“The Faith, in that wild frontier, is like a buried treasure,” he observes, which it is his purpose to unearth. Other secrets will not be theirs fully to know or to reveal: Bishop Latour learns about one, held by his native guide Jacinto. On the occasion of another storm, while traveling, they take shelter in a cavern of ineffable importance to Jacinto’s people. When the Bishop wakens in the night, he sees Jacinto leaning against a newly patched hole in the cavern wall, “listening with supersensual ear, it seemed, and he looked to be supported against the rock by the intensity of his
...more
