“There!” panted the girl, the task finished. “Now we will wait for the answer.”
Josè went down into the ominous silence of the town with a lighter heart. The sublime faith of the child moved before him like a beacon. To the sick he spoke words of comfort, with the vision of Carmen always before him. At the altar in the empty church, where he offered the Mass in fulfillment of his promise to the people, her fair form glowed with heavenly radiance from the pedestal where before had stood the dilapidated image of the Virgin. He prepared the sacred wafer and left a part of it on the altar for the people to carry in their procession to Santa Barbara. The other portion he took to the sick ones who had asked for the sacrament.
Two more had fallen ill that afternoon. Mateo Gil, he 181 thought, could not live the night through. He knelt at the loathsome bedside of the suffering man and prayed long and earnestly for light. He tried not to ask, but to know. While there, he heard a call from the street, announcing the passing of Guillermo Hernandez. Another one! His heart sank again. The plague was upon them in all its cruel virulence.
Sadly he returned to the hill, just as the sun tipped the highest peaks of the Cordilleras. Standing on the crest, he waited with heavy heart, while the mournful little procession wended its sad way through the streets below. An old, battered wooden image of one of the Saints, rescued from the oblivion of the sacristía, had been dressed to represent Santa Barbara. This, bedecked with bits of bright colored ribbon, was carried at the head of the procession by the faithful Juan. Following him, Pedro Gonzales, old and tottering, bore a dinner plate, on which rested the hostia, while over the wafer a tall young lad held a soiled umbrella, for there was no canopy.
A slow chant rose from the lips of the people like a dirge. It struck the heart of the priest like a chill wind. “Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!” Tears streamed from his eyes while he gazed upon his stricken people. Slowly, wearily, they wound around the base of the hill, some sullen with despair, others with eyes turned beseechingly upward to where the priest of God stood with outstretched hands, his full heart pouring forth a passionate appeal to Him to turn His light upon these simple-minded children. When they had gone back down the road, their bare feet raising a cloud of thick dust which hid them from his view, Josè sank down upon the rock and buried his face in his hands.
“I know––I think I know, oh, God,” he murmured; “but as yet I have not proved––not yet. But grant that I may soon––for their sakes.”
Rosendo touched his shoulder. “There is another body to bury to-night, Padre. Eat now, and we will go down.”
Standing over the new grave, in the solemn hush of night, the priest murmured: “I am the resurrection and the life.” But the mound upon which Rosendo was stolidly heaping the loose earth marked only another victory of the mortal law of death over a human sense of life. And there was no one there to call forth the sleeping man.
“Behold, I give you power over all things,” said the marvelous Jesus. The wondrous, irresistible power which he exerted in behalf of suffering humanity, he left with the world when he went away. But where is it now?