rdent midday heat, Rosendo and his family
repaired to the church. There before the altar Jose baptised the
little one and gave it his own name, thus triumphantly ushering the
pagan babe into the Christian Catholic world. The child cried at the
touch of the baptismal water.

"Now," commented Rosendo, "the devil has gone out of him, driven out
by the holy water."

But, as Jose leaned over the babe and looked into its dark eyes, his
hand stopped, and his heart stood still. He raised his head and bent a
look of inquiry upon the mother. She returned the look with one that
mutely voiced a stifled fear and confirmed his own. "Padre!" she
whispered hoarsely. "What is it? Quick!"

He took a candle from the altar and passed it before the child's
eyes.

"Padre! He sees! _Santa Virgen!_ Do not tell me--_Dios mio_!" The
mother's voice rose to a wail, as she snatched her babe away.

A loud exclamation escaped Rosendo. Dona Maria stood mute; but Jose as
he looked at her divined her thought and read therein a full knowledge
of the awful fact that she had never voiced to the heart-broken
mother.

"Padre!" cried the perplexed Rosendo. "Maria!" turning in appeal to
his wife. "Speak, some one! _Santa Virgen_, speak! Ana, what ails the
child?"

Jose turned his head aside. Carmen crowded close to the weeping Ana.
Dona Maria took Rosendo's arm.

"The babe, Rosendo," she said quietly, "was born--blind."

CHAPTER 30

The "revolutionist" of Latin America is generally only the disgruntled
politician. His revolution is seldom more than a violent squabble
among greedy spoilsmen for control of the loose-jointed administration.
But the great Mosquera Revolution which burst into flame in New
Granada in 1861 was fed with fuel of a different nature. It
demonstrated, if demonstration were necessary, that the Treaty of
Westphalia did not write _finis_ to the history of bloodshed in the
name of Christ; that it had but banked the fires of religious
animosity, until the furnace should be transferred from the Old World to
the New, where the breath of liberty would again fan them into
vigorous activity.

The Mosquera War tore asunder Church and State; but left unhappy
Colombia prone and bleeding. It externalized a mighty protest of
enlightenment against Rome's dictates in temporal affairs. And, as has
before happened when that irresistible potentiality, the people, has
been stirred into action, the Church was disestablished, its propert