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!"
CHAPTER 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 deception to him, but what, or why, he could not
remember; so much greater seemed the enormity of his own transgression.
He thought Cranch had put in his hands the letter he had written to the
Father Superior, saying that his secret was still safe, and that he
had been spared the avowal and the scandal that might have ensued. But
through all, and above all, he was conscious of one fixed idea: to
seek the seashore with Sanchicha, and upon the spot where she had found
Francisco, meet the young girl who had taken his place, and so part from
|