Far away on the other side of the world, in a region José never knew, stands a wild mountain famed in song. Near its summit is a lonely rock, consecrated by a strange legend. It is said that he who dares to sleep upon it will be found at daybreak with life extinct;—with reason fled for ever;—or else endowed with the matchless gift of song, heir to the poet’s immortal crown. There are lonely places of conflict to which souls are sometimes led, not unlike the rock of Cader Idris. Sore is the peril of madness—of despair, which means death; but if God answers His servant from the secret place of thunder, and with His own right hand upholds and delivers him, he will come down from that mountain with face transfigured, and lips baptized with living fire. It is to such God gives His messages. And those messages they must needs deliver, or die. Days and nights glided by, noiselessly and all too swiftly,—until at last there came a day unlike any before or after. A day “much to be remembered,” marked evermore in Fray Fernando’s calendar, though not with white. All through its sultry hours the sun blazed down upon the grimy hull of the _Sea Snake_, lying moored in a quiet bay. Dense woods of lofty smooth-stemmed palms with fan like feathery crowns, and luxuriant thick-leaved ceibas, met the pebbly beach, and fringed the bay on either side; while the one bold headland of granite that formed its southern extremity stood out into the sea, bare and bleak, save for a solitary cluster of graceful cocoa-palms that crowned its summit. Already it is late in the afternoon. The last water-cask has been rolled on board; the last loiterer has come back from the woods with his spoil of cocoa-nuts and bananas. The wind is favourable; the sails are set; soon the shores of the New World will glimmer and fade away beneath the eyes that watch them from the deck of the _Sea Snake_. If it were only on this fair earth that watching loving eyes must look their last! Every one on board, from the captain to the cabin-boy, has wrung the brown hand of José, and prayed God to speed him on his way. And more than one manly eye has glistened through unaccustomed tears at his earnest, simple words of grateful farewell. Walter Grey he has embraced, with a fervent “God be with thee, true friend.” And now, as he stands for the last time on the deck of the English ship, all see him—but he sees only one. Yet once more he turns to Fray Fernando, kneels at his feet—“My father, bless thy son.” Fray Fernando raises him, folds him in his arms—“God’s best blessings rest on thee, now and ever—my son—my son!” Heart beats against heart, lip burns against lip, in one long passionate embrace. But the end must be. “We shall meet—yet,” Fray Fernando murmurs.