“Most gladly!” he declared with enthusiasm. “He is but a poor priest--a most holy and devoted Padre, who gives his last centavo to the poor Indios of his parish and goes hungry that they may eat, and when I scold him for so doing, what answer does Fray José make me? That it is the duty of all Spaniards, and of priests in particular, to make what amends they may for the cruelties and wrongs inflicted upon the Indios by the Spaniards in the past. _Caramba, amigo_, what reasoning! Were I, with the blood of the Aztecs in my veins, to go in rags and in bare feet and with empty stomach, would it bring Montezuma back to life; would it ease the sufferings of Guatemozin on the rack under Cortes? But Padre José is, as I say, most holy and, _amigo_, most wise and a deep student of all the past of his country. Si, Señor, he speaks a dozen of the native dialects, he knows the myths and the legends of the Indios as well as they themselves do; he takes part in their _fiestas_, and he is beloved by them all. And he reads the ancient Mayan glyphs as easily as he reads his own Castilian or the Latin of his office. Si, amigo, Fray José is the one man who may solve the riddle of your most wonderful codex.” * * * * * I FOUND Fray José in his modest quarters adjoining the ancient church in the tiny Indian village of Xibaltango. I had expected to find a cowled and tonsured priest, a gray ascetic, bent with years and seamed with the marks of self-denial, fasting and a rigorous life; in fact, I expected to find the living counterpart of a saint or martyr. Instead, the man who greeted me was short, rather corpulent, with a round, brown face, merry gray eyes, and in place of cassock and cowl he wore a suit of native homespun cotton. If, as Professor Cervantes had said, he starved that his Indians might eat, then most assuredly he thrived on starvation, for he looked the picture of health. He was as jolly and merry as his features implied, and he welcomed me most cordially, apologizing for his home but assuring me, in the usual Spanish fashion, that it was all mine.