“_He?_ the patre? Of course he has known all this, and far more, for many a year—from his childhood, I suppose. I wish indeed from my heart that I could tell Señor Hualter, who is far away from us now. He it was who first told me about Christ the King. Instead of the gem I sought—the hope of deliverance for my people—he put that day into my outstretched hand a little seed, like a grain of sand. I was grieved and angry, for to my eyes it had no beauty: it did not burn and quiver in the light like the stones of fire. But I buried it in my heart; and lo! it sprang up and grew, until at last there came forth a living flower, brighter and more glorious than a thousand cold dead stones.—But the patre, oh,—he knows everything!” “I am sure God has marked him for His own,” said Melchior—“‘chosen him in the furnace of affliction,’ as he read yesterday from the good Book. But if it were not for the hope in Him, life would be a sad thing enough for my brother and for me, Don José. Does he seem to you an old, broken, world-weary man, with the wrinkles on his brow and the gray streaks in his hair? In years he is yet almost young. If he has numbered eight and thirty, it is the utmost.” “I know he has suffered as few suffer, even in this sad world.” “You may well say that. Think of those long, dark, weary years! And now I go hence—I who have cost him so much, and been able to give him back so little. But I turn to you, Don José. All that I would have been to him, all that I would have done for him, and never can be or do, I leave to you—you, his adopted son. I pray you to help him, guard him, watch over him.” “I vowed to do that, Melchior, ere I ever saw your face.” “Yet promise now once more, to please a dying man.” “With all my heart I promise. Perhaps,” he added, “you may be able to watch over him yourself, from your place in yonder sky.” “I do not think that, Don José. What do we know, after all, save so much as that Book tells us? And it tells us scarce anything of the dead, but that they are ‘with the Lord.’—Ah, there is Señor Don Alfonso at the door. I would know his step amongst a thousand.” Another was at the door also, though neither José nor Fray Fernando heard his footsteps. But at midnight he entered unbidden, touched Melchior with his shadowy hand, and whispered the gentle yet imperative summons, “Arise, and go hence.” Not always without a struggle does the flesh leave the spirit free to obey that call. With Melchior the struggle lasted “until the breaking of the day.” But in the end there was peace. For the last time on earth, the foster-brothers held converse together. What passed was unheard, even by José, who kept watch in the outer room. If “the rites of the Church” were administered, José did not know it, and was amazed at the apparent omission.