interests of the Church, you one day would have been found dead in some
lonely pass in the mountains while engaged in your Mission work."

Padre Antonio was too astute an observer of men not to perceive the
force of her words.

"I marvel at your sagacity, my child; but think what it has cost you!"

"Ah! that is the marvelous part of it!" she replied. "Whoever would have
imagined that, unconscious of the true facts, he would have succeeded in
turning my own weapons against me? It's fate, Padre _mio_."

He paced back and forth for some time in silence, then suddenly pausing
before her, said: "This cloud must not rest upon you, Chiquita _mia_. We
must find that blackleg, Carlton, if we have to raise heaven and earth
to do it."

"That is easier said than done, Padre _mio_," she answered quietly.

"God never wholly abandons his children to the evil of the world," he
returned firmly. "Don Felipe has deceived the Church once, but he shall
not do so a second time. God has allowed him to triumph thus far in
order that his punishment may be all the greater in the end when it
comes upon him. Carlton must be somewhere just across the border--in
Texas or Arizona or New Mexico. Within twenty-four hours after the word
has been flashed over the wires, runners will have passed through all
our remote Missions along the border, and if he is no longer in Mexico,
then the word shall be passed across the frontier into the United
States. If he still be alive, he can not escape us. We will find him and
bring him back again. No, the Church is not so powerless as many, strong
in worldly possessions, imagine. The Church of Rome has never yet failed
to find the man or woman she has set out to find. Don Felipe will be
stripped of his possessions and his child restored to its rightful
position.

"Again I say, God's ways are past all understanding. You have been His
unconscious instrument. Think of what you were and how you came to me,
and what your life has been since then! Have you endured all for naught?
Are God's plans to be frustrated by a man, a dastardly craven like Don
Felipe? No, my child, I see things clearer now than I ever have seen
them before. You and Captain Forest have not been brought together from
the ends of the earth only to be mocked by the world of evil. God
demands that we all shall pass through the fire in order that we may be
fitted to bear the burden He lays upon us. You both have endured the
trial; proved yourselves