The afternoon haze had been long gathering when Josè roused the sleeping _cochero_ and prepared to return to the stifling ecclesiastical atmosphere from which for a brief day he had been so happily free. A cold chill swept over him when he took his seat in the carriage, and he shuddered as if with an evil presentiment. "And you still adhere to your determination to remain in the Church?" his friend asked, as they turned from the green hills and nodding palms of Turbaco, and set their course, toward the distant mediaeval city. "Yes," came the scarcely audible reply. But as Josè spoke, he knew that his mind had that day been stripped of its last remaining vestige of the old theology, leaving it bare, exposed--and receptive. * * * * * A week passed. The explorer had gone, as silently and unannounced as he had come. The evening before his departure he and Josè had sat again in the thick shadows of the old wall. The next morning he was on the mighty river; and the priest was left with a great void in his heart. One noon, as Josè was returning from his classes, he pondered deeply the last words of the explorer, "Remember, nothing that has been invented by mankind or evolved by the human mind can stand, or remain. We might just as well accept that great fact now as later, and adjust ourselves to it. But the things of the spirit remain. And Paul has told us what they are." As he passed slowly along the winding little street toward the dormitory, a messenger approached him with a summons from the Bishop. He turned and started wonderingly toward the Cathedral. He had been reprimanded once, twice, for the liberal views which he had expressed to his classes. Was he to receive another rebuke now? He had tried to be more careful of late. Had he been seen with the explorer?