Eloise turned deathly pale, and her dark eyes opened wide, seeing nothing.  It was not I who comforted her, but Jondo, who put his strong arm about her, and she leaned against his shoulder.  Father and daughter in spirit, stricken to the heart.

“For many years she has lived in that lonely ranch-house on the Narveo grant in the little canon up the San Christobal Arroyo.  When the fever left her with memory darkened forever, you recorded her as dead.  But your wife, Gloria Ramero, spared no pains to make her comfortable.  She has never known a want, nor lived through one unhappy hour, because she has forgotten.”

“A priest, confessor for men’s inmost souls, who babbles all he knows!  I wonder that this roof does not fall on you and strike you dead before this altar.”  Ferdinand Ramero’s voice rose to a shout.

“It was too strongly built by one who knew men’s inmost souls, and what they needed most,” Father Josef replied.  “You drove me to this by your insistence.  I would have shielded you—­and these.”

He turned to Eloise and Jondo as he spoke.

“One more point, since you hold it ready to spring when I am through.  You stand accused of plotting for your father’s murder.  The evidence still holds, and some men who rode with you to-day to seize this gentle girl and drag her back to a marriage with your son—­and save your ill-gotten gold thereby—­some of these men who will confess to me and do penance to-morrow night, are the same men who long ago confessed to other crimes—­you can guess what they were.

“It pays well to repent before such a holy tattler as yourself.”  Ramero’s blue eyes burned deep as their fire was centered on the priest.

“These are the counts against you,” Father Josef said in review, ignoring the last outburst of wrath.  “A life of ease and inheritance through money not your own, nor even rightly yours to control.  A stricken woman listed with the dead, whose memory might have come again—­God knows—­if but the loving touch of childish hands had long ago been on her hands.  It is years too late for all that now.  A brave young ward rescued from your direct control by Esmond Clarenden’s force of will and daring to do the right.  You know that last pleading cry of Mary Marchland’s, for Jondo to protect her child, and how Clarenden, for love of this brave man, came to New Mexico on perilous trails to take the little Eloise from you.  And lastly in this matter, the threats to force a marriage unholy in God’s sight, because no love could go with it.  Your mad chase and villainous intention to use brute force to secure your will out yonder on the rocks above the cliff.  You have debauched an Apache boy, making him your tool and spy.  You sanctioned the seizing of a Hopi girl whose parents you permitted to be murdered, and their child sold into slavery among foreign tribes.  You have stirred up and kept alive a feud of hatred and revenge among the Kiowa people against the life and property of Esmond Clarenden and all who belong to him.  And, added to all these, you stand to-day a patricide in spirit, accused of plotting for the murder of your own father.  Do not these things call for restoration and repentance?”