I had to go to Boque, I went to your house to ask you, and—and you weren't there. And I couldn't find padre Rosendo either—and there wasn't anybody in the streets at all—and I came up here. Then I saw the blanket out on the hill, and I kept hunting for you—I wanted to see you so much. And when I saw the door of the church broken, I thought you might be in here—and so I came in—and, oh, Padre dear, I was so glad to find you—but I wouldn't wake you up—and while you were sleeping I just knew that God was taking care of you all the time—"

Jose had sunk again upon the bench.

"Padre dear!" Carmen came flying to him across the darkness and threw her arms about his neck. "Padre dear! I just couldn't stand it to leave you!" The flood-gates opened wide, and the girl sobbed upon his shoulder.

"Carmen—child!" But his own tears were mingling freely with hers. The strain of the preceding night had left him weak. He strove feebly to loosen the tightly clasped arms of the weeping girl. Then he buried his drawn face in her thick curls and strained her to his heaving breast. What this might mean to Carmen he knew full well. But—why not have it so? If she preceded him into the dark vale, it would be for only a little while. He would not live without her.

The sobs died away, and the girl looked up at the suffering man.

"Padre dear, you will not send me away—will you?" she pleaded.

"No! no!" he cried fiercely, "not now!"

A happy little sigh escaped her lips. Then she drew herself closer to him and whispered softly, "Padre dear—I love you."

A groan burst from the man. "God above!" he cried, "have you the heart to let evil attack such a one as this!"

The girl looked up at him in wonder. "Why, Padre dear—what is it? Tell me."

"Nothing, child—nothing! Did—er—did your madre Maria say why you must go to Boque?" he asked hesitatingly.

"She said Feliz Gomez died last night of the plague, and that the people were afraid they would all get sick and die too. And she said—Padre dear, she said you were afraid I would get sick, and so you told her to take me away. You didn't mean that, did you? She didn't understand you, did she? You are not afraid, are you? You can't be, you know, can you? You and I are not afraid of anything. We know—don't we, Padre dear?"

"What do we know, child?" he asked sadly.

"Why—why, we know that God is everywhere!" She looked at him wonderingly. What could she understand of a nature so wavering?—firm when the sun shone bright above—tottering when the blasts of adversity whirled about it? He had said such beautiful things to her, such wonderful things about God and His children only yesterday. And now—why this awful change? Why again this sudden lowering of standards?

He had sunk deep into his dark thoughts. "Death is inevitable!" he muttered grimly, forgetful of the child's presence.

"Oh, Padre dear!" she pleaded, passing her little hand tenderly over his cheek. Then her face brightened. "I know what it is!" she exclaimed. "You are just trying to think that two and two are seven—and you can't prove it—and so you'd better stop trying!" She broke into a little forced laugh.

Jose sat wrapped in black silence.

"Padre dear." Her voice was full of plaintive tenderness. "You have talked so much about that good man Jesus. What would he say if he saw you trying to make two and two equal seven? And if he had been here last night—would he have let Feliz die?"

The priest made no answer. None was required when Carmen put her questions.

"Padre dear," she continued softly. "Why didn't you cure Feliz?"

His soul withered under the shock.

"You have told me, often, that Jesus cured sick people. And you said he even made the dead ones live again—didn't you, Padre dear?"

"Yes," he murmured; "they say he did."

"And you read to me once from your Bible where he told the people that he gave them power over everything. And you said he was the great rule—you called him the Christ-principle—and you said he never went away from us. Well, Padre dear," she concluded with quick emphasis, "why don't you use him now?"

She waited a moment. Then, when no reply came—

"Feliz didn't die, Padre."

"Hombre! It's all the same—he's gone!" he cried in a tone of sullen bitterness.

"You think he is gone, Padre dear. And Feliz thought he had to go. And so now you both see it that way—that's all. If you would see things the way that good man Jesus told you to—well, wouldn't they be different—wouldn't they, Padre dear?"

"No doubt they would, child, no doubt. But—"

She waited a moment for him to express the limitation which the conjunctive implied. Then:

"Padre dear, how do you think he did it? How did he cure sick people, and make the dead ones live again?"

"I—I don't know, child—I am not sure. That knowledge has been lost, long since."

"You do know, Padre," she insisted; "you do! Did he know that God was everywhere?"

"Yes."

"And what did he say sickness was?"

"He classed it with all evil under the one heading—a lie—a lie about God."

"But when a person tells a lie, he doesn't speak the truth, does he?"

"No."

"And a lie has no rule, no principle?"

"No."

"And so it isn't anything—doesn't come from anything true—hasn't any real life, has it?"