real Rosendo,
were beyond the reach of evil.

If this were true, then he must clear his own mentality--even as he
now knew Carmen had done out on the shales that afternoon. He was no
longer dealing with a material Rosendo, but with false beliefs about a
son of God. He was handling mental concepts. And to the serpent,
error, he was trying to say: "What is your authority?"

If man lives, he never dies. If man is, then he always has been. And
he was never born--and never passes into oblivion. A fact never
changes. If two and two make four to-day, they always have done so,
and always will.

Can good produce evil? Then evil can have no creator. Rosendo, when
moved by good, had gone into the wilds of Guamoco on a mission of
love. Did evil have power to smite him for his noble sacrifice?

What is this human life of ours? Real existence? No, but a sense of
existence--and a false sense, for it postulates a god of evil opposed
to the one supreme Creator of all that really is. Then the testimony
that said Rosendo must die was cruelly false. And, more, it was
powerless--unless Jose himself gave it power.

Did Carmen know that? Had she so reasoned? Assuredly no! But she knew
God as Jose had never known Him. And, despite the testimony of the
fleshly eyes, she had turned from physical sense to Him.

"It is not practicable!" the world cries in startled protest.

But, behold her life!

Jose had begun to see that discord was the result of unrighteousness,
false thought. He began to understand why it was that Jesus always
linked disease with sin. His own paradoxical career had furnished
ample proof of that. Yet his numberless tribulations were not due
solely to his own wrong thinking, but likewise to the wrong thought of
others with respect to him, thought which he knew not how to
neutralize. And the channels for this false, malicious, carnal thought
had been his beloved parents, his uncle, the Archbishop, his tutors,
and, in fact, all with whom he had been associated until he came to
Simiti. There he had found Carmen. And there the false thought had met
a check, a reversal. The evil had begun to destroy itself. And he was
slowly awaking to find nothing but good.

The night hours flitted through the heavy gloom like spectral
acolytes. Rosendo sank into a deep sleep. The steady roll of the frogs
in the lake at length died away. A flush stole timidly across the
eastern sky.

"Padre dear, he will not die."

It was Carmen's vo