of men, and left to the more awful judgment of an offended God.
This was wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age;
he was even bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake
to their own danger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of
that house should go up to heaven.

He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;
whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill news direct to the
threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;
for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;
by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping
hidden behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit.
Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,
remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other
with a passionate sadness.

"I thought you had gone," she said at length. "It is all that you can do
for me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. But do
you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your
head, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought
you love me, and the people will not suffer it."

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
"Olalla," I said, "I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not
alone."

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I
stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration,
now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed
countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image.
The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that
circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the
hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil,
and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked
upon me with a pale and sorrowful countenance.

"I have laid my hand upon the cross," she said. "The Padre says you are
no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the face
of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;
we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all
of us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endure
for a little while, un