beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply
fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be
impassable. Thither Jose bent his steps, and at length came upon the
girl sitting in the shade of a stunted _algarroba_ tree some distance
from the usual trail.

"Well, what are you doing here, little one?" he inquired in surprise.

The child looked up visibly embarrassed. "I was thinking, Padre," she
made slow reply.

"But do you have to go away from home to think?" he queried.

"I wanted to be alone; and there was so much going on in the house
that I came out here."

"And what have you been thinking about, Carmen?" pursued Jose,
suspecting that her presence in the hot shale beds held some deeper
significance than she had as yet revealed.

"I--I was just thinking that God is everywhere," she faltered.

"Yes, _chiquita_. And--?"

"That He is where padre Rosendo is going, and that He will take care
of him up there, and bring him back to Simiti again."

"And were you asking Him to do it, little one?"

"No, Padre; I was just _knowing_ that He would."

The little lip quivered, and the brown eyes were wet with tears. But
Jose could see that faith had conquered, whatever the struggle might
have been. The child evidently had sought solitude, that she might
most forcibly bring her trust in God to bear upon the little problem
confronting her--that she might make the certainty of His immanence
and goodness destroy in her thought every dark suggestion of fear or
doubt.

"God will take care of him, won't He, Padre?"

Jose had taken her hand and was leading her back to the house.

"You have said it, child; and I believe you are a law unto yourself,"
was the priest's low, earnest reply. The child smiled up at him; and
Jose knew he had spoken truth.

That evening, the preparations for departure completed, Rosendo and
Jose took their chairs out before the house, where they sat late, each
loath to separate lest some final word be left unsaid. The tepid
evening melted into night, which died away in a deep silence that hung
wraith-like over the old town. Myriad stars rained their shimmering
lustre out of the unfathomable vault above.

"_Un canasto de flores_," mused Rosendo, looking off into the infinite
blue.

"A basket of flowers, indeed," responded Jose reverently.

"Padre--" Rosendo's brain seemed to struggle with a tremendous
thought--"I often try to think of what is beyond the stars; and I