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

“ChiquinquÍa,” 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 JosÈ.

“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 ChiquinquÍa, north of BogotÁ, 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.”

JosÈ laughed. “You don’t believe that, do you, Rosendo?” he asked in banter.

“Hombre, yes!” exclaimed the latter a bit testily. “I know 150 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! JosÈ 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 JosÈ 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.”

JosÈ 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.

JosÈ returned with his Bible and seated himself again at the table. Opening the book, his eyes fell upon a verse of 153 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. JosÈ 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 JosÈ again, if the promises are kept, why have we fallen so woefully short of their realization? Then he 154 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.

JosÈ’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 JosÈ first set foot upon the hot shales of SimitÍ. In that time his mentality had been turned over like a fallow field beneath the plowshare. 156 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 SimitÍ, 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”? JosÈ 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 JosÈ had known of it, it had meant nothing to him. What though the Transcendentalists called the universe “a metaphore of the human mind”? JosÈ’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 157 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, JosÈ 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?”

JosÈ 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 JosÈ 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 JosÈ 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 JosÈ had found him, seated back of his cottage, rubbing the knotted muscles of his legs, and groaning aloud. But when he became aware of JosÈ 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. JosÈ 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 JosÈ’s remittances to Cartagena were never questioned by Wenceslas. 159 But SimitÍ 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 GuamocÓ 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 JosÈ 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 SimitÍ he hung over the child in rapt absorption as she worked out her problems, or recited her lessons to JosÈ. 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 JosÈ no little astonishment. One day, after returning from the hills, he approached JosÈ 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. JosÈ 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?” JosÈ queried in astonishment.

“Yes, Padre. Nights, up in GuamocÓ, 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.”

JosÈ 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:

“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 JosÈ’s approbation.

“Decidedly, I would!” returned JosÈ 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 JosÈ, 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 SimitÍ, Rosendo seldom spoke of matters pertaining to religion. Yet JosÈ 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 TiguÍ. He had once said to JosÈ 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 JosÈ. “You have Escolastico’s account, and the boat captain’s.”

“Well, and what then? Even the blessed Saviour was born 161 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!”

JosÈ 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 SimitÍ, 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?” JosÈ 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?” JosÈ 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 DoÑa 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 162 flight. He had gained the GuamocÓ 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 SimitÍ, and bound JosÈ 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 GuamocÓ. JosÈ, 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 SimitÍ awoke from its lethargy in terror, with the spectre of pestilence stalking through her narrow streets.