accusations, _does_ shine in the Church, and is visible to all who rightly seek it. You have yet four years in the _Seminario_. You gave us your promise--the Rincón word--that you would lay aside these doubts and questionings until your course was completed. We do not hold you--_but you hold yourself to your word_! Our sincere advice is that you keep your counsel, and silently work with us for the Church and mankind. The Church will offer you unlimited opportunities for service. She is educating you. Indeed, has she not generously given you the very data wherewith you are enabled now to accuse her? You will find her always the same just, tolerant, wise Mother, leading her children upward as fast as they are able to journey. Her work is universal, and she is impervious to the shafts of envy, malice, and hatred which her enemies launch at her. She has resources of which you as yet know nothing. In the end she will triumph. You are offered an opportunity to contribute toward that triumph and to share in it. His Eminence knows that you will not permit Satan to make you reject that offer now." The secretary's sharp, beady eyes looked straight into those of the youth, and held him. His small, round head, with its low brow and grizzled locks, waved snake-like on the man's long neck. His tall form, in its black cassock, bent over the lad like a spectre. His slender arms, of uncanny length, waved constantly before him; and the long, bony fingers seemed to reach into the boy's very soul and choke the springs of life at their origin. His reasoning took the form of suggestion, bearing the indisputable stamp of authority. Again, the boy, confused and uncertain, bowed before years and worldly experience, and returned to his solitude and the companionship of his books and his writing. "Occupy till I come," the patient Master had tenderly said. From earliest boyhood Josè had heard this clarion call within his soul. And striving, delving, plodding, he had sought to obey--struggling toward the distant gleam, toward the realization of something better and nearer the Master's thought than the childish creeds of his fellow-men--something warmer, more vital than the pulseless decrees of ecumenical councils--something to solve men's daily problems here on earth--something to heal their diseases of body and soul, and lift them into that realm of spiritual thinking where material pleasures, sensations, and possessions no longer form the single aim and existence of mankind, and life becomes what in reality it is, eternal ecstasy! The Christ had promised! And Josè would occupy and wait in faith until, with joy inexpressible, he should behold the shining form of the Master at the door of his opened tomb.