had been to him a well-known fact of life. For the past week
he had spent much of his time with the _maestro de novios_ of the local
chapter, a wizened old sheep herder, who had instructed him monotonously
in the secrets of the order, almost lulling him to sleep with his endless
mumblings of the ritual that was written in a little leather book a
century old. He had learned that if he betrayed the secrets of the order,
he would be buried alive with only his head sticking out of the ground, so
that the ants might eat his face. He had been informed that if he fell ill
he would be taken to the _Morada_ where his brothers in Christ would pray
for him, and seek to drive the devil out of his body, and that if he died,
they would send his shoes to his family as a notice of that event; and
would bury him in consecrated ground. Some of the things he had learned
had bored him and some had made him want to laugh, but none of them had
impressed him, as they were intended to do, with the might and dignity of
the ancient order.

He was impressed now as he stood before this dark still house where a
dozen ignorant fanatics waited to take his blood for what was to them a
holy purpose. He knew that this _Morada_ was a very old one. He thought of
all the true penitents who had knocked for admission at its door and had
gone through its bloody ordeal with a zeal of madness which had enabled
them to cry loudly for blows and more blows until they fell insensible. He
tried to imagine their state of mind, but he could not. He was of their
race and a growth of the same soil, but an alien civilization had touched
him and sundered him from them, yet without taking him for its own. He
could only nerve himself to face this ordeal because it would serve his
one great purpose.

As he stood there, a curious half-irrelevant thought came into his mind.
He knew that the marks they would make on his back would be permanent. He
had seen the long rough scars on the backs of sheep-herders, stripped to
the waist for the hot work of shearing. And he wondered how he would
explain these strange scars to Julia. He imagined her discovering them
with her long dainty hands, her round white arms. A great longing surged
up in him that seemed to weaken the very tissues of his body. He shook
himself, threw away his cigarette, went to the heavy wooden door and
knocked.

Now he spoke a rigamarole in Spanish which had been taught him by rote.

"God knocks at this mission