“_Señor Americano!_” he exclaimed. “Many, very many and very strange things have I heard of you _Norte-Americanos_. Much that I could not believe; but the very strangest, the most incredible of all is what I hear from your own lips. You come to me with a so-strange codex. I send you to learn the Zutugil. From there you journey to see Katchilcan. He tells you some story, you vanish in the wilderness. You are killed, destroyed. I pray for the repose of your soul--though for all I know you are heretic--the months pass. Suddenly, from nowhere, a spirit, a ghost, an apparition, you appear. You have been transformed; no longer are you the _Señor Americano_. You are, you have become a savage, an Indio, and--_Madre de Dios_, yes, _si_, an ancient Maya--a figure from that so-strange codex. By your hand you lead a girl, an India, a most beautiful _muchacha_. An India such as I, who thought I knew all the tribes, have never seen. Do you tell me where you have been, Señor? Do you relate your tale? Do you explain why you still live? Do you speak of your codex? No, no indeed! Your first words are--‘Marry me to this maiden!’ It is sublime, marvelous! If I had doubts before, I could have none now. Never--not for one moment! No one but an Americano, a Yanqui could be so mad! But I am impatient to hear your story. I am aflame with curiosity. So I _will_ marry you, will baptize you, will make you both _Catolicos_ so I may do so. Only in that way can I get the story, Señor. That I can see. But,” he added as if to himself, “very much do I doubt if in the eyes of God you will be any more man and wife than you are now.” To Itza that extemporaneous baptism, the short ceremony that made us legally man and wife, was all a most impressive, mysterious and wonderful affair. Aside from myself, Padre José was the only white man she had ever seen, and having never seen me save bearded, unkempt, tanned, the fat, jolly, smooth-faced priest appeared like a being of a totally different race. To her, too, the little adobe church must have appeared a most poor and tawdry “temple.” And though, for her benefit, Padre José used the Zutugil dialect in the ceremony, she went through it as though in a daze or a dream, and I doubt if she really understood what it all meant or what it was about. In fact, much later, she confided to me that at the time she thought it some mystic rite that all my race went through when they returned from distant places, and that the ring--that the priest produced from the Lord only knows where--was placed upon her finger as a mark to show she was my property. But there was one thing she _did_ understand. She recognized the cross above the little altar, she realized that the figure of the Saviour was an image of my people’s God. Falling upon her knees before it, she murmured the Lord’s prayer I had taught her, and then, switching to her own tongue, gave thanks to Kukulcan.