"You are old, sir, and I am young; and perhaps it is not my place to counsel you.Moreover, sir, in spite of this strange dress of mine, I am neither more nor less than an English priest; and Isuppose you will not be willing to listen to a heretic.""I have seen Catholics, senor, commit too many abominations even with the name of God upon their lips, to shrink from a heretic if he speak wisely and well.At least, you are a man; and after all, my heart yearns more and more, the longer I sit among you, for the speech of beings of my own race.Say what you will, in God's name!""I hold, sir," said Jack, modestly, "according to holy Scripture, that whosoever repents from his heart, as God knows you seem to have done, is forgiven there and then; and though his sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, for the sake of Him who died for all.""Amen! Amen!" said the old man, looking lovingly at his little crucifix."I hope and pray--His name is Love.I know it now; who better? But, sir, even if He have forgiven me, how can I forgive myself? In honor, sir, I must be just, and sternly just, to myself, even if God be indulgent; as He has been to me, who has left me here in peace for forty years, instead of giving me a prey to the first puma or jaguar which howls round me every night.He has given me time to work out my own salvation; but have I done it?
That doubt maddens me at whiles.When I look upon that crucifix, Ifloat on boundless hope: but if I take my eyes from it for a moment, faith fails, and all is blank, and dark, and dreadful, till the devil whispers me to plunge into yon stream, and once and for ever wake to certainty, even though it be in hell."What was Jack to answer? He himself knew not at first.More was wanted than the mere repetition of free pardon.
"Heretic as I am, sir, you will not believe me when I tell you, as a priest, that God accepts your penitence.""My heart tells me so already, at moments.But how know I that it does not lie?""Senor," said Jack, "the best way to punish oneself for doing ill, seems to me to go and do good; and the best way to find out whether God means you well, is to find out whether He will help you to do well.If you have wronged Indians in time past, see whether you cannot right them now.If you can, you are safe.For the Lord will not send the devil's servants to do His work."The old man held down his head.
"Right the Indians? Alas! what is done, is done!""Not altogether, senor," said Amyas, "as long as an Indian remains alive in New Granada.""Senor, shall I confess my weakness? A voice within me has bid me a hundred times go forth and labor, for those oppressed wretches, but I dare not obey.I dare not look them in the face.I should fancy that they knew my story; that the very birds upon the trees would reveal my crime, and bid them turn from me with horror.""Senor," said Amyas, "these are but the sick fancies of a noble spirit, feeding on itself in solitude.You have but to try to conquer.""And look now," said Jack, "if you dare not go forth to help the Indians, see now how God has brought the Indians to your own door.
Oh, excellent sir--"
"Call me not excellent," said the old man, smiting his breast.
"I do, and shall, sir, while I see in you an excellent repentance, an excellent humility, and an excellent justice," said Jack."But oh, sir, look upon these forty souls, whom we must leave behind, like sheep which have no shepherd.Could you not teach them to fear God and to love each other, to live like rational men, perhaps to die like Christians? They would obey you as a dog obeys his master.You might be their king, their father, yea, their pope, if you would.""You do not speak like a Lutheran."
"I am not a Lutheran, but an Englishman: but, Protestant as I am, God knows, I had sooner see these poor souls of your creed, than of none.""But I am no priest."
"When they are ready," said Jack, "the Lord will send a priest.If you begin the good work, you may trust to Him to finish it.""God help me!" said the old warrior.
The talk lasted long into the night, but Amyas was up long before daybreak, felling the trees; and as he and Cary walked back to breakfast, the first thing which they saw was the old man in his garden with four or five Indian children round him, talking smilingly to them.
"The old man's heart is sound still," said Will."No man is lost who still is fond of little children.""Ah, senors!" said the hermit as they came up, "you see that I have begun already to act upon your advice.""And you have begun at the right end," quoth Amyas; "if you win the children, you win the mothers.""And if you win the mothers," quoth Will, "the poor fathers must needs obey their wives, and follow in the wake."The old man only sighed."The prattle of these little ones softens my hard heart, senors, with a new pleasure; but it saddens me, when I recollect that there may be children of mine now in the world--children who have never known a father's love--never known aught but a master's threats--""God has taken care of these little ones.Trust that He has taken care of yours."That day Amyas assembled the Indians, and told them that they must obey the hermit as their king, and settle there as best they could:
for if they broke up and wandered away, nothing was left for them but to fall one by one into the hands of the Spaniards.They heard him with their usual melancholy and stupid acquiescence, and went and came as they were bid, like animated machines; but the negroes were of a different temper; and four or five stout fellows gave Amyas to understand that they had been warriors in their own country, and that warriors they would be still; and nothing should keep them from Spaniard-hunting.Amyas saw that the presence of these desperadoes in the new colony would both endanger the authority of the hermit, and bring the Spaniards down upon it in a few weeks; so, making a virtue of necessity, he asked them whether they would go Spaniard-hunting with him.
