GOLD AND GLORY

OR,

WILD WAYS OF OTHER DAYS

A TALE OF EARLY AMERICAN DISCOVERY

BY GRACE STEBBING

Author of "Silverdale Rectory," "Only a Tramp," etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

New York
THOMAS WHITTAKER
2 AND 3, BIBLE HOUSE.

INTRODUCTION.

Only an apology for having written this historical tale.

My private opinion is, that all writers of historical tales should return me thanks if I apologize for them with myself, all in a body, the truer the tale the ampler being the spirit of the apology.

While I have been writing this tale, sometimes in its most important or serious portions, I have been startled by detecting my own mouth widening with an absurd smile, or by hearing a ridiculous chuckle issuing from my own lips, and have suddenly discovered that I was quite unconsciously repeating to myself the famous old Scotch anecdote of the old woman and the Scotch preacher—"That's good, and that's Robertson; and that's good, and that's Chalmers; ... and that's bad, and that's himsel'."

Turning the old woman into the more learned among my possible readers, and the Scotch preacher into myself, I read the anecdote—"That's good, and that's Prescott; that's good, and that's Robertson; that's good, and that's guide-book; that's good, and that's Arthur Helps; and that's bad, and that's hersel'."

I can only wind up my apology by pleading, that at least my badness has not gone the length of distorting a single fact, nor of giving to this wonderful page of history any touch of false colouring.

G. S.

CONTENTS.

GOLD AND GLORY,

OR

Wild Ways of other Days.

[CHAPTER I.]

A POISON-FLY FOR THE HEART OF ARAGON.

In an apartment, gorgeous with a magnificence that owed something of its style to Moorish influence, were gathered, one evening, a number of stern-browed companions.

A group of men, whose dark eyes and olive complexions proclaimed their Spanish nationality, as their haughty mien and the splendour of their attire bore evidence to their noble rank.

The year was 1485: a sad year for Aragon was that of 1485, and above all terrible for Saragossa. But as yet only the half, indeed not quite the half, of the year had gone by, when those Spanish grandees were gathered together, and when one of them muttered beneath his breath, fiercely:

"It is not the horror of it only, that sets one's brain on fire. It is the shame!"

And those around him echoed—"It is the shame."

During the past year, 1484, his Most Catholic Majesty, King Ferdinand of the lately-united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, had forced upon his proud, independent-spirited Aragonese a new-modelled form of the Inquisition. The Inquisition had, indeed, been one of the institutions of the noble little kingdom for over two hundred years already, but in the free air of Aragon it had been rather an admonisher to orderliness and good manners than a deadly foe to liberty. Now, all this was changed. The stern and bitter-spirited Torquemada took care of that. The new Inquisition was fierce, relentless, suspicious, grasping, avaricious, deadly. And in their hearts the haughty, freedom-loving Aragonese loathed its imperious domination even more than they dreaded its cruelty.

"It was not the horror of it only," said Montoro de Diego truly, "that made their eyes burn, and sent the tingling blood quivering into their hands. It was the shame."

And those others around him, even to Don James of Navarre, the King Ferdinand's own nephew, echoed the words with clenched hands, and between clenched teeth—

"It is the shame!"

But what cared Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, that mortal wounds should be inflicted on the noblest instincts of human nature? or what cared his tools in Aragon? Crushed, broken-spirited men would be all the easier to handle—all the easier to plunder or destroy.

Montoro de Diego had been one of the deputation sent by the Cortes to the fountain-head, as it was then believed, of all truth and mercy and justice, to implore release from the new infliction; for whilst one deputation had gone to the king himself, to implore him to abolish his recent innovation, another, headed by Diego, had gone to the pope. But the embassy was fruitless. The pope wanted money, and burning rich Jews, and wealthy Aragonese suspected of heretical tendencies, put their property into the papal coffers. The pope very decidedly refused to give up this new and easy way of making himself and his friends rich. The king's refusal was equally peremptory, and the deputations returned with dark brows and heavy hearts to those anxiously awaiting them.

The burnings and confiscations had already begun.

Soon after Diego and his companions entered the city of Saragossa they encountered a great procession, evidently one of importance judging from the sumptuousness of the ecclesiastics' dresses, their numbers, and the crowds of attendants surrounding them, crucifix-bearers, candle-bearers, incense-bearers, and others. There was no especial Saint's Day or Festival named in the Calendar for that date, and for a few moments the returning travellers were puzzled. But the procession advanced, and the mystery was solved.

In the centre of the gorgeous train moved a group so dismal, so heart-rending to look upon, that it must have rained tears down the cheeks of the Inquisitors themselves, had they not steeled their hearts with the impenetrable armour of a cold, utter selfishness.

