that, do you, Rosendo?" he asked in
banter.

"_Hombre_, yes!" exclaimed the latter a bit testily. "I know it! Did
not Don Felipe go there when the doctor in Mompox told him the little
white spot on his hand was leprosy? And he came back cured."

Leprosy! Jose started as if he had received a blow. He looked
furtively at the scar on his own hand, the hand which the leper in
Maganguey had lacerated that dreadful night, and which often burned
and ached as if seared by a hot iron. He had never dared to voice the
carking fear that tightened about his heart at times. But often in the
depths of night, when dread anticipation sat like a spectre upon his
bed, he had risen and gone out into the darkness to wrestle with his
black thoughts. Leprosy! All the gladness and joy left his heart, and
a pall of darkness settled over his thought. He turned back into his
cottage and tried to find forgetfulness in the simple duties that lay
at hand.

"Why is it," he asked himself, as he sat wearily down at his little
table, "that I always think of evil first; while Carmen's first
thought is invariably of God?"

He looked at the ugly scar on his hand. What thought was externalized
in the loathsome experience which produced that? he wondered. Was it
the summation of all the fear, the weakness, the wrong belief, that
had filled his previous years? And now why was he finding it so
difficult to practice what Carmen lived, even though he knew it was
truth?

"Alas!" he murmured aloud, "it was the seminary that did it. For there
my thought was educated away from the simple teachings of Jesus. To
Carmen there is no mystery in godliness. Though she knows utterly
nothing about Jesus, yet she hourly uses the Christ-principle. It is
the children who grasp the simple truths of God; while the lack of
spirituality which results from increasing years shrinks maturer minds
until they no longer afford entrance to it. For godliness is broad;
and the mind that receives it must be opened wide."

As he sat with his bowed head clasped in his hands, a sweet, airy
voice greeted him.

"Why, Padre dear--ah, I caught you that time!--you were thinking that
two and two are seven, weren't you?" She shook a rebuking finger at
him.

Framed in the doorway like an old masterpiece, the sunlight bronzing
her heavy brown curls, the olive-tinted skin of her bare arms and legs
flushing with health, and her cheap calico gown held tightly about
her, showing the contour of