er. At
the touch of her fingers, he felt himself growing old and cold. Even
the penance of parting, which he had looked forward to, was denied him;
there was no longer sympathy enough for sorrow. He thought of the empty
chorister's robe in the little cell, but not now with regret. He only
trembled to think of the flesh that he had once caused to inhabit it.

"That's all, gentlemen," broke in the practical voice of Cranch.
"Whether there are proofs enough to make Francisca the heiress of her
father's wealth, the lawyers must say. I reckon it's enough for me that
they give me the chance of repairing a wrong by taking her father's
place. After all, it was a mere chance."

"It was the will of God," said Father Pedro, solemnly.

They were the last words he addressed them. For when the fog had begun
to creep inshore, hastening their departure, he only answered their
farewells by a silent pressure of the hand, mute lips, and far-off eyes.

When the sound of their laboring oars grew fainter, he told Antonio to
lead him and Sanchicha again to the buried boat. There he bade her kneel
beside him. "We will do penance here, thou and I, daughter," he said
gravely. When the fog had drawn its curtain gently around the strange
pair, and sea and shore were blotted out, he whispered, "Tell me, it was
even so, was it not, daughter, on the night she came?" When the distant
clatter of blocks and rattle of cordage came from the unseen vessel, now
standing out to sea, he whispered again, "So, this is what thou didst
hear, even then." And so during the night he marked, more or less
audibly to the half-conscious woman at his side, the low whisper of the
waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the lightening and thickening
of the fog, the phantoms of moving shapes, and the slow coming of the
dawn. And when the morning sun had rent the veil over land and sea,
Antonio and Jose found him, haggard, but erect, beside the trembling
old woman, with a blessing on his lips, pointing to the horizon where a
single sail still glimmered:--

"Va Usted con Dios."

A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

CHAPTER I

She was barely twenty-three years old. It is probable that up to that
age, and the beginning of this episode, her life had been uneventful.
Born to the easy mediocrity of such compensating extremes as a small
farmhouse and large lands, a good position and no society, in that vast
grazing district of Kentucky known as the "Blue Grass" region