Fiat Allis FG65C Grader Service Manual_73162566

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“And––Padre, don’t we have to do that way, too?” she asked
earnestly.
“Just so, chiquita. We must, every one of us, do exactly as Jesus did.
We must wash ourselves clean––wash off the dirty beliefs of power
apart from God; we must wash off the beliefs of evil as a power,
created in opposition to Him, or permitted by Him to exist and to use
His children; we must wash off beliefs of matter as real and created
by Him. We must know that matter and all evil, all that decays and
passes away, all discord and disease, everything that comes as
testimony of the five physical senses, is but a part of the lie about
Him, the stuff that has the minus sign before it, making it less than
nothing. We must know that it is the suppositional opposite of the
real––it is an illusion, seeming to exist, yet evaporating when we try
to define it or put a finger on it, for it has no rule or principle by
which it was created and by which it continues to exist. Its existence
is only in human thought.”
No, Josè assured himself, the Gospels are not “loose, exaggerated,
inaccurate, credulous narratives.” They are the story of the clearest
transparency to truth that was ever known to mortals as a human
being. They preserve the life-giving words of him whose mission it
was to show mankind the way out of error by giving them truth.
They contain the rule given by the great Mathematician, who taught
mankind how to solve their life-problems. They tell the world plainly
that there seems to exist a lie about God; that every real idea of the
infinite Mind seems to have its suppositional opposite in a material
illusion. They tell us plainly that resisting these illusions with truth
renders them nugatory. They tell us clearly that the man Jesus was
so filled with truth that he proved the nothingness of the lie about
God by doing those deeds that seemed marvelous in the eyes of
men, and yet which he said we could and should do ourselves. And
we must do them, if we would throw off the mesmerism of the lie.
The human concept of man and the universe must dissolve in the
light of the truth that comes through us as transparencies. And it
were well if we set about washing away the dirt of materialism, that 216

the light may shine through more abundantly.

Jesus did not say that his great deeds were accomplished contrary to
law, but that they fulfilled the law of God. The law is spiritual, never
material. Material law is but human limitation. Ignorance of spiritual
law permits the belief in its opposite, material law, or laws of matter.
False, human beliefs, opinions, and theories, material speculations
and superstitions, parade before the human mind as laws. Jesus
swept them all aside by knowing that their supposed power lay only
in human acceptance. The human mind is mesmerized by its own
false thought. Even Paul at times felt its mesmerism and exclaimed:
“I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with
me.” The very idea of good stirs up its opposite in the human
consciousness. But Paul rose above it and saw its nothingness. Then
he cried: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death.” He recognized the spiritual law
that Jesus employed; and with it he overcame the mesmerism of the
lie.
“To be a Christian, then,” said Josè, “means not merely taking the
name of Christ, and, while morally opposing sin, succumbing to
every form of mesmerism that the lie about God exerts. No, it is
infinitely more! It means recognizing the nature of God and His
Creation, including Man, to be wholly spiritual––and the nature of
the material creation and mankind as their opposite, as mental
concepts, existing as false interpretations of the spiritual Universe
and Man, and as having their place only in the false human
consciousness, which itself is a mental activity concerned only with
false thought, the suppositional opposite of God’s thought. It means
taking this Truth, this spiritual law, as we would take a mathematical
rule or principle, and with it overcoming sin, sickness, discord of
every name and nature, even to death itself. What, oh, what have
so-called Christians been doing these nearly two thousand years,
that they have not ere this worked out their salvation as Jesus
directed them to do? Alas! they have been mesmerized––simply
mesmerized by the lie. The millennium should have come long, long
ago. It would come to-day if the world would obey Jesus. But it will
not come until it does obey him.”
Day after day, week after week, month after month, Josè delved and
toiled, studied and pondered. The books which he ordered through
the Empresa Alemania, and for which for some two months he
waited in trembling anticipation and fear lest they be lost in transit,
finally arrived. When Juan brought them up from Bodega Central,
Josè could have wept for joy. Except for the very few letters he had
received at rare intervals, these were the only messages that had 217

