learning was deep and reverential. He was a silent worshiper, this
great-hearted man, at the shrine of intellect; but, alas! he himself
knew only the rudiments, which he had acquired by years of patient,
struggling effort, through long days and nights filled with toil. His
particular passion was his Castilian mother-tongue; and the precision
with which he at times used it, his careful selection of words, and
his wide vocabulary, occasioned Jose no little astonishment. One day,
after returning from the hills, he approached Jose as the latter was
hearing Carmen's lessons, and, with considerable embarrassment,
offered him a bit of paper on which were written in his ample hand
several verses. Jose read them, and then looked up wonderingly at the
old man.

"Why, Rosendo, these are beautiful! Where did you get them?"

"I--they are mine, Padre," replied Rosendo, his face glowing with
pleasure.

"Yours! Do you mean that you wrote them?" Jose queried in astonishment.

"Yes, Padre. Nights, up in Guamoco, when I had finished my work, and
when I was so lonely, I would sometimes light my candle and try to
write out the thoughts that came to me."

Jose could not keep back the tears. He turned his head, that Rosendo
might not see them. Of the three little poems, two were indited to the
Virgin Mary, and one to Carmen. He lingered over one of the verses of
the latter, for it awoke responsive echoes in his own soul:

"Without you, the world--a desert of sadness;
But with you, sweet child--a vale of delight;
You laugh, like the sunbeam--my gloom becomes gladness;
You sing--from my heart flee the shadows of night."

"I--I have written a good deal of poetry during my life, Padre. I will
show you some of it, if you wish," Rosendo advanced, encouraged by
Jose's approbation.

"Decidedly, I would!" returned Jose with animation. "And to think,
without instruction, without training! What a lesson!"

"Yes, Padre, when I think of the blessed Virgin or the little Carmen,
my thoughts seem to come in poetry." He stooped over the girl and
kissed her. The child reached up and clasped her arms about his black
neck.

"Padre Rosendo," she said sweetly, "you are a poem, a big one, a
beautiful one."

"Aye," seconded Jose, and there was a hitch in his voice, "you are an
epic--and the world is the poorer that it cannot read you!"

But, though showing such laudable curiosity regarding the elements
which entere