“Some one ill, doubtless, on board one of the vessels,” thought José, as he sat down to await the patre’s return. “I wish, however, they could have waited till the morning.—Did he give you any message for me?” asked José as the woman was leaving the room. “Yes; I was forgetting. It was not much, at all events. He just bade me say to you, ‘Every way He makes for us leads safely to the Golden City.’” A pang of vague uneasiness shot through the heart of José. He feared—he knew not what. He watched anxiously for the patre’s return. But hour after hour passed away, and he came not. At last it was morning. José threw on his yacollo, and went down to the beach. Few were stirring at that early hour; and none could give him any tidings of Fray Fernando. “He must have gone to the City,” he said to himself. “At the Franciscan monastery they will surely be able to tell me what has become of him. Perhaps he has suddenly received orders to go to some distant place.” But his alarm was increasing every moment. José had frequently visited the Franciscan monastery, both with Fray Fernando and by himself; and he was very favourably regarded by its inmates, as an interesting specimen of the educated and Christianized Indian. Two of the brethren readily came to speak with him. In his usual calm, unimpassioned manner, he told his story; but his hearers gazed at him and at each other in evident blank dismay. Then a rapid Latin colloquy passed between them: they were not aware that José understood the language. “I have feared this for some time,” the elder whispered. “Too clever—too mystical! Ah! the spite of those Dominicans!” “Had he worn the black cowl, instead of the gray, he might have preached with impunity all the heresies of Luther,” returned the other. “Well, the Holy Office never had a better man or a truer Catholic in its dungeons.” “Still, you cannot deny that he was very imprudent. _Miserere me!_ We are helpless as sheep against these sons of St. Dominic. If good Fray Tomas de San Martin were but here!” “He could do nothing in a case of this kind. But—_tace!_ we are forgetting our dark-faced friend.” “Better he should not suspect the truth. Let us tell him quietly to go his way.—My son,” he said, addressing José in Spanish, “we are led to believe, by what you have told us, that the holy father has been sent, by his spiritual superiors, on some mission of importance requiring haste and secrecy. Where do your kindred reside? Be advised by us, and rejoin them for the present. The Fray’s absence may be lengthened, for anything we know to the contrary.” José bowed. His lips were silent; nor did his impassive Indian countenance express either the anguish or the resolution that filled his heart. But he said within himself, “God do so to me, and more also, if I go to my people and leave my father alone amongst his enemies.”