CHAPTER IV


That night Father Pedro dreamed a strange dream. How much of it was
reality, how long it lasted, or when he awoke from it, he could not
tell. The morbid excitement of the previous day culminated in a febrile
exaltation in which he lived and moved as in a separate existence.

This is what he remembered. He thought he had risen at night in a sudden
horror of remorse, and making his way to the darkened church had fallen
upon his knees before the high altar, when all at once the acolyte's
voice broke from the choir, but in accents so dissonant and unnatural
that it seemed a sacrilege, and he trembled. He thought he had confessed
the secret of the child's sex to Cranch, but whether the next morning
or a week later he did not know. He fancied, too, that Cranch had also
confessed some trifling deception to him, but what, or why, he could not
remember; so much greater seemed the enormity of his own transgression.
He thought Cranch had put in his hands the letter he had written to the
Father Superior, saying that his secret was still safe, and that he
had been spared the avowal and the scandal that might have ensued. But
through all, and above all, he was conscious of one fixed idea: to
seek the seashore with Sanchicha, and upon the spot where she had found
Francisco, meet the young girl who had taken his place, and so part from
her forever. He had a dim recollection that this was necessary to some
legal identification of her, as arranged by Cranch, but how or why he
did not understand; enough that it was a part of his penance.

It was early morning when the faithful Antonio, accompanied by Sanchicha
and Jose, rode forth with him from the Mission of San Carmel. Except