und, for even that "misses the mark." No, righteousness was
right conduct until the marvelous Jesus appeared. But he swept it at
once from the material into the mental; from the outward into the
inward; and defined it as _right-thinking_!

"Righteousness!" murmured Jose, sitting with head buried in his hands.
"Aye, the whole scheme of salvation is held in that one word! And the
wreck of my life has been caused by my blind ignorance of its
tremendous meaning! For righteousness is salvation. But Carmen, wise
little soul, divined it instinctively; for, if there is one thing that
is patent, it is that if a thing is evil it does not exist for her.
Righteousness! Of course it means _thinking no evil_! Jesus lived his
thorough understanding of it. And so does Carmen. And so would the
world, but for the withering influence of priestly authority!"

At that moment Carmen reappeared to summon him to lunch.

"Come here, little girl," said Jose, drawing her to him. "You asked me
to tell you about Jesus. He was the greatest and best man that ever
lived. And it was because he never had a bad thought."

"Did he know that God was everywhere?" The little face turned lovingly
up to his.

"He did, sweet child. And so do I--now; for I have found Him even in
desolate Simiti."

CHAPTER 7

Carmen's studies began in earnest that afternoon. In the quiet of his
humble cottage Jose, now "a prisoner of the Lord," opened the door of
his mental storehouse and carefully selected those first bits of
knowledge for the foundation stones on which to rear for her, little
by little, a broad education.

He found her a facile learner; her thorough ease in the rudiments
of arithmetic and in the handling of her own language delighted him.
His plan of tutelage, although the result of long contemplation, and
involving many radical ideas regarding the training of children,
ideas which had been slowly developing in his mind for years, he
nevertheless felt in her case to be tentative. For he was dealing
with no ordinary child; and so the usual methods of instruction were
here wholly out of the question.

But on several points he was already firmly resolved. First, he would
get well below the surface of this child's mind, and he would endeavor
to train her to live in a depth of thought far, far beneath the froth
and superficiality of the every-day thinking of mankind. Fortunately,
she had had no previous bad training to be counteracted now. Nature