y subjects. Why, not since leaving New Orleans have I
met any one with whom I could talk, except of the weather and the brute
interests common to us all. That such a one as you should be here is
like a dream."

"But it is not a dream," said the padre.

"And, sir--pardon me if I do say this--are you not wasted at Santa
Ysabel del Mar? I have seen the priests at the other missions They
are--the sort of good men that I expected. But are you needed to save
such souls as these?"

"There is no aristocracy of souls," said the padre, almost whispering
now.

"But the body and the mind!" cried Gaston. "My God, are they nothing? Do
you think that they are given to us for nothing but a trap? You cannot
teach such a doctrine with your library there. And how about all
the cultivated men and women away from whose quickening society the
brightest of us grow numb? You have held out. But will it be for long?
Do you not owe yourself to the saving of higher game henceforth? Are not
twenty years of mesclados enough? No, no!" finished young Gaston, hot
with his unforeseen eloquence; "I should ride down some morning and take
the barkentine."

Padre Ignazio was silent for a space.

"I have not offended you?" said the young man.

"No. Anything but that. You are surprised that I should--choose--to stay
here. Perhaps you may have wondered how I came to be here at all?"

"I had not intended any impertinent--"

"Oh no. Put such an idea out of your head, my son. You may remember that
I was going to make you a confession about my operas. Let us sit down in
this shade."

So they picketed the mules near the stream and sat down.

"You have seen," began Padre Ignazio, "what sort of a man I--was once.
Indeed, it seems very strange to myself that you should have been here
not twenty-four hours yet, and know so much of me. For there has come
no one else at all"--the padre paused a moment and mastered the
unsteadiness that he had felt approaching in his voice--"there has been
no one else to whom I have talked so freely. In my early days I had
no thought of being a priest. My parents destined me for a diplomatic
career. There was plenty of money and--and all the rest of it; for by
inheritance came to me the acquaintance of many people whose names
you would be likely to have heard of. Cities, people of fashion,
artists--the whole of it was my element and my choice; and by-and-by I
married, not only where it was desirable, but where I loved. Then