penetrated the isolation of Simití from the outside world in the two
long years of his exile. His starving mind ravenously devoured them.
They afforded his first introduction to that fearlessly critical thought
regarding things religious which has swept across the world like a
tidal wave, and washed away so many of the bulwarks of
superstition and ignorance bred of fear of the unknown and
supposedly unknowable.
And yet they were not really his first introduction to that thought,
for, as he pored over these books, his heart expanded with gratitude
to the brusque explorer whom he had met in Cartagena, that genial,
odd medley of blunt honesty, unquibbling candor, and hatred of
dissimulation, whose ridicule of the religious fetishism of the human
mentality tore up the last root of educated orthodox belief that
remained struggling for life in the altered soil of his mind.
But, though they tore down with ruthless hand, these books did not
reconstruct. Josè turned from them with something of
disappointment. He could understand why the trembling heart,
searching wearily for truth, turned always from such as they with
sinking hope. They were violently iconoclastic––they up-rooted––
they overthrew––they swept aside with unsparing hand––but they
robbed the starving mortal of his once cherished beliefs––they
snatched the stale and feebly nourishing bread from his mouth, and
gave nothing in return. They emptied his heart, and left it starving.
What did it boot to tell a man that the orthodox dream of eternal
bliss beyond the gates of death was but a hoax, if no substitute be
offered? Why point out the fallacies, the puerile conceptions, the
worse than childish thought expressed in the religious creeds of
men, if they were not to be replaced by life-sustaining truth? If the
demolition of cherished beliefs be not followed by reconstruction
upon a sure foundation of demonstrable truth, then is the resulting
state of mind worse than before, for the trusting, though deceived,
soul has no recourse but to fall into the agnosticism of despair, or
the black atheism of positive negation.
“Happily for me,” he sighed, as he closed his books at length, “that
Carmen entered my empty life in time with the truth that she hourly
demonstrates!”
218
 CHAPTER 24

Days melted into weeks, and these in turn into months. Simití, drab
and shabby, a crumbling and abandoned relique of ancient Spanish
pride and arrogance, drowsed undisturbed in the ardent embrace of
the tropical sun. Don Jorge returned, unsuccessful, from his long
quest in the San Lucas mountains, and departed again down the
Magdalena river.
“It is a marvelous country up there,” he told Josè. “I do not wonder
that it has given rise to legends. I felt myself in a land of
enchantment while I was roaming those quiet mountains. When,
after days of steady traveling, I would chance upon a little group of
natives hidden away in some dense thicket, it seemed to me that
they must be fairies, not real. I came upon the old trail, Padre, the
Camino Real, now sunken and overgrown, which the Spaniards used.
They called it the Panamá trail. It used to lead down to Cartagena.
Hombre! in places it is now twenty feet deep!”
“But, gold, Don Jorge?”
“Ah, Padre, what quartz veins I saw in that country! Hombre! Gold
will be discovered there without measure some day! But––Caramba!
This map which Don Carlos gave me is much in error. I must consult
again with him. Then I shall return to Simití.” Josè regretfully saw
him depart, for he had grown to love this ruggedly honest soul.
Meantime, Don Mario sulked in his house; nor during the intervening
year would he hold anything more than the most formal intercourse
with the priest. Josè ignored him as far as possible. Events move
with terrible deliberation in these tropic lands, and men’s minds are
heavy and lethargic. Josè assumed that Don Mario had failed in the
support upon which he had counted; or else Diego’s interest in
Carmen was dormant, perhaps utterly passed. Each succeeding day
of quiet increased his confidence, while he rounded out month after
month in this sequestered vale on the far confines of civilization, and
the girl attained her twelfth year. Moreover, as he noted with
marveling, often incredulous, mental gaze her swift, unhindered
progress, the rapid unfolding of her rich nature, and the increasing
development of a spirituality which seemed to raise her daily farther
above the plane on which he dwelt, he began to regard the
uninterrupted culmination of his plans for her as reasonably assured,
if not altogether certain.
Juan continued his frequent trips down to Bodega Central as general
219

