ncient papers of which I have been long in search. In the
archives are frequent references to these papers--they are of much
importance to our Order--but as with all my search I never could
discover them, I had decided in my mind that in one or another of the
troublous periods that our Church has passed through they had been
destroyed. It is plain to me now that in one of these periods of danger
they were hidden in this safe place.

"Some of these papers, dealing with mere matters of history, you will
have pleasure in examining in due time. But that which I shall show you
now, and which has so excited me that you not unnaturally thought that I
had gone mad over it, has got among the rest, as I verily believe, by
simple accident. Among the books and papers in the chest was a parchment
case on which was written 'Mission of Santa Marta,' and the date '1531.'
Within it were some loose sheets of paper on which were records of
Indian baptisms, as is evident by the strange mixing of Christian and of
heathen names. Plainly, this was the register of some mission station of
our Order in that far-back time. But as I pried into the case more
closely, I found, within a double fold of the parchment--yet not as
though intentionally hidden, but rather as though there placed for
temporary safety--a sealed letter directed to the blessed Fray Juan de
Zumarraga, who was of our Order, and who, as you know, was the first
bishop of our holy Church in this New Spain. As I drew forth the
letter, the seal, that time had loosened, fell away and left it open in
my hand. That this letter never until now has been read I am altogether
confident, for the prodigy of which it tells would have made so great a
stir that ample record of it would have been preserved. Nor is it
difficult to account for the way in which it missed coming to the eye
for which it was intended. In that early time many and many of our
Order, going out to preach God's Word among the barbarians, came happily
to that end which is the happiest end attainable in God's service: a
blessed martyrdom." Fray Antonio's voice trembled with deep feeling as
he spoke, and I remembered that Don Rafael had told me that this good
brother, it was believed, himself longed for a death so glorious. "And
being thus slain," Fray Antonio in a moment continued, "the mission
stations which they had established were left desolate, with what they
held--save such few things as might be cared for by the savage