But how? Of all the
boys eagerly offered to the Church by their parents there seemed none
sufficiently pure and free from parental taint. He remembered how one
night, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin herself, as he
firmly then believed, this dream was fulfilled. An Indian woman brought
him a _Waugee_ child--a baby-girl that she had picked up on the
sea-shore. There were no parents to divide the responsibility, the
child had no past to confront, except the memory of the ignorant Indian
woman, who deemed her duty done, and whose interest ceased in giving it
to the Padre. The austere conditions of his monkish life compelled him
to the first step in his adoption of it--the concealment of its sex.
This was easy enough, as he constituted himself from that moment its
sole nurse and attendant, and boldly baptized it among the other
children by the name of Francisco. No others knew its origin, nor cared
to know. Father Pedro had taken a _muchacho_ foundling for adoption;
his jealous seclusion of it and his personal care was doubtless some
sacerdotal formula at once high and necessary.
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