“I see the word GOD in it very often, Fray Ignatius. Perhaps, indeed, it is not bad.”
“It is a heretic Bible, I am sure. Could anything be more sinful, more disrespectful to God, more dangerous for a young girl?” and as he said the words he took it from the Senora’s listless hands, glanced at the obnoxious title-page, and then, stepping hastily to the hearth, flung the book upon the burning logs.
With a cry of horror, pain, amazement, all blended, Antonia sprang towards the fire, but Fray Ignatius stood with outstretched arms, before it.
“Stand back!” he cried. “To save your soul from eternal fires, I burn the book that has misled you!”
“Oh, my Bible! Oh, my Bible! Oh, mother! mother!” and sobbing and crying out in her fear and anger, she fled down stairs and called the peon Ortiz.
“Do you know where to find the Senor Doctor? If you do, Ortiz, take the swiftest horse and bring him here.”
The man looked with anger into the girl’s troubled face. For a moment he was something unlike himself. “I can find him; I will bring him in fifteen minutes. Corpus Christi it is here he should be.”
The saddled horse in the stable was mounted as he muttered one adjuration and oath after another, and Antonia sat down at the window to watch for the result of her message. Fortunately, Rachela had been so interested in the proceedings, and so determined to know all about them, that she seized the opportunity of the outcry to fly to “her poor Senora,” and thus was ignorant of the most unusual step taken by Antonia.
Indeed, no one was aware of it but herself and Ortiz; and the servants in the kitchen looked with a curious interest at the doctor riding into the stable yard as if his life depended upon his speed. Perhaps it did. All of them stopped their work to speculate upon the circumstance.
They saw him fling himself from the saddle they saw Antonia run to meet him; they heard her voice full of distress—they knew it was the voice of complaint. They were aware it was answered by a stamp on the flagged hall of the doctor’s iron-heeled boot—which rang through the whole house, and which was but the accompaniment of the fierce exclamation that went with it.