determined already to try the devious
route of apostasy.

Rising the next morning at dawn from the chill floor where he had
spent the torturing hours of an interminable night, and still clinging
forlornly to his battered sense of honor and family pride, Jose again
received the Bishop's summons; and, after the events of the morning
already related, faced the angry churchman's furious tirade, and with
it, what he could not have imagined before, a charge of hideous
immorality. Then had been set before him a choice between apostasy and
acceptance of the assignment to the parish of far-off Simiti.

"And now, unpitying Fate," he murmured, as the door of the Bishop's
_sanctum_ closed behind him, and he wandered down through the gloom of
the quiet Cathedral, "receive your victim. You have chosen well your
carnal instruments--pride--ecclesiasticism--lust! My crimes? Aye, the
very lowest; for I have loved liberty of thought and conscience; I
have loved virtue and honor; the pursuits of intellect; the fair; the
noble; yea, the better things of life. I have loved my fellow-men; and
I have sought their emancipation from the thraldom of ignorance. I
have loved truth, and the Christ who revealed it to the dull minds of
mortals. Enough! I stand convicted! And--I accept the sentence--I have
no desire to resist it. For the end is now not distant!"

CHAPTER 16

The tropical moon shone in her fullness from an unclouded sky. Through
the ethereal atmosphere which bathed the storied city her beams fell,
plashing noiselessly upon the grim memorials of a stirring past. With
a mantle of peace they gently covered the former scenes of violence
and strife. With magic, intangible substance they filled out the rents
in the grassy walls and smoothed away the scars of battle. The pale
luster, streaming through narrow barbican and mildewed arch, touched
the decaying ruin of San Felipe with the wand of enchantment, and
restored it to pristine freshness and strength. Through the stillness
of night the watery vapor streamed upward from garden and _patio_, and
mingled with the scent of flushing roses and tropical buds in a
fragrant mist suffused with the moon's yellow glow.

On the low parapet bordering the eastern esplanade of the city wall
the solitary figure of the priest cast a narrow shadow in the pale
moonlight. The sounds which eddied the enveloping silence seemed to
echo in his ears the tread of mediaeval warriors. In the wraith-like
s