Deadly pale, emaciated, unwashed, uncombed, with wrists and fingers twisted and broken, and limping feet, came the members of this group clad in coarse yellow garments embroidered with scarlet crosses, and a hideous adornment of red flames and devils. Some few of the tortured victims of base or bigoted cruelty were on their way to receive such a pardon as consisted in the fine of their entire fortunes, or life-long imprisonment; the others—they were to afford illuminations for the day's ceremonies with their own burning bodies. For each member of the wretched group there was the added burden of knowing that they were leaving behind them names that were to be loaded with infamy, and families reduced to the lowest depths of beggary.

"And all," muttered a voice beside Diego's elbow, "for the crime, real or suspected, or imputed, of having Jewish blood in their veins."

"Say rather," fiercely muttered back the noble—"say rather, for the crime of having gold and lands, which will so stick to the hands of the Inquisitors, that the king's troops in Granada will keep the Lenten fast the year through, before a sack of grain is bought for them out of those new funds."

"Ay," answered the unknown voice, "the Señor saith truth, unless there shall be hearts stout enough, and hands daring enough, to rid our Aragon of yon fiend Arbues de Epila."

Montoro de Diego turned with an involuntary start to look at the speaker of such daring words. For even though they had been uttered in low cautious tones they betokened an almost mad audacity, during those late spring days when the very breath of the warm air seemed laden with accusations, bringing death and ruin to the worthiest of the land, at the mandate of that very Arbues.

But Diego's eyes encountered nothing more important than the wondering brown orbs of a little beggar child, who was taking the whole imposing spectacle in with artistic delight, unmixed with any idea of horror, and who was evidently astonished at the agitated aspect of his tall companion, and irritated too, that the Señor should thus stand barring the way, instead of passing on with the rest of the rabble-rout trailing after the procession.

Whoever had ventured to express his fury against the new Inquisitor of Saragossa, it was evidently not this curly-headed little urchin, and with a somewhat impatient gesture of disappointment the noble turned away in search of his companions. But they also had disappeared. Carried away by the excitement or curiosity of the moment, they also had joined in the dread procession of the Auto da Fé.

[CHAPTER II.]

CONSPIRATORS.

"It is the shame," that was the burden of the low and emphatic consultation that was being held by the group of men, gathered privately in the palace of one of the indignant nobles of Aragon. Little more than twenty-four hours had passed since the disappointed deputation to Rome had returned, in time to witness the full horrors of the cruel tribunal they had so vainly tried to abolish, and the feeling of humiliation was keen.

And shame, indeed, there was for the brave, proud Aragonese, that the despotic tyranny of the Inquisition should hold sway amidst their boasted freedom and high culture.

"We are not alone in our indignation," added Montoro de Diego after a pause, and with a keen, swift glance around at the faces of his companions to satisfy a lurking doubt whether the muffled voice at his elbow, yesterday, had not indeed belonged to one of them.

But every face present was turned to his suddenly, with such vivid, evident curiosity at the changed and significant tone of his voice, that the shadowy supposition quickly faded, and with a second cautious but sharp glance, this time directed at doors and windows instead of at the room's occupants, the young nobleman replied to the questioning looks by a sign which gathered them all closer about him as he repeated:

"No; we are not alone in our just resentment. The spirit of disaffection is rife in Saragossa."

"The Virgin be praised that it is so," muttered one of the grandees moodily, while another asked hastily:

"But how know you this? What secret intelligence have you received?"

"And when?" put in a third questioner somewhat jealously.

The new system was already beginning to grow its natural fruit of general suspicion and distrust. But Diego speedily disarmed them as regarded himself on this occasion. His voice had been low before, it sank now to a scarcely audible whisper as he answered:

"One, I know not who—even the voice was a disguised one I believe—spoke to me yesterday in the crowded streets; one who must have marked the anger and mortification of my countenance I judge, and thence dared act the tempter."

"But how?" "In what way?" came the eager, impatient queries.

"In the intimation that the world were well rid of Arbues de Epila."

As those few weighty words were rather breathed than spoken, those self-controlled, impassible grandees of Spain started involuntarily, and stifled exclamations escaped their lips.

Arbues de Epila! The day was hot with brilliant sunshine. Even in that carefully-shaded room the air was heavy with warmth, and yet—as Montoro de Diego muttered the hinted threat against Arbues de Epila, the crafty, cruel, unsparing Inquisitor—those brave, dauntless, self-reliant men felt chill. They were in a close group before, but involuntarily they drew into a still closer circle, and looked over their shoulders. In open fight with the impetuous Italians or with the desperate Moors of Granada, no more fearless warriors could be found than those grandees of Spain, but against this new, secret, lurking, unaccustomed foe their haughty courage provided them no weapons. To be snatched at in the dark, torn secretly from home, fame, and family, buried in oblivion until brought forth to be burnt; and branded, unheard with the blackest infamy—these were agonies to fill even those stout hearts with horror.

