olicy to appear passive. I attended mass, and sought the
confessional, and all the while cursed him in my heart. I watched him,
and saved your people from destruction. Would you know how? I heard
whispered promises to meet at dead of night. I followed; I saw the
meeting between an emissary of Santa Anna and my godly Padre. At
imminent risk I listened to their plot. You were to be kept in
ignorance of the powerful force hurrying on to destroy you. Santa
Anna was to burst suddenly upon the town, and, ere you could receive
reinforcements, capture the Alamo at a blow. Once in his possession,
more than one of your people were to be handed over to the tender
mercies of my holy confessor. I warned you of your danger, and happily
you heeded the signs of the time; else you, too, would now molder
beneath the walls of the Alamo. His prey escaped him, and with
redoubled eagerness he sought to consummate my destruction. I was made
a prisoner in my own home, ere the sod settled on my father's grave!
I fled in the midnight hour, and you see me here! Dr. Bryant, I
well-nigh cut short the knotted thread of my life; but one thing saved
me, else my body would even now whirl along the channel of the river.
When I parted from the blue-eyed, sainted Mary, she gave me this book,
and asked me not only to read but follow its teachings. She clasped my
hand, and told me to remember God, and the eternity which awaited me,
and the judgment of that other, final world. Oh! if there be a heaven
and a purgatory! a God and a judge! if I sink to perdition, one alone
is to blame. He told me he had power to forgive my sins; that the
more completely I obeyed him on earth, the more blessed I should be in
heaven. Yet I have heard him lie, and seen him set aside the rules of
humanity and the laws of God! Mary's Bible tells me 'to keep holy the
Sabbath day.' Yet, from my childhood, I have seen our Priests at mass
on Sabbath morning, and at monte and cock-fights on the evening of the
same day! And I have seen them take from the widow, as the burial-fee
of her husband, the last cow she possessed. I saw these things, and
I said, there is no God, or he would not suffer such as these to
minister as his chosen servants upon the earth. I said in my heart,
purgatory is but a lie made to keep pace with their marvelous legends
and frequent miracles! There is not a purgatory, or they would fear
the retribution in store for them. I had none to teach me aright.
I mocked at t