clapped her
hands in merriment.

"Never!" muttered Rosendo. "I will not enter that place! It would
bring the plague upon me! _Na! na!_" he insisted, when they reached
the steps, "do you go in if you wish; but I will stay outside in the
shadow of the building." Nor would the combined entreaties of Carmen
and Jose induce him to yield. Dona Maria calmly and silently prepared
to remain with him.

"Pull off the old door, Padre!" cried Carmen excitedly. "And open all
the shutters. Look! Look, Padre! There goes the bad angel that padre
Rosendo was afraid of!" A number of bats, startled at the noise and
the sudden influx of light, were scurrying out through the open door.

"Like the legion of demons which Jesus sent into the swine," said
Jose. "I will tell you the story some day, _chiquita_," he said, in
answer to her look of inquiry.

The day passed quickly for the child, nor did she seem to cast another
thought in the direction of the cloud which hung over the sorrowing
town. At dusk, Mendoza and Cardenas came to the foot of the hill with
food and blankets.

"Amado Sanchez has just died," they reported.

"What!" cried Jose. "So soon? Why--he fell sick only yesterday!"

"No, Padre, he had been ailing for many days--but it may have been the
plague just the same. Perhaps it was with us before Feliz brought it.
But we have not exposed ourselves to the disease and--Padre--there is
not a man in Simiti who will bury Amado. What shall we do?"

Jose divined the man's thought. "_Bien, amigo_," he replied. "Go you
back to your homes. To-night Rosendo and I will come and bury him."

Jose had sent Carmen and Dona Maria beyond the church, that they might
not hear the grewsome tidings. When the men had returned to their
homes, the little band on the hilltop ate their evening meal in
silence. Then a bench was swept clean for Carmen's bed, for she
insisted on sleeping in the old church with Jose when she learned that
he intended to pass the night there.

Again, as the heavy shadows were gathering, Jose and Rosendo descended
into the town and bore out the body of Amado Sanchez to a resting
place beside the poor lad who had died the day before. To a man of
such delicate sensibilities as Jose, whose nerves were raw from
continual friction with a world with which he was ever at variance,
this task was one of almost unendurable horror. He returned to the old
church in a state bordering on collapse.

"Rosendo," he murmured, as they s