the gentle laments of the once happy dwellers in this primitive
paradise.

Sitting in the rounded bow of the wretched riverine steamer Honda,
Padre Jose de Rincon gazed with vacant eyes upon the scenery on either
hand. The boat had arrived from Barranquilla that morning, and was now
experiencing the usual exasperating delay in embarking from Calamar.
He had just returned to it, after wandering for hours through the
forlorn little town, tormented physically by the myriad mosquitoes,
and mentally by a surprising eagerness to reach his destination. He
could account for the latter only on the ground of complete
resignation--a feeling experienced by those unfortunate souls who have
lost their way in life, and, after vain resistance to molding
circumstances, after the thwarting of ambitions, the quenching of
ideals, admit defeat, and await, with something of feverish
anticipation, the end. He had left Cartagena early that morning on the
ramshackle little train which, after hours of jolting over an
undulating roadbed, set him down in Calamar, exhausted with the heat
and dust-begrimed. He had not seen the Bishop nor Wenceslas since the
interview of the preceding day. Before his departure, however, he had
made provision for the burial of the girl, Maria, and the disposal of
her child. This he did at his own expense; and when the demands of
doctor and sexton had been met, and he had provided Marcelena with
funds for the care of herself and the child for at least a few weeks,
his purse was pitiably light.

Late in the afternoon the straggling remnant of a sea breeze drifted
up the river and tempered the scorching heat. Then the captain of the
Honda drained his last glass of red rum in the _posada_, reiterated to
his political affiliates with spiritous bombast his condensed opinion
anent the Government, and dramatically signaled the pilot to get under
way.

Beyond the fact that Simiti lay somewhere behind the liana-veiled
banks of the great river, perhaps three hundred miles from Cartagena,
the priest knew nothing of his destination. There were no passengers
bound for the place, the captain had told him; nor had the captain
himself ever been there, although he knew that one must leave the boat
at a point called Badillo, and thence go by canoe to the town in
question.

But Jose's interest in Simiti was only such as one might manifest in a
prison to which he was being conveyed. And, as a prisoner of the
Church, he inwardly pr