and he left others behind him at his death, as his estate, for he had no other estate except instruments of penance. From these long journeys on foot, through these rough and hot regions, a sickness resulted in Pangasinan which threatened to be the last of his life, and obliged him to give up the ministry to the Indians, much against his will. He suffered from this very much more than from the pain of the illness; but what he could not gain in this life he laid up for the other by his admirable patience and fortitude. Finally God restored his health, without medicines or comforts, for which there is little provision here; and there was less then, because things were nearer the beginning, when everything was barrenness and extreme poverty. With all these merits, he still lacked one thing to fill up the measure of his deserts. The common enemy of souls guessed this, and once appeared to him, while he was reading a book of devotion, in a hideous and shocking form; and although the father made the sign of the cross, the enemy did not flee so quickly but that he had time to say that, if it were not for the stones on the father's neck, he would be revenged upon him. This was the rosary, which the father took off neither by night nor by day, that he might be at all hours armed against him who may attack at any hour, and will do so whenever he is permitted. His zeal for souls increased with age, contrary to what often happens; for with the old age of the body, the weakening of the strength, and the increase of infirmity, old age often attacks the spirit--as St. Paul says (Hebrews, viii), Quod antiquatur et senescit prope interitum est [56]--which is as true of the spirit as of the body. When the father had reached the age of seventy years, he implored father Fray Francisco de Herrera, who was provincial at the time, to send him to Japon on the occasion when the large mission thither was planned which, afterward, God did not see fit to permit to be carried out. I think that this was not the first time that he proffered this request to his superiors. In proportion to the dangers and hardships promised by this mission, of which father Fray Thomas was not ignorant, was his earnestness in the desire to be a member of it. This is a proof of his vigorous spirit in venerable old age. His urgent request was not admitted, on the ground of his age; but he did not lose the merit of it, since he made it without any hypocrisy. God preserved him for another mission (that described in the previous chapter), which he undertook in the province of Ytui. He had made a beginning there in former years, but had not carried it on because of the obstacle there mentioned. He had now come to three years beyond seventy, and undertook the difficult expedition already described with as much spirit and energy as if he had only half his years. Yet he was much bowed with infirmities, as well as with age; and between them he seemed, as he walked,