messenger and transportation agent for his fellow-townsmen,

meanwhile adoring Carmen from a distance of respectful decorum.
Rosendo and Lázaro, relaxing somewhat their vigilance over the girl,
labored daily on the little hacienda across the lake. The dull-witted
folk, keeping to their dismally pretentious mud houses during the
pulsing heat of day, and singing their weird, moaning laments in the
quiet which reigned over this maculate hollow at night, followed
undeviatingly the monotonous routine of an existence which had no
other aim than the indulgence of the most primitive material wants.
“Ah, Padre,” Rosendo would say of them, “they are so easy! They
love idleness; they like not labor. They fish, they play the 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 Josè had progressed during his years in Simití. 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 220 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 the open door at him, watchful of
the minutest detail of his activity. He had now grown used to that.
And he had grown used to their thoughtless intrusion upon him at
any hour. He had learned, too, not to pale with nausea when, as was
their wont of many centuries, the dwellers in this uncouth town
relentlessly pursued their custom of expectorating upon his floor
immediately they entered and stood before him. He had accustomed
himself to the hourly intrusion of the scavenger pigs and starving
dogs in his house. And he could now endure without aching nerves
the awful singing, the maudlin wails, the thin, piercing, falsetto
howls which rose almost nightly about him in the sacred name of
music. For these were children with whom he dwelt. And he was
trying to show them that they were children of God.
The girl’s education was progressing marvelously. Already Josè had
been obliged to supplement his oral instruction with texts purchased
for her from abroad. Her grasp of the English language was his daily
wonder. After two years of study she spoke it readily. She loved it,
and insisted that her conversations with him should be conducted
wholly in it. French and German likewise had been taken up; and her
knowledge of her own Castilian tongue had been enriched by the
few books which he had been able to secure for her from Spain.
Josè’s anomalous position in Simití had ceased to cause him worry.
What mattered it, now that he had endeared himself to its people,
and was progressing undisturbed in the training of Carmen? He
performed his religious duties faithfully. His people wanted them.
And he, in turn, knew that upon his observance of them depended
his tenure of the parish.
And he wanted to remain among them, to lead them, if possible, at
least a little way along what he was daily seeing to be the only path
out of the corroding beliefs of the human mind. He knew that his
people’s growth would be slow––how slow might not his own be,
too! Who could say how unutterably slow would be their united
march heavenward! And yet, the human mind was expanding with 221

wonderful rapidity in these last days. What acceleration had it not

acquired since that distant era of the Old Stone Man, when through
a hundred thousand years of darkness the only observable progress
was a little greater skill in the shaping of his crude flint weapons!
To Padre Diego’s one or two subsequent curt demands that Carmen
be sent to him, Josè had given no heed. And perhaps Diego,
absorbed in his political activities as the confidential agent of
Wenceslas, would have been content to let his claim upon the child
lapse, after many months of quiet, had not Don Jorge inadvertently
set the current of the man’s thought again in her direction.
For Don Jorge was making frequent trips along the Magdalena river.
It was essential to his business to visit the various riverine towns
and to mingle freely with all grades of people, that he might run
down rumors or draw from the inhabitants information which might
result in valuable clues anent buried treasure. Returning one day to
Simití from such a trip, he regaled Josè with the spirited recital of his
experience on a steamboat which had become stranded on a river
bar.
“Bien,” he concluded, “the old tub at last broke loose. Then we saw
that its engines were out of commission; and so the captain let her
drift down to Banco, where we docked. I was forced, not altogether
against my will, to put up with Padre Diego. Caramba! The old fox!
But I had much amusement at his expense when I twitted him about
his daughter Carmen, and his silly efforts to get possession of her!”
Josè shook with indignation. “Good heaven, friend!” he cried, “why
can you not let sleeping dogs alone? Diego is not the man to be
bearded like that! Would that you had kept away from the subject!
And what did you say to him about the girl?”
“Caramba, man! I only told him how beautiful she was, and how
large for her few years. Bien, I think I said she was the most
beautiful and well-formed girl I had ever seen. But was there
anything wrong in telling the truth, amigo?”
“No,” replied Josè bitterly, as he turned away; “you meant no harm.
But, knowing the man’s brutal nature, and his assumed claim on the
girl, why could you not have foreseen possible misfortune to her in
dwelling thus on her physical beauty? Hombre, it is too bad!”
“Na, amigo,” said Don Jorge soothingly, “nothing can come of it.
Bien, you take things so hard!” But when Don Jorge again set out for
the mountains he left the priest’s heart filled with apprehension.
A few weeks later came what Josè had been awaiting, another 222