Stealthy glances, of which until the present time they would have been altogether disdainful, were cast by each and all of them at one another. Who should say that even in their own midst there might not be standing a creature of the Inquisition, bribed to the hideous work by promises of titles, lands, position, or Paradise without Purgatory?

Quailing beneath these strangely unaccustomed fears all maintained a constrained silence for some time. But meanwhile the suggestion thrown out yesterday, and now repeated, worked in those fevered brains, and at length the fiercest of the number threw back his head, folded his arms across his breast, and spoke. Not loudly indeed, but with a concentrated passion that sent each syllable with the force of an alarum into the hearts of his hearers.

"The stranger was right. We have been cravens—children kissing the rod, with our petitions. Now we will be men once more, judges in our own cause, and Arbues shall die."

As he pronounced that last dread word he held out his hand, and his companions crowded together to clasp it, in tacit acceptance of the declaration. But there was one exception. One member of the group drew back. Montoro de Diego stretched forth no consenting hand, but stood, pale and sorrowful, gazing at his friends. They in turn gazed back at him with mingled astonishment, fear, and fury. But he never blenched. His lip indeed curled for a moment with something of scorn as he detected the expression of terror in some of the gleaming eyes turned on him. But scorn died away again in sadness as he said slowly:

"Is it so then, truly, that we nobles of Aragon have already yielded ourselves voluntarily for slaves, accepting the despicable sins of slaves—cowardice and assassination! Now verily it is time then to weep for the past of Aragon, to mourn over its decay."

But bravely and nobly as Montoro de Diego spoke, he could not undo the harm of his incautious repetition of the stranger's fatal hint. Some of his companions had already their affections lacerated by the loss of friends, torn from their families to undergo the most horrible of deaths, the others were full of dark apprehensions for themselves, or for those whose lives were more precious to them than their own. And the thought of getting quit of the cruel tormentor took all too swift and fast hold of the minds of that assembled group.

"It is very evident," muttered one of the party with a scarcely stifled groan—"it is very evident, my Diego, that you count amongst the number of your friends none of those whose names, or position, or country, place them in jeopardy."

"Ah! indeed," added another, without perceiving the flush that suddenly deepened on the young noble's cheeks, "and it is easy enough to discover, even if one had not known it, that Diego has neither wife nor child for whose sake to feel a due value for his life and lands."

Again that sudden flush on the handsome face, but Montoro stood in shadow, and none marked it. The gathering of men, now turned into a band of conspirators, was more intent on learning from Montoro de Diego whether he meant to betray their purpose, than in taking note of his own private emotion, and once assured of his silence they let him depart, while they remained yet some time longer in secret conclave, to concert their plans for destroying Arbues and the Inquisition both together.

"There cannot be much difficulty one would imagine," muttered one of the conspirators, "in compassing the death of a wretch held in almost universal odium."

But others of the party shook their heads, while one, more fully acquainted with the state of affairs than the rest, replied moodily:

"Nay then, your imagination runs wide of the mark. The difficulty in accomplishing our undertaking will be as great as the danger we incur. The cruel are ever cowards. Arbues wears mail beneath his monastic robes, complete even to bearing the weight of the warrior's helmet beneath the monk's hood. And his person is diligently guarded by an obsequious train of satellites."

"Then we must bribe the watch-dogs over to our side," was the stern remark of the haughty Don Alonso, who had been the first to seize upon the suggestion thrown out by the unknown voice in the crowd.

Immediately after that declaration the noblemen dispersed, for it was not safe just at that time for men to remain too long closeted together.

[CHAPTER III.]

RIVALS AT DON PHILIP'S HOUSE.

When Montoro de Diego quitted the palace of Don Alonso his face betokened an anxiety even greater than that warranted by the conversation in which he had just taken part. To say truth his secret belief was, that the deadly decision arrived at by his friends was the frothy result of recent disappointed hopes, and that with the calming influence of time bolder and more honourable counsels would prevail. As he left the palace, therefore, he left also behind him all disquietudes especially associated with the late discussion, and the settled gravity of his face now belonged to matters of more private interest.

Don Alonso had declared, that it was easy enough to see that Don Diego had no friends amongst those looked upon with evil eyes by the authorities of the Inquisition. But Don Alonso was wrong. The two friends whom Don Diego valued more highly than any others upon earth were reputed of the race of Israel. Christians indeed, for two generations past, but still with a true proud gratitude clinging to the remembrance that they had the blood in their veins of the "chosen people of God." They were Don Philip and his daughter Rachel.

