cannot. Where is the end?"

"There is none, Rosendo."

"But, if we could get out to the last star--what then?"

"Still no end, no limit," replied Jose.

"And they are very far away--how far, Padre?"

"You would not comprehend, even if I could tell you, Rosendo. But--how
shall I say it? Some are millions of miles from us. Others so far that
their light reaches us only after the lapse of centuries."

"Their light!" returned Rosendo quizzically.

"Yes. Light from those stars above us travels nearly two hundred
thousand miles a second--"

"_Hombre!_" ejaculated the uncomprehending Rosendo.

"And yet, even at that awful rate of speed, it is probable that there
are many stars whose light has not yet reached the earth since it
became inhabited by men."

"_Caramba!_"

"You may well say so, friend."

"But, Padre--does the light never stop? When does it reach an end--a
stopping-place?"

"There is no stopping-place, Rosendo. There is no solid sky above us.
Go whichever way you will, you can never reach an end."

Rosendo's brow knotted with puzzled wonder: Even Jose's own mind
staggered anew at its concept of the immeasurable depths of space.

"But, Padre, if we could go far enough up we would get to heaven,
wouldn't we?" pursued Rosendo. "And if we went far enough down we
would reach purgatory, and then hell, is it not so?"

Restraint fell upon the priest. He dared not answer lest he reveal his
own paucity of ideas regarding these things. Happily the loquacious
Rosendo continued without waiting for reply.

"Padre Simon used to say when I was a child that the red we saw in the
sky at sunset was the reflection of the flames of hell; so I have
always thought that hell was below us--perhaps in the center of the
earth."

For a time his simple mind mused over this puerile idea. Then--

"What do you suppose God looks like, Padre?"

Jose's thought flew back to the galleries and chapels of Europe, where
the masters have so often portrayed their ideas of God in the shape of
an old, gray-haired man, partly bald, and with long, flowing beard.
Alas! how pitifully crude, how lamentably impotent such childish
concepts. For they saw in God only their own frailties infinitely
magnified. Small wonder that they lived and died in spiritual gloom!

"Padre," Rosendo went on, "if there is no limit to the universe, then
it is--"

"Infinite in extent, Rosendo," finished Jose.

"Then whoever made it is infinite, too," Rosendo