demand upon him for the girl. Failure to comply with it, said Diego’s
letter, meant the placing of the case in the hands of the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities for action.
Rosendo’s face grew hard when he read the note. “There is a way,
Padre. Let my woman take the girl and go up the Boque river to
Rosa Maria, the clearing of Don Nicolás. It is a wild region, where
tapirs and deer roam, and where hardly a man has set foot for
centuries. The people of Boque will keep our secret, and she can
remain hidden there until––”
“No, Rosendo, that will not do,” replied Josè, shaking his head in
perplexity. “The girl is developing rapidly, and such a course would
result in a mental check that might spell infinite harm. She and Doña
Maria would die to live by themselves up there in that lonely region.
What about her studies? And––what would I do?”
“Then do you go too, Padre,” suggested Rosendo.
“No, amigo, for that would cause search to be instituted by the
Bishop, and we certainly would be discovered. But, to take her and
flee the country––and the Church––how can I yet? No, it is
impossible!” He shook his head dolefully, while his thoughts flew
back to Seville and the proud mother there.
“Bien, Padre, let us increase our contributions to Don Wenceslas. Let
us send him from now on not less than one hundred pesos oro each
month. Will not that keep him quiet, no matter what Diego says?”
“Possibly,” assented Josè. “At any rate, we will try it.” They still had
some three thousand pesos gold left.

“Padre,” said Rosendo, some days later, as they sat together in the
parish house, “what do you think Diego wants of the girl?”
Josè hesitated. “I think, Rosendo––” he began. But could even a
human mind touch such depths of depravity? And yet––“I think,” he
continued slowly, “that Diego, having seen her, and now speculating
on her future beauty of face and form––I think he means to place
her in a convent, with the view of holding her as a ready substitute
for the woman who now lives with him––”
“Dios! And that is my own daughter!” cried Rosendo, springing up.
“Yes––true, Rosendo. And, if I mistake not, Diego also would like to
repay the score he has against you, for driving him from Simití and
holding the threat of death over him these many years. He can most
readily do this by getting Carmen away from you––as he did the
other daughter, is it not so?”
Rosendo came and stood before the priest. His face was strained 223

with fearful anxiety. “Padre,” he said in a low voice, “I shall end this
matter at once. I go to Banco to-morrow to kill Diego.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind!” cried Josè, seizing his hand.
“Why––Rosendo, it would mean your own death, or lifelong
imprisonment!”
“And what of that, Padre?” said the old man with awful calmness. “I
have nothing that is not hers, even to my life. Gladly would I give it
for her. Let me die, or spend my remaining days in the prison, if that
will save her. Such a price for her safety would be low.”
While he was speaking, Fernando, the town constable, entered. He
saluted the men gravely, and drew from his pocket a document to
which was attached the Alcalde’s official seal.
“Señores,” he said with much dignity, as if the majesty of his little
office weighed upon him, “I am commanded by Señor, the Alcalde,
to exercise the authority reposing in him and place Don Rosendo
Ariza under arrest. You will at once accompany me to the cárcel,” he
added, going up to the astonished Rosendo and laying a hand upon
his shoulder.
“Arrest! Me! Hombre! what have I done?” cried the old man,
stepping back.
“Bien, amigo, I do not find it my duty to tell you. The Señor Alcalde
hands me the document and commands me to execute it. As for the