Don Miguel had remarked with something of a sneer that it was easy enough to remember, from his present action, that Don Diego was unencumbered with family ties. And Don Miguel was so far right that Montoro de Diego was as yet a bachelor. But he was on the eve of marriage with Don Philip's daughter, and the words of his fellow-nobles had rung in his ears as words of evil omen. As he paced along the streets he tried in vain to shake off his dark forebodings, and it was with a very careworn countenance that he at length presented himself at the home of his promised bride.

To his increased disturbance, upon being ushered into the presence of Don Philip and his daughter, the young nobleman found a stranger with them; at least, one who was a stranger to him, though apparently not so to his friends, with whom he appeared to be on terms of familiar intercourse.

Don Diego at once took a deep aversion to the interloper, for he had entered with the full determination to press upon Rachel and Don Philip the expediency of an immediate marriage, in order that both father and daughter might have the powerful protection of his high position, and undoubted Spanish descent and orthodoxy. But it was, of course, impossible to speak on such topics in the presence of a stranger. So annoyed was he that his greetings to his betrothed bride partook of his constraint, and the girl appeared relieved when her father called to her:

"Rachel, my child, the evening is warm; will you not order in some fruit for the refreshment of our guests?"

As the beautiful young girl left the apartment in gentle obedience to her father's desire the stranger followed her with his eyes, saying with studied softness:

"Your daughter is so lovely it were a pity that she had not been dowered with a fairer name."

The old man sighed before replying: "Perchance, Señor, you are right. And yet, in my ears the name of Rachel has a sweetness that can scarcely be surpassed."

"It might sound sweeter in mine," rejoined the stranger still in tones of studied suavity, "if it were not one of the names favoured by the accursed race of Israel."

A momentary flash shot from the eyes of Don Philip, but hastily he dropped his lids over them as he answered with forced quietude: "Doubtless I should have bestowed another name upon my child had I foreseen these days, when it is counted for a crime to be descended from those to whom the Great I Am, in His infinite wisdom, gave the first Law and the first Covenant."

He ceased with another low, quiet sigh, and a short silence ensued, during which Don Diego felt rather than saw the sharp, searching glances being bestowed upon himself by the stranger, who at length rose, and said coolly:

"Ay, truly, Don Philip, a crime it is in the eyes of Holy Mother Church to have aught to do, even to the extent of a name, with the accursed race, and so, to repeat my offer to you for the hand of your fair daughter. I support my offer now with the promise—not a light one, permit me to impress upon you—to gain the sanction of the Church that her old name of Rachel shall be cancelled, and a new and Christian one bestowed upon her?"

As he finished speaking he turned from Don Philip with a look of insolent assurance to Don Diego, who in his turn had started from his seat, and stood with nervous fingers grasping the hilt of his rapier. As the nobleman met the sinister eyes, full of an impertinent challenge, he made a hasty step forward with the haughty exclamation:

"And who are you pray, sir, who dare ask for the hand of one who is promised to Don Montoro de Diego? Know you, sir, that the daughter of Don Philip is my affianced bride?"

"I have heard something of the sort," was the reply, in a tone of indescribable cool insolence. "Yes; I have already learnt that you have had eyesight good enough to discover the fairest beauty in Saragossa. But you had better leave her to me, noble Señor. She will be—" and the speaker paused a moment to give greater emphasis to his next slowly-uttered words—"she will be safer with me than with you—and her father also." And with a parting look and nod, so full of latent knowledge and cruel determination that Don Diego's blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he encountered them, the new aspirant for the beautiful young heiress took his leave.

As the great iron-bound outer door clanged to, behind him, the head of the old man sank forward on his breast with a groan. His daughter re-entered the apartment at the moment, and the smile which had begun to dawn on her countenance at the departure of the unwelcome guest gave way to a cry of dismay. Flying across the floor she threw herself on the ground beside her father with a pitiful little cry.

"Oh! my father, are you ill?—What ails you, my father?"

For some seconds the old man's trembling hand tenderly caressing the soft hair was the only answer. At last he asked with a choked voice:

"My daughter—couldst thou be content to wed yon Italian?"

The words had scarcely passed his lips when the girl sprang to her feet, gazing with wild eyes at her questioner.

"Kill me, my father, but give me not to yon awful, hateful man. Besides—" and with a look of agonized entreaty she turned towards Don Diego—"besides, am I not already given by you to another?"

"And to another who has both the will and the power to claim the fulfilment of the promise," exclaimed Montoro de Diego, coming forward, and clasping the girl's hand in his with an air of iron resolution.

Once again there was a heavy silence in the darkening chamber, and when it was broken the hearers felt scarcely less oppressed by the sound, although the words themselves seemed to speak of happiness.

"My son," said the old man in low and urgent tones, "it is true, I have given you my child—my only one. Fetch the good old priest Bartolo now, at once, and secretly, and let him within this hour make my gift to you secure."

