He recalled how once, with the zeal of propagandism quickening in the
instincts of a childless man, he had dreamed of perpetuating his work
through some sinless creation of his own; of dedicating some virgin
soul, one over whom he could have complete control, restricted by no
human paternal weakness, to the task he had begun. 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.
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