cause––Bien, you must ask him.”
“Come,” said Josè, the first to recover from his astonishment, “let us
go to him at once.” He at any rate had now an opportunity to
confront Don Mario and learn what plans the man had been devising
these many months.
The Alcalde received the men in his little patio, scowling and
menacing. He offered them no greeting when they confronted him.
“Don Mario,” asked Josè in a trembling voice, “why have you put this
indignity upon our friend, Rosendo? Who orders his arrest?”
“Ask, rather, Señor Padre,” replied the Alcalde, full of wrath, “what
alone saves you from the same indignity. Only that you are a priest,
Señor Padre, nada más! His arrest is ordered by Padre Diego.”
“And why, if I may beg the favor?” pursued Josè, though he well
knew the sordid motive.
“Why? Caramba! Why lay the hands of the law upon those who
deprive a suffering father of his child! Bien, Fernando,” turning to the
constable, “you have done well. Take your prisoner to the cárcel.”
“No!” cried Rosendo, drawing back. “No, Don Mario, I will not go to
the jail! I will––”
“Caramba!” shouted the Alcalde, his face purple. “I set your trial 224
for
to-morrow, in the early morning. But this night you will spend in the
jail! Hombre! I will see if I am not Alcalde here! And look you, Señor
Padre, if there is any disturbance, I will send for the government
soldiers! Then they will take Rosendo to the prison in Cartagena!
And that finishes him!”
Josè knew that, if Diego had the support of the Bishop, this was no
idle threat. Rosendo turned to him in helpless appeal. “What shall I
do, Padre?” he asked.
“It is best that you go to the jail to-night, Rosendo,” said Josè with
sinking heart. “But, Don Mario,” turning menacingly to the Alcalde,
“mark you, his trial takes place in the morning, and he shall be
judged, not by you alone, but by his fellow-townsmen!”
“Have I not said so, señor?” returned Don Mario curtly, with a note
of deep contempt in his voice.
As in most small Spanish towns, the jail was a rude adobe hut, with
no furnishings, save the wooden stocks into which the feet of the
hapless prisoners were secured. Thus confined, the luckless wight
who chanced to feel the law’s heavy hand might sit in a torturing
position for days, cruelly tormented at night by ravenous
mosquitoes, and wholly dependent upon the charity of the townsfolk
for his daily rations, unless he have friends or family to supply his
needs. In the present instance Don Mario took the extra precaution
of setting a guard over his important prisoner.
Josè, benumbed by the shock and bewildered by the sudden
precipitation of events, accompanied Rosendo to the jail and mutely
watched the procedure as Fernando secured the old man’s bare feet
in the rude stocks. And yet, despite the situation, he could not
repress a sense of the ridiculous, as his thought dwelt momentarily
on the little opéra bouffe which these child-like people were so
continually enacting in their attempts at self-government. But it was
a play that at times approached dangerously near to the tragic. The
passions of this Latin offshoot were strong, if their minds were dull
and lethargic, and when aroused were capable of the most
despicable, as well as the most grandly heroic deeds. And in the
present instance, when the fleeting sense of the absurd passed, Josè
knew that he was facing a crisis. Something told him that resistance
now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest
with violence, and perhaps have escaped. But that would have
accomplished nothing for Carmen, the pivot upon which events were
turning. Josè had reasoned that it were better to let the Alcalde play
his hand first, in the small hope that as the cards fell he might more
225

