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of his parishioners.
    â€œWhere were you, Don Manuel? We looked for you. My friends want to thank you for all you did for me. I told them how you saved me in the boat and how you would not let me be left behind at Mollendo. Get up and join us! You must eat and drink before midnight. To-morrow, remember, you have to fast till after Mass!”
    Gabar was touched by the welcome extended to him by Don José-Maria and his boon companions. It had seemed to him that he had been cordially received before, but there was now an extra warmth in their hospitality which made him feel as if he himself were a son of the pueblo. He had expected a lessening of his popularity owing to the inconvenience he had caused their beloved priest on the road. But this episode had run widely and humorously from mouth to mouth until Gabar appeared in it as a comic hero rather than the villain.
    â€œWould you all believe,” roared José-Maria, “that this man, this friend, is a heathen?”
    â€œLet us take him to see the Niño!” exclaimed one of the men. “Then he must believe. Our Niño is so pretty—so divine a child!”
    â€œIt is good,” said José-Maria. “Let us drink a last copa and we will all go to see the Niño.”
    Gabar’s protests were overruled. They treated him as a curiosity, as a fellow whose education had been oddly neglected, and they were all sure that the fault could be quickly remedied. He joined good-humoredly in the procession to the church.
    As far as the door it was a carousal which then instantly changed into a pilgrimage. The men entered silently and reverently and knelt before the famous Niño.
    The head of the image was a splendid piece of portrait pottery, brought up from the coast by the Incas or their conquerors. It was the head of a gentle child, the sensitive lips caught at the beginning of a laugh. Two emeralds had been set deep in the painted eyes, giving a curious effect of unworldly life and changing expression with the moving lights. The fine hawk nose and high cheekbones were hardly formed, but promised the later beauty of a true Child of the Sun. It was robust and living portraiture—the face of a child compelling obedience because so happy and so sure that its innocent desires would be granted.
    The body was hidden under a stiffly embroidered surplice of linen. Round its neck and pinned to its smock were the offerings of the faithful: a pearl necklace, some silver spurs, earrings of all sorts, and many little crudely moulded shapes of pure gold. In this it was no different from the average image in any poor Peruvian church. But the head was an astonishing and accidental conception of an Indian Christ.
    â€œIsn’t he pretty?” asked José-Maria proudly.
    â€œHe is very original,” Gabar admitted.
    This remark was taken as high praise, for had not Don Manuel traveled all over the world and seen many much more splendid images? The men nodded their heads wisely, implying that they had known all along that their Niño would compel this heathen’s admiration.
    â€œSince we are here,” said José-Maria, “I will show you what I have brought him for to-morrow’s fiesta.”
    He disappeared into the sacristy and came back with the cardboard box which he had saved from his falling trunk.
    â€œWhen I was in Buenos Aires,” he explained, “I saw so many rich. There must be more rich people there than in all the rest of the world. And so well dressed! I would never have believed it! So I thought I would buy a new garment for our Niño. I went to a shop—such a shop, as big as a town and with all the goods in it brought from Europe, they say! There was a shopman—most courteous, altogether a caballero —who asked me what I wanted. I told him there was a child in my pueblo whom I loved, and I wished to buy for him a very rich, very simple dress. I asked him to give me what the Buenos Aires