nd sunk again into his chair. The valet hurried to
his assistance. The Papal Secretary, his face contorted with rage, and
his throat choking with the press of words which he strove to utter,
hastened to the door to summon help. "Remove this man!" he commanded,
pointing out the prostrate form of Jose to the two Swiss guards who
had responded to his call. "Confine him! He is violent--a raging
maniac!"

A few days later, Padre Jose de Rincon, having been pronounced by the
Vatican physicians mentally deranged, as the result of acute cerebral
anaemia, was quietly conveyed to a sequestered monastery at
Palazzola.

* * * * *

Two summers came, and fled again before the chill winds which blew
from the Alban hills. Then one day Jose's uncle appeared at the
monastery door with a written order from His Holiness, effecting the
priest's conditional release. Together they journeyed at once to
Seville, the uncle alert and energetic as ever, showing but slight
trace of time's devastating hand; Jose, the shadow of his former self
physically, and his mind clouded with the somber pall of melancholia.

Toward the close of a quiet summer, spent with his mother in his
boyhood home, Jose received from his uncle's hand another letter,
bearing the papal insignia. It was evident that it was not unexpected,
for it found the priest with his effects packed and ready for a
considerable journey. A hurried farewell to his mother, and the
life-weary Jose, combining innocence and misery in exaggerated
proportions, and still a vassal of Rome, set out for the port of
Cadiz. There, in company with the Apostolic Delegate and Envoy
Extraordinary to the Republic of Colombia, he embarked on the West
Indian trader Sarnia, bound for Cartagena, in the New World.

CHAPTER 12

There is no region in the Western Hemisphere more invested with the
spirit of romance and adventure than that strip of Caribbean coast
stretching from the Cape of Yucatan to the delta of the Orinoco and
known as the Spanish Main. No more superb setting could have been
chosen for the opening scenes of the New World drama. Skies of profoundest
blue--the tropical sun flaming through massive clouds of vapor--a sea
of exuberant color, foaming white over coral beaches--waving cocoa
palms against a background of exotic verdure marking a tortuous shore
line, which now rises sheer and precipitous from the water's edge to
dizzy, snowcapped, clou