guitar, they
gather fruits. They sing and dance--and then die. Padre, it is sad, is
it not?"

Aye, thought the priest, doubly sad in its mute answer to the
heartlessly selfish query of Cain. No one, not even the Church, was
the keeper of these benighted brothers. He alone had constituted
himself their shepherd. And as they learned to love him, to confide
their simple wants and childish hopes to him, he came to realize the
immense ascendency which the priests of Colombia possess over the
simple understanding of the people. An ascendency hereditary and
dominant, capable of utmost good, but expressed in the fettering of
initiative and action, in the suppression of ambition, and the
quenching of every impulse toward independence of thought. How he
longed to lift them up from the drag of their mental encompassment!
Yet how helpless he was to afford them the needed lustration of soul
which alone could accomplish it!

"I can do little more than try to set them a standard of thought,"
he would muse, as he looked out from the altar over the camellia-like
faces of his adult children when he conducted his simple Sunday
services. "I can only strive to point out the better things of
this life--to tell them of the wonders of invention, of art, of
civilization--I can only relate to them tales of romance and
achievement, and beautiful stories--and try to omit in the recital all
reference to the evil methods, aims, and motives which have manifested
in those dark crimes staining the records of history. The world
calls them historical incident and fact. I must call them 'the mist
that went up from the ground and watered the face of the earth.'"

But Jose had progressed during his years in Simiti. It had been
hard--only he could know how hard!--to adapt himself to the narrow
environment in which he dwelt. It had been hard to conform to these
odd ways and strange usages. But he now knew that the people's
reserve and shyness at first was due to their natural suspicion of
him. For days, even weeks, he had known that he was being weighed and
watched. And then love triumphed.

It is true, the dull staring of the natives of this unkempt town had
long continued to throw him into fits of prolonged nervousness. They
had not meant to offend, of course. Their curiosity was far from
malicious. But at hardly any hour of the day or night could he look up
from his work without seeing dark, inquisitive faces peering in
through the latticed window or