A faint protest against this sudden, unexpected haste was made by the young bride, but Don Diego needed no second bidding to the adoption of a course he considered to be dictated as much by prudence as affection. Two hours later Montoro de Diego wended his way to his own palace with his young wife, Rachel Diego, by his side.

"Do not weep so, my Rachel," entreated the young nobleman as he led his bride into her new home.

But the tears of the agitated girl flowed as bitterly as ever as she moaned, "My father—oh! my father! If but my father had come with us!"

"He has promised to take up his abode with us, if possible, within the next few weeks, my Rachel," returned Montoro de Diego, in the vain endeavour to give her comfort. But she dwelt upon the words, "if possible," rather than upon the promise. She guessed but too well the fears which had dismissed her thus summarily from her father's home. She had heard but too much of the hideous tragedies of the past two months, and her husband himself was too oppressed with forebodings to give her consolation in such a tone of confidence as should secure her belief.

Don Philip had offered his life for his daughter's happiness, and his daughter well-nigh divined the fact.

Had the Christianized Jew consented to give his daughter, and his daughters princely fortune, to the vile informer of the Inquisition, he would have escaped harm or persecution, at any rate for that season. But he counted the cost, and taking his life into his hand, for the sake of his child's happiness, he committed her henceforth to the loving charge of the noble-hearted Don Diego. The fulfilment of the sacrifice was not long delayed.

The days went by, and the weeks—one—two—three. The second day of the fourth week was drawing to its close, since the group of Spanish noblemen had muttered their passionate resolves to rid their Aragon of Arbues de Epila. They had not been idle since then. Time had not quenched their burning indignation, but rather fanned it fiercer as they gathered fresh adherents, and gold, that ever needful aid in all enterprises. But the one adherent Don Alonso and Don Miguel most longed for still held aloof.

The lengthening shadows of that day belonged also, as the reader knows, to the second day of the fourth week since Don Diego's marriage, and his new ties made him but increasingly anxious to keep in the most careful path of rectitude, for the sake of expediency now as much as honour.

The name of Montoro de Diego was hitherto so unblemished, his rank was so important, that he might well believe himself a safe protector for his young bride, and for his new father-in-law, even though it was not wholly unmixed, pure Spanish blood that flowed in their veins. And he was firm in his refusal to have any part in schemes of danger. His wife was safe, hidden up in the recesses of his palace; and his father-in-law, he trusted, had secured safety in flight.

On the day succeeding that on which Don Philip had refused to purchase peace at the price of his daughter's welfare, Rachel Diego had received a few hurried lines of farewell from him, saying that he was going into exile until safer times for Saragossa, and bidding her be of good cheer, as all immediately concerning themselves now promised to go well.

Under these circumstances Don Diego might be pardoned, perhaps, if for a time he forgot the miseries surrounding him—forgot his hopes to infuse a bolder, nobler spirit of upright resistance to evil, into his comrades, and rested content with his own happiness.

But there came a dark awakening.

The day had been one of dazzling heat; and as the sun's rays grew more and more slanting, and the shadows longer, Don Diego bid his gentle young wife a short adieu, and sauntered forth to draw, if possible, a freer breath out-of-doors than was possible within.

He had been more impatient in seeking the evening breeze than most of his fellow-citizens, for the streets were still almost deserted. There was but one pedestrian besides himself in sight, and Montoro de Diego was well content to note that that one was a stranger, for he was in no mood just then for parrying fresh solicitations from his friends by signs, and half-uttered words, to join their secret counsels. He was sufficiently annoyed when he perceived at the lapse of a few seconds that even the stranger was evidently bent on accosting him. Determined not to have his meditations interrupted he turned short round, and began to retrace his way towards his own abode.

But not so was he to secure isolation. The rapid pitpat of steps behind him quickly proved that the stranger was as desirous of a meeting as he was wishful to avoid it; and scarcely had the Spanish nobleman had time to entertain thoughts of mingled wonder and annoyance, when he shrank angrily from a tap on his arm, and faced round to see what manner of individual it might be who had dared such a familiarity with one of the grandees of Aragon. The explanation was sudden and complete.

A low, mocking laugh greeted the involuntary widening of his eyes. Don Diego stood face to face with the man he had seen but once before; but that was on an occasion never to be forgotten, for it was the evening of his marriage, and the man before him was the one who had dared try to deprive him of his bride. For that he bore him no love, nor for the hinted threats then uttered; but now his blood curdled with instinctive horror as he gazed at the sinister, cruel face mocking his with an expression on it of such cool insolence.

Don Diego's most eager impulse was to dash his companion to the ground and leave him; but for the first time in his life fear had gained possession of him. Fear, not for himself, but for those whom he held more precious.

"Why do you stay me? What would you with me?" he questioned at last, in tones that vainly strove for their customary accent of haughtiness. The cynical triumph of the Italian grew more visible.

