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children would wear on a Sunday, the wealthiest, noblest children! This”—he reverently opened the box—“is what he sold me.”
    It was a white sailor suit: blouse, trousers, blue collar, black scarf, and a jaunty little cap with H.M.S. Triumph embroidered in gold across the ribbon.
    Don José-Maria’s parishioners gasped with delight. It was so white, so little, so beautiful. And was that really what rich children wore? Vaya! Vaya! How proud they would be of the Niño! Gabar hastily sat down behind a pillar, exploding with laughter. Incredible José-Maria! Amazing superstition! He looked at the image and his laughter changed to indignation. It was such an exquisite head. It ought to be in the Lima Museum. And they were going to put a carnival hat on it and double their prayers! The men, chattering excitedly, began to disperse. Gabar composed his face, slipped away unnoticed, and made his way back to the inn.
    The following morning the lanes of Huanca del Niño were packed. Many of the inhabitants of Chiquibamba had come in for the day, and there were some solemn semi-Christian Indians from the Montaña. Pisco Gabar attended Mass in accordance with his promise and, when it was over, took his place in the procession with the three other bearers who were to carry the Niño. The image was mounted on a solid stage carried by four poles projecting from the corners. The beauty of the face was actually set off by the cap across the terra-cotta forehead. The Niño looked like a small boy laughing in joy at his new suit. The crowd was charmed by this realism. The image had not and had never had any legs,—a fact that had escaped notice under the surplice,—but José-Maria had got over the difficulty by stuffing the white sailor trousers with straw. Nobody but Gabar seemed to see anything odd in that. If God had no legs it was obviously their duty to supply them.
    The procession left the churchyard and started slowly round the plaza. It was led by riders, shouting, letting off firearms, and mounted insecurely on the only mules the two pueblos possessed. Then followed Don José-Maria and his acolytes; then the Niño on the shoulders of the four bearers; then the faithful carrying candles in their hands—some of them with a candle between each pair of fingers, thereby obliging friends and relatives who had vowed to bear a candle in the procession but had been prevented from attending.
    Pisco soon realized that Don José-Maria had not only wished him to perform a religious penance, but had deliberately chosen him as a porter because of his strength and steadiness. The public thronged around the image, praying, kneeling, dancing, offering drink to the thirsty bearers. His three colleagues were soon none too steady on their feet and yielding to the small excitable sea of human beings which washed against them. He found himself in command of the party and entirely responsible, by quick anticipation of their erratic movements, for keeping the Niño in a fairly perpendicular position.
    Every few minutes the procession stopped at a house or corner, a patch of cultivation or a water channel which José-Maria blessed in Latin, afterwards freely and fervently translating the blessing into Quechua. He used the correct words of power and thus delivered his hearers from any temptation they might have to employ occasional pagan rites of their own. Pisco’s shoulder, though protected by a leather pad, ached abominably from the continual raising up and setting down of the image. He was still fasting and very thirsty. He began to accept some of the cups of maize spirit proffered to him on all sides.
    Up to the wall went the procession, with José-Maria almost dancing ahead. The crowd chanted whatever came into their heads, and sudden tenor voices threw their impromptu poems into the thin mountain air. Pisco cursed his companions, adjuring them for their pride in the Niño to stop