than match his opponent’s strength with his own.

“Na, Padre, do not worry,” said Rosendo reassuringly. “It is for her
sake; and we shall have to know, as she does, that everything will
come out right. My friends will set me free to-morrow, when the trial
takes place. And then”––he drew the priest down to him and
whispered low––“we will leave Simití and take to the mountains.”
Josè bent his heavy steps homeward. Arriving at Rosendo’s house,
he saw the little living room crowded with sympathetic friends who
had come to condole with Doña Maria. That placid woman, however,
had not lost in any degree her wonted calm, even though her
companions held forth with much impassioned declamation against
the indignity which had been heaped upon her worthy consort. He
looked about for Carmen. She was not with her foster-mother, nor
did his inquiry reveal her whereabouts. He smiled sadly, as he
thought of her out on the shales, her customary refuge when storms
broke. He started in search of her; but as he passed through the
plaza Mañuela Cortez met him. “Padre,” she exclaimed, “is the little
Carmen to go to jail, too?”
Josè stopped short. “Mañuela––why do you say that?” he asked
hurriedly, his heart starting to beat like a trip-hammer.
“Because, Padre, I saw the constable, Fernando, take her into Don
Mario’s house some time ago.”
Josè uttered an exclamation and started for the house of the
Alcalde. Don Mario stood at the door, his huge bulk denying the
priest admission.
“Don Mario!” panted Josè. “Carmen––you have her here?”
Fernando, who had been sitting just within the door, rose and came
to his chief’s side. Josè felt his brain whirling. Fernando stepped
outside and took his arm. The Alcalde’s unlovely face expanded in a
sinister leer. “It is permissible to place even a priest in the stocks, if
he becomes loco,” he said significantly.
Josè tightened his grip upon himself. Fernando spoke quickly:
“It was necessary to take the girl in custody, too, Padre. But do not
worry; she is safe.”
“But––you have no right to take her––”
“There, Señor Padre, calm yourself. What right had you to separate
her from her father?”
“Diego is not her father! He lies! And, Don Mario, you have no
authority but his––”
“You mistake, Señor Padre,” calmly interrupted the Alcalde. “I have
226
a
much higher authority.”
Josè stared dully at him. “Whose, then?” he muttered, scarce
hearing his own words.
“The Bishop’s, Señor Padre,” answered Don Mario, with a cruel grin.
“The Bishop! But––the old man––”
“Na, Señor Padre, but the Bishop is fairly young, you know. That is,
the new one––”
“The new one!” cried the uncomprehending Josè.
“To be sure, Señor Padre, the new Bishop––formerly Señor Don
Wenceslas Ortiz.”
Josè beat the air feebly as his hand sought his damp brow. His
confused brain became suddenly stagnant.
“Bien, Señor Padre,” put in Fernando gently, pitying the priest’s
agony. “You had not heard the news. Don Mario received letters to-
day. The old Bishop of Cartagena died suddenly some days ago, and
Don Wenceslas at once received the temporary appointment, until
the vacancy can be permanently filled. There is talk of making
Cartagena an archbishopric, and so a new bishop will not be
appointed until that question is settled. Meanwhile, Don Wenceslas
administers the affairs of the Church there.”
“And he––he––” stammered the stunned priest.
“To be sure, Señor Padre,” interrupted Don Mario, laughing aloud;
“the good Don Wenceslas no doubt has learned of the beautiful
Carmen, and he cannot permit her to waste her loveliness in so
dreary a place as Simití. And so he summons her to Cartagena, in
care of his agent, Padre Diego, who awaits the girl now in Banco to
conduct her safely down the river. At least, this is what Padre Diego
writes me. Bien, it is the making of the girl, to be so favored by His
Grace!”
Josè staggered and would have fallen, had not Fernando supported
him. Don Mario turned into his house. But as he went he spitefully
hurled back:
“Bien, Señor Padre, whom have you to blame but yourself? You keep
a child from her suffering father––you give all your time to her,
neglecting the other poor children of your parish––you send
Rosendo into the mountains to search for La Libertad––you break
your agreement with me, for you long ago said that we should work
together––is it not so? You find gold in the mountains, but you do
not tell me. Na, you work against me––you oppose my authority as
Alcalde––Bien, you opposed even the authority of the good Bishop––
may he rest with the Saints! You have not made a good priest for
Simití, Señor Padre––na, you have made a very bad one! And now 227

you wonder that the good Don Wenceslas takes the girl from you, to
bring her up in the right way. Caramba! if it is not already too late to
save her from your bad teachings!” His voice steadily rose while he
talked, and ended in a shrill pipe.
Josè made as if to reach him; but Fernando held him back. The
Alcalde got quickly within the house and secured the door. “Go now
to your home, Padre,” urged Fernando; “else I shall call help and put
you in the stocks, too!”
“But I will enter that house! I will take the child from him!” shouted
Josè desperately, struggling to gain the Alcalde’s door.
“Listen to me, Padre!” cried Fernando, holding to the frenzied man.
“The little Carmen––she is not in there!”
“Not––in––there! Then where is she, Fernando?––for God’s sake tell
me!” appealed the stricken priest. Great beads of perspiration stood
upon his face, and tears rolled down his drawn cheeks.
Fernando could not but pity him. “Bien, Padre,” he said gently;
“come away. I give you my word that the girl is not in the house of
the Alcalde. But I am not permitted to say where she is.”
“Then I will search every house in Simití!” cried the priest wildly.
“Na, Padre, you would not find her. Come, I will go home with you.”
He took Josè’s arm again and led him, blindly stumbling, to the
parish house.
By this time the little town was agog with excitement. People ran
from house to house, or gathered on the street corners, discussing
the event.
“Caramba!” shrilled one wrinkled beldame, “but Simití was very quiet
until the Cura came!”
“Na, señora,” cried another, “say, rather, until that wicked little hada
was brought here by Rosendo!”
“Cierto, she is an hada!” put in a third; “she cured Juanita of goitre
by her charms! I saw it!”
“Caramba! she works with the evil one. I myself saw her come from
the old church on the hill one day! Bien, what was she doing? I say,
she was talking with the bad angel which the blessed Virgin has
locked in there!”
“Yes, and I have seen her coming from the cemetery. She talks with
the buzzards that roost on the old wall, and they are full of evil
spirits!”
“And she brought the plague two years ago––who knows?” piped
another excitedly.
“Quien sabe? But it was not the real plague, anyway.”
“Bueno, and that proves that she caused it, no?” 228

“Cierto, señora, she cast a spell on the town!”