"Meseems, my Señor," he replied with a sneer; "meseems from your countenance, and your new-found humility of voice, that your heart must have prophesied to you that matter anent which I have stayed you, that counsel that I would, for our mutual advantage, hold with you. It is of Don Philip and his daughter Rachel that I wish to speak with you."

Montoro de Diego inclined his head in silent token of attention, and the foreigner continued in slow, smooth speech:

"Doubtless, my Señor, you remember that in your presence, some few weeks ago, I made proposals of marriage for the fair, rich daughter of Don Philip. The night of the day on which I made these proposals the birds flew from me, and from my little hints in case of contumacy, out of Saragossa. That was a foolish step to take, my Señor, was it not?"

He paused for an answer, and the dry lips of Don Diego replied stiffly: "Don Philip asked me not for counsel in his actions, neither did I give it."

"Ah!" resumed the Italian with a second sneer, "that may perchance be a true statement, Don Diego; but I shall be better inclined to accept it worthily, when you shall now reverse your professed behaviour, and accept the post of adviser to the obstinate heretic."

"I cannot," was the hasty exclamation. "Don Philip is no heretic, but a faithful son of the Church, and I have no clue to his retreat."

"Then I can give you one," was the low-spoken answer. "Don Philip has been tracked, and brought back. But his daughter is not with him. He refuses to confess her hiding-place, although he is now in the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, and can purchase freedom by the information."

"Cruel, black-hearted villain!" exclaimed Don Diego, shocked and infuriated at length beyond all prudence; "know this, that Rachel, daughter of Don Philip, is now my bride. And know this yet further, that the nobles of Aragon are not yet so ground beneath the feet of a new dominion that they cannot protect their wives, and those belonging to them, from the perjured baseness of dastards who would destroy them."

Once more the young nobleman turned to quit his abhorred companion, but once more that hated touch fell upon his arm, and the Italian again confronted him with a face literally livid with malice as he hissed out:

"The nobles of Aragon are doubtless all-powerful, my Señor, and yet for your news of your bride I will give you news of her father. Ere this hour to-morrow the burnt ashes of his body will have been scattered to the four winds of heaven. Take that news back to your bride to win her welcome with."

Don Diego was alone. Whether he had been leaning against the walls of that heavy portico five seconds, five minutes, or five hours, he could scarcely tell when he became conscious of his own painful reiteration of the words, "Ere this hour to-morrow—ere this hour to-morrow."

"What is the matter, Montoro? rouse yourself. What about this hour to-morrow?" asked the voice of Don Alonso at his elbow. And Montoro shudderingly raised himself from the wall, looked with dazed eyes at his friend, and repeated:

"Ere this hour to-morrow. Will she know?"

"Will who know?" again questioned Don Alonso, as he passed his arm through his friend's and drew him on, for the street was no longer empty. Doors were opening on all sides, and the people pouring forth to the various entertainments of the evening. Some curious glances had already been cast at Don Diego, as he leant there stupefied with horror and anguish for his wife's threatened misery.

In the early part of the evening the Italian tool of the Inquisition had sought Don Diego. When evening had given way to night, Don Diego sought the Italian, and as a suppliant.

"It ill suits an Aragonese to sue to the villain of a foreigner," said the wretch, with malicious sarcasm. "It makes me marvel, my Señor, that you should deign thus to condescend."

"I marvel also," murmured the Spaniard, rather to himself than to his unworthy companion. "When the sword of the Moor was at my throat I disdained to sue for mercy; when I lay spurned by the pirate's foot I felt no fear; but now—ay now, if you will—I will give you the power to boast that one of the greatest of the nobles of Aragon has knelt at your feet to sue for a favour at your hands."

"And you will not deny the humiliating fact if I should publish it?" demanded the Italian, with a half air of yielding, and Montoro Diego, with a light of hope springing into his face, exclaimed:

"No, no. I will myself declare the deed, if for its performance you will obtain me the life and freedom of Don Philip."

Like a drowning man stretching forth to a straw, Montoro had snatched at a false hope. With that low, mocking laugh that issued freely enough from his thin, cruel lips, the Italian said slowly:

"Ah! your wish is very great, my Señor, I see that—truly very great to save a heart-ache to your bride. But—see you—you have hindered Jerome Tivoli of his desire, and now it is his turn, the turn of the 'base, black-hearted villain,' Jerome. And he takes your desire into his ears, he tastes it on his palate, it is sweet to him, sweetened with the thought of revenge, and then—he spurns it—spits it forth from him—thus!"

The Aragonese tore his rapier from its sheath, and darted forward, his fierce southern blood aflame with fury at the insult. But his companion stood there coolly with folded arms, content to hiss between his teeth:

"We are not unwatched, my Señor. I have plenty to avenge me if you think Doña Rachel will be gratified to lose husband now as well as father."

