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 the stranger's remarkable presence through the open door.

"Behold this wanderer from God knows where, Brother Mateo. See if you can get anything out of him with the modern tongues; I can do nothing with him."

"What is this, now?" said Padre Mateo, clapping the stranger heartily on the shoulder, smiling assuringly. "You look like a German; let us try you in that voice. Can you speak German, friend?" he inquired in that tongue.

The stranger's face beamed at the sound; the light of a smile leaped in his eyes.

"Nein, nacht, nicht," he stammered; "Ich vas—Ich bin—American—United Stateser."

"Oh, American. Then English is your tongue," said Padre Mateo, with the greatest ease of transition, addressing him in the idiom that he understood.

The stranger was so pleased to hear intelligible sounds issue again from a human mouth that he almost leaped. He grasped Padre Mateo's hand, unawed by the priest's strange dress, strange to him, no doubt, as his own barbarous covering of hairy skins was to them.

"Padero, you don't know how glad I am to meet somebody that can talk God's own language!" he said.

"What does he say?" Padre Ignacio inquired.

Padre Mateo translated the words, at which varying expressions of disgust, disdain, astonishment