[Illustration:  “HE AWOKE SUDDENLY, THE POWER OF A STEADFAST GAZE DRAGGING HIS BRAIN FROM ITS REST.”]

The priest rose, drank of the bubbles in the stream, and retraced his steps.  He took up the burden of the cross again and returned to the village.  There he found the savage and the Christianized sitting together in brotherly love.  The islanders were decked with the rosaries presented to them, and the women in their blankets were swollen with pride.  All had eaten of bread and roast fowl, and made the strangers offerings of strange concoctions in magnificent earthen dishes.  As the priest appeared the heathen bowed low, then gathered about him.  Their awe had been dispelled, and they responded to the magnetism of his voice and smile.  He knew many varieties of the Indian language, and succeeded in making them understand that he wished them to return with him, and that he would make them comfortable and happy.  They nodded their heads vigorously as he spoke, but pointed to their venerable chief, who sat at the entrance of his cave eating of a turkey’s drumstick.  Father Carillo went over to the old man and saluted him respectfully.  The chief nodded, waved his hand at a large flat stone, and continued his repast, his strong white teeth crunching bone as well as flesh.  The priest spread his handkerchief on the stone, seated himself, and stated the purpose of his visit.  He dwelt at length upon the glories of civilization.  The chief dropped his bone after a time and listened attentively.  When the priest finished, he uttered a volley of short sentences.

“Good.  We go.  Great sickness come.  All die but us.  Many, many, many.  We are strong no more.  No children come.  We are old—­all.  One young girl not die.  The young men die.  The young women die.  The children die.  No more will come.  Yes, we go.”

“And this young girl with the hair—­” The priest looked upward.  The sun had gone.  He touched the gold of the cross, then his own hair.

“Dorthe,” grunted the old man, regarding his bare drumstick regretfully.

“Who is she?  Where did she get such a name?  Why has she that hair?”

Out of another set of expletives Father Carillo gathered that Dorthe was the granddaughter of a man who had been washed ashore after a storm, and who had dwelt on the island until he died.  He had married a woman of the tribe, and to his daughter had given the name of Dorthe—­or so the Indians had interpreted it—­and his hair, which was like the yellow fire.  This girl had inherited both.  He had been very brave and much beloved, but had died while still young.  Their ways were not his ways, Father Carillo inferred, and barbarism had killed him.

The priest did not see Dorthe again that day.  When night came, he was given a cave to himself.  He hung up his robes on a jutting point of rock, and slept the sleep of the weary.  At the first shaft of dawn he rose, intending to stroll down to the beach in search of a bay where he could bathe; but as he stepped across the prostrate Californians, asleep at the entrance of his cave, he paused abruptly, and changed his plans.