d into their simple life in Simiti, Rosendo seldom spoke
of matters pertaining to religion. Yet Jose knew that the old faith
held him, and that he would never, on this plane of existence, break
away from it. He clung to his _escapulario_; he prostrated himself
before the statue of the Virgin; he invoked the aid of Virgin and
Saints when in distress; and, unlike most of the male inhabitants of
the town, he scrupulously prayed his rosary every night, whether at
home, or on the lonely margins of the Tigui. He had once said to Jose
that he was glad Padre Diego had baptised the little Carmen--he felt
safer to have it so. And yet he would not have her brought up in the
Holy Catholic faith. Let her choose or formulate her own religious
beliefs, they should not be influenced by him or others.

"You can never make me believe, Padre," he would sometimes say to the
priest, "that the little Carmen was not left by the angels on the
river bank."

"But, Rosendo, how foolish!" remonstrated Jose. "You have Escolastico's
account, and the boat captain's."

"Well, and what then? Even the blessed Saviour was born of a woman;
and yet he came from heaven. The angels brought him, guarded him as he
lay in the manger, protected him all his life, and then took him back
to heaven again. And I tell you, Padre, the angels brought Carmen, and
they are always with her!"

Jose ceased to dispute the old man's contentions. For, had he been
pressed, he would have been forced to admit that there was in the
child's pure presence a haunting spell of mystery--perhaps the mystery
of godliness--but yet an undefinable _something_ that always made him
approach her with a feeling akin to awe.

And in the calm, untroubled seclusion of Simiti, in its mediaeval
atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring
past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a
nature that communed incessantly with her God, and that read His name
in every trivial incident, in every stone and flower, in the sunbeams,
the stars, and the whispering breeze. In that ancient town, crumbling
into the final stages of decrepitude, she dwelt in heaven. To her, the
rude adobe huts were marble castles; the shabby rawhide chairs and
hard wooden beds were softest down; the coarse food was richer than a
king's spiced viands; and over it all she cast a mantle of love that
was rich enough, great enough, to transform with the grace of fresh
and heavenly beauty t