Who are you,
who speak thus?" he said hoarsely, advancing upon Cranch with
outstretched and anathematizing fingers. "Who are you, Senor Heathen,
who dare to dictate to me, a Father of Holy Church? I tell you, I will
have none of this. Never! I will not! From this moment, you
understand--nothing. I will never" ...

He stopped. The first stroke of the Angelus rang from the little tower.
The first stroke of that bell before whose magic exorcism all human
passions fled, the peaceful bell that had for fifty years lulled the
little fold of San Carmel to prayer and rest, came to his throbbing
ear. His trembling hands groped for the crucifix, carried it to his
left breast; his lips moved in prayer. His eyes were turned to the
cold, passionless sky, where a few faint, far-spaced stars had silently
stolen to their places. The Angelus still rang, his trembling ceased,
he remained motionless and rigid.

The American, who had uncovered in deference to the worshiper rather
than the rite, waited patiently. The eyes of Father Pedro returned to
the earth, moist as if with dew caught from above. He looked half
absently at Cranch.

"Forgive me, my son," he said, in a changed voice. "I am only a worn
old man. I must talk with thee more of this--but not to-night--not
to-night;--to-morrow--to-morrow--to-morrow."

He turned slowly and appeared to glide rather than move under the
trees, until the dark shadow of the Mission tower met and encompassed
him. Cranch followed him with anxious eyes. Then he removed the quid of
tobacco from his cheek.

"Just as I reckoned," remarked he, quite audibly. "He's clean gold on
the bed rock after all!"

IV.

That night Father Pedro dreamed a strange dream. How much of it was
reality, how long it lasted, or when he awoke from it, he could not
tell. The morbid excitement of the previous day culminated in a febrile
exaltation in which he lived and moved as in a separate existence.

This is what he remembered. He thought he had risen at night in a
sudden horror of remorse, and making his way to the darkened church had
fallen upon his knees before the high altar, when all at once the
acolyte's voice broke from the choir, but in accents so dissonant and
unnatural that it seemed a sacrilege, and he trembled. He thought he
had confessed the secret of the child's sex to Cranch, but whether the
next morning or a week later he did not know. He fancied, too, that
Cranch had also confessed some trifling decep