The mention of his wife was opportune. It restored Don Diego to his self-control. With a mighty effort mastering his pride, he collected his thoughts for one final attempt on behalf of the good old man doomed so tyrannically to an awful death.

Before seeking this second interview with the foreigner Montoro de Diego had schooled himself to bear everything for the sake of his one great object, and although for a moment he had allowed self to rise uppermost, he now once more crushed it down, and returned to the attitude of the humble suppliant.

He did not indeed repeat the offer, so insultingly rejected, to kneel to the informer, but he appealed earnestly to more sordid instincts. The man had alluded to Don Philip's daughter as rich as well as beautiful, and he now offered him the heiress's wealth as compensation for the loss of the heiress herself.

As he spoke a sudden gleam of satisfaction shot into the Italian's eyes, and a second time a hope, far greater than the first, rose in the petitioner's heart; but yet again it was dashed to the ground. Just as he was prepared to hear that his terms were agreed upon, his companion's countenance underwent a sudden change. A shadow had just fallen across the floor, and with a heavy scowl replacing the expression of greed he bent forward with the hasty mutter:

"Fool of a Spaniard, has that idiot tongue of thine but one tone, that thou must needs screech thy offers, like a parrot from the Indies, into all ears that choose to listen?" Then aloud, as though in continuation of a widely-different theme: "And so, as I tell thee, thy offers go for nought, for the wealth will of right flow into the coffers of the Sacred Office when the accursed Jew shall have suffered in the flesh to save his soul. And now," insolently, "I have no more time to listen to thy prating, and so go."

Whether he went of his free will, or was turned out, Montoro de Diego never clearly remembered, but on finding himself beneath the starry sky, he dashed off to the palace of the dread Arbues himself. Well-nigh frantic with despair, as he thought of the torments that the aged prisoner was even then all too probably undergoing, he forced admittance, late though the hour was, to the presence of the stern ecclesiastic, who was prudently surrounded by guards even in the privacy of his own supper-room. Nothing short of the great influence of Don Diego's high rank would have enabled him to penetrate so far, but even that did not protect him from the Inquisitor's rebuke, nor gain him a favourable hearing for his cause.

"It is our blessed office," said the bigoted supporter of Rome's worst errors, "to purge the Church, to—"

"If Don Philip die, others will die with him," sharply interrupted the young Spaniard, with fierce significance, and he left the Inquisitor's palace as abruptly as he had entered it, half determined, in that bitter hour, to throw in his lot with the conspirators. If there were none to listen to reason, none to obey the dictates of justice or mercy, why should he maintain alone his integrity?

So passion and despair tried to argue against his conscience, as he retraced his steps to his own home and the waiting Rachel. But the events of that night were not yet over.

[CHAPTER IV.]

THINKING OF EXILE.

As Montoro de Diego entered the deep portico of his palace entrance, he stumbled against some obstruction in the way. He stooped, and found there was a man dead, or in a deep swoon, lying at his feet.

Before he could ascertain more, or summon his servants, a third person stepped out of the obscurity and muttered rapidly:

"Remember, the gold is to be mine. It is not my fault that he has thus suffered before release."

Then the whisperer of those significant words was gone, and the young man was alone with the prostrate form of his father-in-law. Relinquishing his intention to call for aid, he lifted the inanimate body in his own strong arms, and bore his burden into a small inner apartment, reserved for his own devotion to such learned studies as were then flourishing in Aragon under the fostering care of royal encouragement. Something of medicine and surgery he had also acquired, but he soon discovered with bitter sorrow that in the present case his skill was useless. The old man was dying. Every limb had been dislocated on the rack.

"They tortured me to try to extort the secret of my child's hiding-place," murmured the old man quietly. "But thanks be to the Lord, He gave me strength. This day I shall be with Him. They have but hastened my coming home, my children."

And so, with forgiveness and love in his heart, and the light of coming glory on his face, this rescued victim of the Inquisition died in his daughter's arms, just as the sun's first golden rays were brightening the streets of Saragossa. Those rays that were glowing on the walls of the dungeons, within which slept, for the last time on earth, those innocent ones who were that day to be burnt in one of the awful Autos da Fé; those rays that were glowing on the walls and windows of the palace where Arbues the Inquisitor still slumbered.

"For so He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good."

The morning was still young when Don Diego received two visitors. The first, Jerome Tivoli, was quickly dismissed with the curt but satisfying speech:

"A noble of Aragon ever keeps his word. The miserable treasure you crave is yours."

His interview with Don Alonso was far longer.

"Surely now you must join us," urged that fiery spirit with impatient indignation. "You cannot refuse to aid in avenging the wrongs of your father-in-law."

"His mode," murmured the other, "of avenging his own wrongs, was to pray for light for his murderers."

