for anxiety about his own happy spirit.

"Stay here under your care?" he asked. "It would do me no good, Padre.
Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!" and he gave that laugh of
his which had disarmed severer judges than his host. "By next week I
should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of
Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the
other serpents at San Francisco."

Soon after breakfast the Padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his
guest set forth down the hills together to the shore. And, beneath the
spell and confidence of pleasant, slow riding and the loveliness of
everything, the young man talked freely of himself.

"And, seriously," said he, "if I missed nothing else at Santa Ysabel, I
should long for--how shall I say it?--for insecurity, for danger, and of
all kinds--not merely danger to the body. Within these walls, beneath
these sacred bells, you live too safe for a man like me."

"Too safe!" These echoed words upon the lips of the pale Padre were a
whisper too light, too deep, for Gaston's heedless ear.

"Why," the young man pursued in a spirit that was but half levity,
"though I yield often to temptation, at times I have resisted it, and
here I should miss the very chance to resist. Your garden could never be
Eden for me, because temptation is absent from it."

"Absent!" Still lighter, still deeper, was this whisper that the Padre
breathed.