"Can a child like Carmen live a sinless life, and still be human?" Josè often mused, as he watched her flitting through the sunlit hours. "It is recorded that Jesus did. Ah, yes; but he was born of a virgin, spotless herself. And Carmen? Is she any less a child of God?" Josè often wondered, wondered deeply, as he gazed at her absorbed in her tasks. And yet--how was she born? Might he not, in the absence of definite knowledge, accept Rosendo's belief--accept it because of its beautiful, haunting mystery--that she, too, was miraculously born of a virgin, and "left by the angels on the river bank"? For, as far as he might judge, her life was sinless. It was true, she did at rare intervals display little outbursts of childish temper; she sometimes forgot and spoke sharply to her few playmates, and even to Doña Maria; and he had seen her cry for sheer vexation. And yet, these were but tiny shadows that were cast at rarest intervals, melting quickly when they came into the glorious sunlight of her radiant nature. But the mystery shrouding the child's parentage, however he might regard it, often roused within his mind thoughts dark and apprehensive. Only one communication had come from Padre Diego, and that some four months after his precipitous flight. He had gained the Guamocó trail, it said, and finally arrived at Remedios. He purposed returning to Banco ultimately; and, until then, must leave the little Carmen in the care of those in whom he had immovable confidence, and to whom he would some day try, however feebly, to repay in an appropriate manner his infinite debt of gratitude. "_Caramba!_" muttered Rosendo, on reading the note. "Does the villain think we are fools?" But none the less could the old man quiet the fear that haunted him, nor still the apprehension that some day Diego would make capital of his claim. What that claim might accomplish if laid before Wenceslas, he shuddered to think. And so he kept the girl at his side when in Simití, and bound Josè and the faithful Juan to redoubled vigilance when he was again obliged to return to the mountains. Time passed. The care-free children of this tropic realm drowsed through the long, hot days and gossiped and danced in the soft airs of night. Rosendo held his unremitting, lonely vigil of toil in the ghastly solitudes of Guamocó. Josè, exiled and outcast, clung desperately to the child's hand, and strove to rise into the spiritual consciousness in which she dwelt. And thus the year fell softly into the yawning arms of the past and became a memory. Then one day Simití awoke from its lethargy in terror, with the spectre of pestilence stalking through her narrow streets. CHAPTER 19 Feliz Gomez, who had been sent to Bodega Central for merchandise which Don Mario was awaiting from the coast, had collapsed as he stepped from his boat on his return to Simití. When he regained consciousness he called wildly for the priest.