He brushed aside the tears as he folded this letter; and, lest regret and self-condemnation seize him again, hurried forth in search of Carmen, whose radiance always dispelled his gloom as the rushing dawn shatters the night. She was not in Rosendo's house, and Doña Maria said she had seen the child some time before going in the direction of the "shales." These were broad beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be impassable. Thither Josè bent his steps, and at length came upon the girl sitting in the shade of a stunted _algarroba_ tree some distance from the usual trail. "Well, what are you doing here, little one?" he inquired in surprise. The child looked up visibly embarrassed. "I was thinking, Padre," she made slow reply. "But do you have to go away from home to think?" he queried. "I wanted to be alone; and there was so much going on in the house that I came out here." "And what have you been thinking about, Carmen?" pursued Josè, suspecting that her presence in the hot shale beds held some deeper significance than she had as yet revealed. "I--I was just thinking that God is everywhere," she faltered. "Yes, _chiquita_. And--?" "That He is where padre Rosendo is going, and that He will take care of him up there, and bring him back to Simití again." "And were you asking Him to do it, little one?" "No, Padre; I was just _knowing_ that He would." The little lip quivered, and the brown eyes were wet with tears. But Josè could see that faith had conquered, whatever the struggle might have been. The child evidently had sought solitude, that she might most forcibly bring her trust in God to bear upon the little problem confronting her--that she might make the certainty of His immanence and goodness destroy in her thought every dark suggestion of fear or doubt. "God will take care of him, won't He, Padre?" Josè had taken her hand and was leading her back to the house. "You have said it, child; and I believe you are a law unto yourself," was the priest's low, earnest reply. The child smiled up at him; and Josè knew he had spoken truth. That evening, the preparations for departure completed, Rosendo and Josè took their chairs out before the house, where they sat late, each loath to separate lest some final word be left unsaid. The tepid evening melted into night, which died away in a deep silence that hung wraith-like over the old town. Myriad stars rained their shimmering lustre out of the unfathomable vault above. "_Un canasto de flores_," mused Rosendo, looking off into the infinite blue. "A basket of flowers, indeed," responded Josè reverently. "Padre--" Rosendo's brain seemed to struggle with a tremendous thought--"I often try to think of what is beyond the stars; and I cannot. Where is the end?" "There is none, Rosendo." "But, if we could get out to the last star--what then?" "Still no end, no limit," replied Josè.