hadows he saw the armored forms of _Conquistadores_ in mortal strife
with vulpine buccaneers. In the whirring of the bats which flouted his
face he heard the singing of arrows and the hiss of hurled rocks. In
the moan of the ocean as it broke on the coral reef below sounded the
boom of cannon, the curses of combatants, and the groans of the dying.
Here and there moved tonsured monks, now absolving in the name of the
peaceful Christ the frenzied defenders of the Heroic City, now turning
to hurl curses at the swarming enemy and consign their blackened souls
to deepest hell, while holding images of the crucified Saviour to the
quivering lips of stricken warriors.

In the fancied combat raging in the moonlight before him he saw the
sons of the house of Rincon manifesting their devotion to Sovereign
and Pope, their unshaken faith in Holy Church, their hot zeal which
made them her valiant defenders, her support, her humble and devoted
slaves for more than three centuries.

What was the charm by which she had held them? And why had its potency
failed utterly when directed to him? But they were men of physical
action, not thought--men of deeds which called only for brave hearts
and stout bodies. It is true, there had been thinkers in those days,
when the valiant sons of Rincon hurled the enemy from Cartagena's
walls--but they lay rotting in dungeons--they lay broken on the rack,
or hung breathing out their souls to God amid the hot flames which His
self-appointed vicars kindled about them. The Rincons of that day had
not been thinkers. But the centuries had finally evolved from their
number a man of thought. Alas! the evolution had developed intellect,
it is true--but the process had refined away the rugged qualities of
animal strength which, without a deeper hold on Truth and the way to
demonstrate it than Jose possessed, must leave him the plaything of
Fate.

Young in years, but old in sorrow; held by oaths which his ever-accusing
sense of honor would not let him break; trembling for his mother's
sake, and for the sake of Rincon pride, lest the ban of excommunication
fall upon him; yet little dreaming that Rome had no thought of this
while his own peculiar elements of character bound him as they did
to her; the man had at last yielded his life to the system which had
wrecked it in the name of Christ, and was now awaiting the morrow, when
the boat should bear him to far-off Simiti. He went resignedly--even
with a dull sense