rtation that he had been hiding in the
napkin of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?
His illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this
contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely ordered
plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and ordained for
that service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious
instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt
to accompany him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that
predestined force within her? Was not even that wantonness and
frivolity contrasted with her childishness--which he had at first
misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to
abandon her in that struggle of good and evil?

He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the
little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a flash of
resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties
in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in
this transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.

She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve
enabled him to make more freely, with some information--which a later
talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed
in detail.

"YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with
her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first
communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could
play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes--of a certainty. She was gay,
and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for
any."

Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed
it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would
make her an easier convert.

But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion?
For the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his
whole nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and
exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he
remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith;
he must "be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove." He must work
upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any
clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw
no wrong in a covert intimacy fo