enough
to get you both out of the country; but it will take many months, it
may be, years."

O, you, whose path in life winds among pleasant places, where roses
nod in the scented breeze and fountains play, picture to yourself, if
you may, the self-immolation of this sweet-souled man, who, in the
winter of life, the shadows of eternity fast gathering about him,
bends his black shoulders again to the burden which Love would lay
upon them. Aye, Love, into which all else merged--Love for the unknown
babe, left helpless and alone on the great river's bank--Love for the
radiant child, whose white soul the agents of carnal greed and lust
would prostitute to their iniquitous system.

Night fell. By the light of their single candle the priest and Rosendo
ate their simple fare in silence. Carmen was asleep, and the angels
watched over her lowly bed.

The meal ended, Rosendo took up the candle, and Jose followed him into
the bedroom. Reverently the two men approached the sleeping child and
looked down upon her. The priest's hand again sought Rosendo's in a
grasp which sealed anew the pact between them.

CHAPTER 8

Like the great Exemplar in the days of his preparation, Jose was
early driven by the spirit into the wilderness, where temptation
smote him sore. But his soul had been saved--"yet so as by fire."
Slowly old beliefs and faiths crumbled into dust, while the new
remained still unrevealed. The drift toward atheism which had set in
during his long incarceration in the convent of Palazzola had not
made him yield to the temptation to raise the mask of hypocrisy and
plunge into the pleasures of the world, nor accept the specious
proffer of ecclesiastical preferment in exchange for his honest
convictions. Honor, however bigoted the sense, bound him to his
oath, or at least to a compromising observance of it harmless to the
Church. Pride contributed to hold him from the degradation of a
renegade and apostate priest. And both rested primarily on an
unshaken basis of maternal affection, which fell little short of
obsession, leaving him without the strength to say, "Woman, what
have I to do with thee?"

But, though atheism in belief leads almost inevitably to disintegration
of morals, Jose had kept himself untainted. For his vital problems he
had now, after many days, found "grace sufficient." In what he had
regarded as the contemptible tricks of fate, he was beginning to
discern the guiding hand of a wisdom greater