d Carmen let me make the salve
again?"

He bent over his outfit for some moments. "She says if I trust God I
will not get sick," he at length resumed. "She says I must not think
about it. _Caramba!_ What has that to do with it? People get sick
whether they think about it or not. Do you believe, Padre, this new
_escapulario_ will protect me?"

The man's words reflected the strange mixture of mature and childish
thought typical of these untutored jungle folk, in which longing for
the good is so heavily overshadowed by an educated belief in the power
of evil.

"Rosendo," said Jose, finding at last his opportunity, "tell me, do
you think you were seriously ill day before yesterday?"

"_Quien sabe_, Padre! Perhaps it was only the _terciana_, after all."

"Well, then," pursuing another tack, "do you think I was very sick
that day when I rushed to the lake--?"

"_Caramba_, Padre! But you were turning cold--you hardly breathed--we
all thought you must die--all but Carmen!"

"And what cured me, Rosendo?" the priest asked in a low, steady
voice.

"Why--Padre, I can not say."

"Nor can I, positively, my friend. But I do know that the little
Carmen said I should not die. And she said the same of you when, as I
would swear, you were in the fell clutches of the death angel
himself."

"Padre--" Rosendo's eyes were large, and his voice trembled in awesome
whisper--"is she--the little Carmen--is she--an _hada_?"

"A witch? _Hombre!_ No!" cried Jose, bursting into a laugh at the
perturbed features of the older man. "No, _amigo_, she is not an
_hada_! Let us say, rather, as you first expressed it to me, she is an
angel--and let us appreciate her as such.

"But," he continued, "I tell you in all seriousness, there are things
that such as you and I, with our limited outlook, have never dreamed
of; and that child seems to have penetrated the veil that hides
spiritual things from the material vision of men like us. Let us wait,
and if we value that '_something_' which she seems to possess and know
how to use, let us cut off our right hands before we yield to the
temptation to place any obstacle in the way of her development along
the lines which she has chosen, or which some unseen Power has chosen
for her. It is for you and me, Rosendo, to stand aside and watch,
while we protect her, if haply we may be privileged some day to learn
her secret in full. You and I are the unlearned, while she is filled
with wisdom. The world wou