He was a wise Devil—­a Devil of an experience so vast that the world would go crashing through space under its weight in print.  He wasted no time with the preliminary temptations—­pride, ambition, avarice.  He brought out the woman at once.

The young priest, wandering through a grove of cottonwoods, his hands clasped listlessly behind him, his chin sunken dejectedly upon his breast, suddenly raised his eyes and beheld a beautiful woman standing not ten paces away.  She was not a girl like her whom he had renounced for the Church, but a woman about whose delicate warm face and slender palpitating bosom hung the vague shadow of maturity.  Her hair was the hot brown of copper, thick and rich; her eyes were like the meeting of flame and alcohol.  The emotion she inspired was not the pure glow which once had encouraged rather than deprecated renunciation; but at the moment he thought it sweeter.

He sprang forward with arms outstretched, instinct conquering vows in a manner highly satisfactory to the Devil; then, with a bitter imprecation, turned and fled.  But he heard light footfalls behind him; he was conscious of a faint perfume, born of no earthly flower, felt a soft panting breath.  A light hand touched his face.  He flung his vows to anxious Satan, and turned to clasp the woman in his arms.  But she coyly retreated, half-resentfully, half-invitingly, wholly lovely.  Satan closed his iron hand about the vows, and the priest ran toward the woman, the lines of repression on his face gone, the eyes conquering the mouth.  But again she retreated.  He quickened his steps; she accelerated hers; his legs were long and agile; but she was fleet of foot.  Finally she ran at full speed, her warm bright hair lifted and spreading, her tender passionate face turned and shining through it.

They left the cottonwoods, and raced down the wide silent valley, the cows staring with stolid disapproval, the stars pulsing in sympathy.  The priest felt no fatigue; he forgot the Church behind him, the future of reward or torment.  He wanted the woman, and was determined to have her.  He was wholly lost; and the Devil, satisfied, returned to the mission.

“Now,” thought he, “for revenge on that old fool for defying me for sixty years!”

He raised his index finger and pointed it straight at the planet Hell.  Instantly the sky darkened, the air vibrated with the rushing sound of many forms.  A moment later he was surrounded by a regiment of abbreviated demons—­a flock as thick as a grasshopper plague, twisted, grinning, leering, hideous.  He raised his finger again and they leaped to the roofs of the mission, wrenched the tiles from their place and sent them clattering to the pavement.  They danced and wrestled on the naked roof, yelling with their hoarse unhuman voices, singing awful chants.

The Devil passed within, and found the good old priest on his knees, a crucifix clasped to his breast, his white face upturned, shouting ave marias and pater nosters at the top of his aged voice as if fearful they would not ascend above the saturnalia on the roof.  The Devil added to his distraction by loud bursts of ribald laughter; but the father, revolving his head as if it were on a pivot, continued to pray.  Satan began to curse like a pirate.