very black
inside; but Chita wanted to know what was there. She pushed her way
through a gap in the thin and rotten line of pickets, and through some
tall weeds with big coarse pink flowers;--then she crouched down on
hands and knees before the black hole, and peered in. It was not so
black inside as she had thought; for a sunbeam slanted down through a
chink in the roof; and she could see!

A brown head--without hair, without eyes, but with teeth, ever so many
teeth!--seemed to laugh at her; and close to it sat a Toad, the hugest
she had ever seen; and the white skin of his throat kept puffing out
and going in. And Chita screamed and screamed, and fled in wild
terror,--screaming all the way, till Carmen ran out to meet her and
carry her home. Even when safe in her adopted mother's arms, she
sobbed with fright. To the vivid fancy of the child there seemed to be
some hideous relation between the staring reptile and the brown
death's-head, with its empty eyes, and its nightmare-smile.

The shock brought on a fever,--a fever that lasted several days, and
left her very weak. But the experience taught her to obey, taught her
that Carmen knew best what was for her good. It also caused her to
think a great deal. Carmen had told her that the dead people never
frightened good little girls who stayed at home.

--"Madrecita Carmen," she asked, "is my mamma dead?"

--"Pobrecita! .... Yes, my angel. God called her to Him,--your darling
mother."

--"Madrecita," she asked again,--her young eyes growing vast with
horror,--"is my own mamma now like That?" ... She pointed toward the
place of the white gleam, behind the great trees.

--"No, no, no! my darling!" cried Carmen, appalled herself by the
ghastly question,--"your mamma is with the dear, good, loving God, who
lives in the beautiful sky, above the clouds, my darling, beyond the
sun!"

But Carmen's kind eyes were full of tears; and the child read their
meaning. He who teareth off the Mask of the Flesh had looked into her
face one unutterable moment:--she had seen the brutal Truth, naked to
the bone!

Yet there came to her a little thrill of consolation, caused by the
words of the tender falsehood; for that which she had discerned by day
could not explain to her that which she saw almost nightly in her
slumber. The face, the voice, the form of her loving mother still
lived somewhere,--could not have utterly passed away; since the sweet
presence came to her in