The night before the ordination Josè had begged to occupy a room alone. The appeal which emanated from his sad face, his thin and stooping body, his whole drawn and tortured being, would have melted flint. His request was granted. Throughout the night the boy, on his knees beside the little bed, wrestled with the emotions which were tearing his soul. Despondency lay over him like a pall. A vague presentiment of impending disaster pressed upon him like a millstone. Ceaselessly he weighed and reviewed the forces which had combined to drive him into the inconsistent position which he now occupied. Inconsistent, for his highest ideal had been truth. He was by nature consecrated to it. He had sought it diligently in the Church, and now that he was about to become her priest he could not make himself believe that he had found it. Now, when bound to her altars, he faced a life of deception, of falsehood, as the champion of a faith which he could not unreservedly embrace. But he had accepted his education from the Church; and would he shrink from making payment therefor? Yet, on the other hand, must he sacrifice honor--yea, his whole future--to the payment of a debt forced upon him before he had reached the age of reason? The oath of ordination, the priest's oath, echoed in his throbbing ears like a soul-sentence to eternal doom; while spectral shades of moving priests and bishops, laying cold and unfeeling hands upon him, sealing him to endless servitude to superstition and deception, glided to and fro through the darkness before his straining eyes. Could he receive the ordination to-morrow? He had promised--but the assumption of its obligations would brand his shrinking soul with torturing falsehood! If he sank under doubt and fear, could he still retract? What then of his mother and his promise to her? What of the Rincón honor and pride? Living disgrace, or a living lie--which? Sacrifice of self--or mother? God knew, he had never deliberately countenanced a falsehood--yet, through circumstances which he did not have the will to control, he was a living one!