It is sadly true, he reflected, that children are educated almost entirely along material lines. Even in the imparting of religious instruction, the spiritual is so tainted with materialism, and its concomitants of fear and limitation, that the preponderance of faith is always on the material side. Josè had believed that as he had grown older in years he had lost faith. Far from it! The quantity of his faith remained fixed; but the quality had changed, through education, from faith in good to faith in evil. And though trained as a priest of God, in reality he had been taught wholly to distrust spiritual power. But how could a parent rely on spiritual power to save a child about to fall into the fire? Must not children be warned, and taught to protect themselves from accident and disaster, as far as may be? True--yet, what causes accident and disaster? Has the parent's thought aught to do with it? Has the world's thought? Can it be traced to the universal acceptance of evil as a power, real and operative? Does mankind's woeful lack of faith in good manifest itself in accident, sickness, and death? A cry roused Josè from his revery. It came from back of the house. Hastening to the rear door he saw Doña Maria standing petrified, looking in wide-eyed horror toward the lake. Josè followed her gaze, and his blood froze. Carmen had been sent to meet the canoe that daily supplied fresh water to the village from the Juncal river, which flowed into the lake at the far north end. It had not yet arrived, and she had sat down beside her jar at the water's edge, and was lost in dreams as she looked out over the shimmering expanse. A huge crocodile which had been lying in the shadow of a shale ledge had marked the child, and was steadily creeping up behind her. The reptile was but a few feet from her when Doña Maria, wondering at her delay, had gone to the rear door and witnessed her peril. In a flash Josè recalled the tale related to him but a few days before by Fidel Avila, who was working in the church. "Padre," Fidel had said, "as soon as the church is ready I shall offer a candle to good _Santa Catalina_ for protecting my sister." "How was that, my son?" inquired Josè. "She protected her from a crocodile a year ago, Padre. The girl had gone to the lake to get water to wash our clothes, and as she sat in the stern of the boat dipping the water, a great crocodile rose and seized her arm. I heard her scream, and I was saying the rosary at the time. And so I prayed to _Santa Catalina_ not to let the crocodile eat her, and she didn't." "Then your sister was saved?" "The crocodile pulled her under the water, Padre, and she was drowned. But he did not eat her; and we got her body and buried her here in the cemetery. We were very grateful." _Sancta simplicitas!_ That such childish credulity might be turned into proper channels!