--but to what end? Had he not yet paid the score in full--good
measure, pressed down and running over? His thoughts ran rapidly from
one topic to another. Again they reverted to the little girl. He had
dreamed of her in that week of black night. He wondered if he had also
talked of her. He had lain at death's door--Rosendo had said so--but
he had had no physician. Perhaps these simple folk brewed their own
homely remedies--he wondered what they had employed in his case. Above
the welter of his thoughts this question pressed for answer.

"What medicine did you give me, Rosendo?" he feebly queried.

"None, Padre."

Jose's voice rose querulously in a little excess of excitement. "What!
You left me here without medical aid, to live or die, as might be?"

The gentle Rosendo laid a soothing hand upon the priest's feverish
brow. "_Na_, Padre,"--there was a hurt tone in the soft answer--"we
did all we could for you. We have neither doctors nor medicines. But
we cared for you--and we prayed daily for your recovery. The little
Carmen said our prayers would be answered--and, you see, they were."

Again the child!

"And what had she to do with my recovery?" Jose demanded fretfully.

"_Quien sabe?_ It is sometimes that way when the little Carmen says
people shall not die. And then," he added sadly, "sometimes they do
die just the same. It is strange; we do not understand it." The gentle
soul sighed its perplexity.

Jose looked up at him keenly. "Did the child say I should not die?" he
asked softly, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, Padre; she says God's children do not die," returned Rosendo.

The priest's blood stopped in its mad surge and slowly began to chill.
God's children do not die! What uncanny influence had he met with here
in this crumbling, forgotten town? He sought the index of his memory
for the sensations he had felt when he looked into the girl's eyes on
his first morning in Simiti. But memory reported back only impressions
of goodness--beauty--love.

Then a dim light--only a feeble gleam--seemed to flash before him, but
at a great distance. Something called him--not by name, but by again
touching that unfamiliar chord which had vibrated in his soul when the
child had first stood before him. He felt a strange psychic
presentiment as of things soon to be revealed. A sentiment akin to awe
stole over him, as if he were standing in the presence of a great
mystery--a mystery so transcendental that the groveling minds