came the scarcely audible reply. But as Jose spoke, he knew
that his mind had that day been stripped of its last remaining vestige
of the old theology, leaving it bare, exposed--and receptive.

* * * * *

A week passed. The explorer had gone, as silently and unannounced as
he had come. The evening before his departure he and Jose had sat
again in the thick shadows of the old wall. The next morning he was on
the mighty river; and the priest was left with a great void in his
heart.

One noon, as Jose was returning from his classes, he pondered deeply
the last words of the explorer, "Remember, nothing that has been
invented by mankind or evolved by the human mind can stand, or remain.
We might just as well accept that great fact now as later, and adjust
ourselves to it. But the things of the spirit remain. And Paul has
told us what they are."

As he passed slowly along the winding little street toward the
dormitory, a messenger approached him with a summons from the Bishop.
He turned and started wonderingly toward the Cathedral. He had been
reprimanded once, twice, for the liberal views which he had expressed
to his classes. Was he to receive another rebuke now? He had tried to
be more careful of late. Had he been seen with the explorer?

An hour later, his eyes set and unseeing, and his thin lips trembling,
Jose dragged himself up the stone steps to his little room and threw
himself upon the bed. The bonds which had been slowly, imperceptibly
tightening during these few months of precious liberty had been drawn
suddenly taut. The Bishop, in the _role_ of _Inquisitor Natus_, had
just revealed a full knowledge of his dismal past, and had summarily
dismissed him from the University faculty. Jose, bewildered and
stunned, had tried vainly to defend himself. Then, realizing his
impotence before the uncompromising bigotry of this choleric
ecclesiastic, he had burst suddenly into a torrent of frenzied
declarations of his undeserved wrongs, of his resolve now to renounce
his oath, to leave the Church, to abandon honor, family, everything
that held or claimed him, and to flee into unknown and unknowing
parts, where his harassed soul might find a few years of rest before
its final flight! The Bishop became bitterly and implacably
infuriated, and remanded the excited priest to his room to reflect
upon his wild words, and to await the final disposition of his
case--unless he should have