and a man in a long black cloak leaned toward her.

"It is the priest again!" she thought. But she had no strength to cry out. She closed her eyes. He lifted her quickly into his arms. She opened her eyes, looked into his, knew her lover and fainted. After she had come out from her long illness, they told her how Aunt Eulalia had scarce left her bedside, begging for forgiveness and to be taken again into her brother's home. "No more of priests for me!" she said.

They told her, too, how her father, Don Ramon, had from that day been searching town and country for the cura, but never yet had he been found, and the town of Altiza had need to find another priest.

CHAPTER XVI.

A WEDDING GUEST.

Not very long after the events recorded in the last chapter, there came to the town of Altiza some strangers. People of high birth, it was said, and the daughter was a beauty, more lovely than even Constancia. So said the discarded admirers of Constancia. The two girls had become acquainted.

"She is one of those condemned heretics. Thou must not associate with her!" so said friends to the newcomer. But in spite of warning, the two girls became fast friends. Frederico, too, was much drawn toward this new friend.

"She makes me think of a queen, so beautiful and stately she is!" said Frederico one day. "And yet, there is something about her that makes me feel as though I have always known her. I wonder what it is. Perhaps it is because her name is Mariana, the name of my long-lost sister. Whenever she is here talking with us, there comes over me a strange feeling, as though I had known her

when we were children. Yet, Constancia, with all her beauty, she is not one-half as lovely as thou art!"

The marriage day was now fast approaching. The Protestant minister was to come to perform the service.

"Mariana Gavina must be present, for she is one of us now, and she must find an heretic husband, too,” exclaimed Constancia.

"Methinks there would be more than one young man willing to turn heretic for that fair hand!" said Aunt Eulalia.

Dona Alicia, Frederico's mother, sighed as she sat and listened. She had heard so much of the beautiful Mariana Gavina, yet she had not met her. The name made her think as of her own little Marianita who left her on that summer afternoon, never to return. She hardly knew whether she cared to know another with that same name.

Not even the bride Constancia was more beautiful that wedding eve than the guest Mariana, and Dona Alicia could not remove her gaze from that lovely face.

"Oh, what is it, what is it!" she kept saying to herself all the eve. "What can it be! Those eyes are the eyes of my own little girl." Ah, who can explain a mother's instincts?

"Child," she exclaimed, at last approaching and taking her by the hand. "Tell me thy name! Is it Mariana Gavina?"

"Why, yes, senora—that is, it is now. But it used to be Mariana Peralta. I was stolen"—

But the mother was weeping, with her arms about the girl. Then Frederico understood why he felt that he had always known Mariana, his sister.

"A strange ending," all said, "for a wedding feast. Strange, yet happy!"

But many strange things had been hap pening lately in that little heretic town. "How rich I am now; I have two daughters!" exclaimed Dona Alicia.

But Mariana's foster parents could not truly rejoice because she had found her own mother.

"Come and live with us!" said Dona Refugia to Dona Alicia. "For a while, at least; for we can not part at once with her. She has grown to us as our very own."

So the young couple were left to begin life together in the pleasant new home which Don Ramon had finished for his daughter.

"She still must stay near by!" said the fond father. And the young heretic teacher still managed the town school.

CHAPTER XVII.

AURELIO.

Far across the republic, in the great capital city of Mexico, had been growing up all these years, a young man, tall, straight and handsome.

Aurelio Mendez he was, who, when a boy, had been stolen for a ransom.

He was now left an orphan, but had learned to carefully keep the money left to him. He had traveled much, over his own country and in other lands. In Europe he had fitted himself for a physician, and again, in his home city, was known as the skillful and popular Dr. 'Mendez.

"Favored man!" his companions were 'accustomed to say to him. "Talented, traveled and handsome! Blushing senoritas and covetous mammas follow thee with longing eyes, and yet to none of their charms dost thou yield. Thy heart is of stone. Or hast thou a heart?"

"Ah, ye have at last guessed aright. I have no heart! It was left long, long ago in a little shanty in a canon's mouth far ir the wilds. It has not since returned! Perchance I may yet run across it!"