"
"You knew him well, then?"
"No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarreled with."
The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon.
Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the
strange. "I thank you. You will never know what you have done for me."
"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set
great store on a new organ."
Padre Ignacio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge.
When he had reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston
Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many
hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom that no
one thought twice of his absence; and when he resumed to the mission in
the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the
garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and
presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had
rounded the headland.
With it departed Temptation for ever.
Gaston's first coming was in the Padre's mind; and, as the vespers bell
began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive
tune passed like a sigh across his memory.
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