Josè sat in his little house like one in a dream. Fernando remained
with him. Doña Maria had gone to the jail to see Rosendo. Juan had
returned that morning to Bodega Central, and Lázaro was at work on
the plantation across the lake. Josè thought bitterly that the time
had been singularly well chosen for the coup. Don Mario’s last words
burned through his tired brain like live coals. In a sense the Alcalde
was right. He had been selfishly absorbed in the girl. But he alone,
excepting Rosendo, had any adequate appreciation of the girl’s real
nature. To the stagnant wits of Simití she was one of them, but with
singular characteristics which caused the more superstitious and less
intelligent to look upon her as an uncanny creature, possessed of
occult powers.
Moreover, Josè had duped Don Mario with assurances of
coöperation. He had allowed him to believe that Rosendo was
searching for La Libertad, and that he should participate in the
discovery, if made. Had his course been wholly wise, after all? He
could not say that it had.
But––God above! it was all to save an innocent child from the
blackest of fates! If he had been stronger himself, this never could
have happened. Or, perhaps, if he had not allowed himself to be
lulled to sleep by a fancied security bred of those long months of
quiet, he might have been awake and alert to meet the enemy when
he returned to the attack. Alas! the devil had left him for a season,
and Josè had laid down “the shield of faith,” while he lost himself in
the intellectual content which the study of the new books purchased
with his ancestral gold had afforded. But evil sleeps not; and with a
persistency that were admirable in a better cause, it returned with
unbated vigor at the moment the priest was off his guard.

Dawn broke upon a sleepless night for Josè. The Alcalde had sent
word that Fernando must remain with the priest, and that no visits
would be permitted to Rosendo in the jail. Josè had heard nothing
from Carmen, and, though often during the long night he sought to
know, as she would, that God’s protection rested upon her; and
though he sought feebly to prove the immanence of good by
knowing no evil, the morning found him drawn and haggard, with
corroding fear gnawing his desolate heart. Fernando remained mute;
and Doña Maria could only learn that the constable had been seen
leading the girl into Don Mario’s house shortly after Rosendo’s arrest.
229
At an early hour the people, buzzing with excitement, assembled for
the trial, which was held in the town hall, a long, empty adobe
house of but a single room, with dirt floor, and a few rough benches.
The Alcalde occupied a broken chair at one end of the room. The
trial itself was of the simplest order: any person might voice his
opinion; and the final verdict was left to the people.
In a shaking voice, his frame tremulous with nervous agitation,
Rosendo recounted the birth of the child at Badillo, and the manner
of her coming into his family. He told of Diego’s appointment to
Simití, and of the loss of his own daughter. Waxing more and more
energetic as his recital drew out, he denounced Diego as the prince
of liars, and as worthy of the violent end which he was certain to
meet if ever that renegade priest should venture near enough for
him to lay his hands upon him. The little locket was produced, and
all present commented on the probable identity of the girl’s parents.
Many affected to detect a resemblance to Diego in the blurred
photograph of the man. Others scouted the idea. Don Mario swore
loudly that it could be no other. Diego had often talked to him,
sorrowfully, and in terms of deepest affection, about the beautiful
woman whose love he had won, but whom his vows of celibacy
prevented from making his lawful wife. The Alcalde’s recital was
dramatic to a degree, and at its close several excitedly attempted to
address the multitude at the same time.
Oratory flowed on an ever rising tide, accompanied by much violent
gesticulation and expectoration by way of emphasis. At length it was
agreed that Diego had been, in times past, a bad man, but that the
verbal proofs which he had given the Alcalde were undoubtedly
valid, inasmuch as the Bishop stood behind them––and Don Mario
assured the people that they were most certainly vouched for by His
Grace. The day was almost carried when the eloquent Alcalde, in
glowing rhetoric, painted the splendid future awaiting the girl, under
the patronage of the Bishop. How cruel to retain her in dreary little
Simití, even though Diego’s claim still remained somewhat obscure,
when His Grace, learning of her talents, had summoned her to
Cartagena to be educated in the convent for a glorious future of