But Don Alonso was marching with hasty strides up and down the apartment, and did not hear the words. His own conscience was ill at ease, as the head of conspirators having assassination for their object, and he had an unacknowledged feeling that he would be more comfortable in his mind if the upright Montoro would throw in his lot with them. But Don Diego was firm in his refusal. That recent death-bed scene had given him back his faith in the wisdom and love of God, in spite of the darkness now around him, and he ended the discussion at last, by saying:

"No, Alonso, I will keep my honour whatever else I may be forced to lose. But, although I will not join you, I will tell you whom I would join, were my Rachel a man, or, being a woman, had she but been inured to hardships as a mountain peasant. I would suffer exile thankfully, so embittered to me has my native land become."

"Embittered indeed to us all," almost groaned the other, adding, "But whom then is it you would join in your exile? Any of our friends, or one I know not?"

"One you know not, nor I either, personally," was the reply; "but one whom we both know well by reputation. That Christopher Colon, the Genoese, who, for the past six months almost, has been wearying our Queen Isabella of Castile to provide him means to find some strange new world; some vision of wonder that has risen in his imagination, brilliant with lands of gold and pearl, and perfumed with sweeter spices than the Indies."

Don Alonso uttered a short laugh of contempt.

"Ah, ha! And you mean to tell me that you would be willing to throw in your lot with that beggarly, visionary adventurer! Our King Ferdinand knows better than to waste his maravedis on such moon-struck projects, or to let his consort do so either."

"And yet," said Montoro, somewhat doubtfully, "and yet, although of course new worlds are foolishness to dream of, some islands might perchance fall to our share, if we adventured somewhat to find them, as such good and profitable prizes have been falling, during the past fifty years, pretty plentifully, to our clever neighbours, the Portuguese."

"Ay, and even they won't listen to this Genoese, you may recollect. Besides, the Pope has given everything in the seas and on it, I have heard, to those lucky neighbours of ours, so of what use for Spaniards to jeopardize lives and treasure to benefit the Portuguese?"

"Nay," answered Don Diego, "the Pope's grant to them is only for the countries from Cape Horn to India. Why should not we obtain a grant for lands in the other hemisphere?"

And so the poor young nobleman tried to stifle grief and apprehension in dreams of other lands, of whose discovery he would not live to hear, although his son would one day help others to found new homes on their far-off soil.

[CHAPTER V.]

DEATH FOR ARBUES DE EPILA.

The days went by; the days of that year, 1485: and still the hideous spectacles of the Auto da Fé continued to be witnessed with shame and anguish by the inhabitants of Saragossa. Still the cry of the tortured victims ascended up to heaven, and still Arbues de Epila lived in his case of mail.

Those were busy, agitating days for Spain. The war with Granada was still in progress. King Ferdinand was much exercised in mind with various jealousies connected with French affairs, and, more than all important for future ages, the Queen's confessor, Ferdinand di Talavera, together with a council of self-sufficient pedants and philosophers, was taking into consideration that request of the Genoese, Christopher Colon, or, as we call him, Columbus, to be provided with such an equipment of ships, men, and necessary stores, as should enable him to find and found countries hitherto unheard of, and only thought of, most people declared, by crack-brained dreamers.

"Besides," finally decided Talavera and his sage council, with pompous absurdity; "besides, if there were nothing else against this scheme, such as the convex figure of the globe, for instance, which, of course, would prevent vessels ever getting back again, up the side of the world, once they got down, there was the impudence of the suggestion. It was presumptuous in any person to pretend that he alone possessed knowledge superior to all the rest of the world united."

And such impertinent presumption was certainly not to be encouraged in an "obscure Genoese pilot." And so, for that while, after weary waiting, and the weary hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, Columbus and his splendid plans were dismissed. But this result was not arrived at until four years after the months with which we are, for the minute, more immediately concerned; and so to return to the thread of our narrative, and to add yet further—and still the men of Saragossa gathered into secret bands, discussing rather by tokens, than by words, the unspeakable cruelties that were being committed in their midst, and the proposed destruction of their arch-instigator, Arbues de Epila.

All was ripe at length for the fulfilment of the fatal plot; fatal, alas, not only to the Inquisitor, but to his murderers also, and to many and many another wholly innocent of the crime.

All day long Don Alonso, Don Miguel, Don James of Navarre, with the rest of the conspirators, many of them with the noblest blood of Aragon flowing in their veins, watched with a fierce, hungry eagerness for the moment in which to strike the blow. The hours wore on, the evening came. In low-breathed murmurs one and another rekindled their own fury, or revived the flagging courage of a companion, by recalling the generosity of character, the blameless life, of some friend or relative snatched out of life by this barbarous persecution.

Night fell over the city of Saragossa, and gradually the conspirators stealthily, silently drew round about the walls of the cathedral. It was approaching midnight. The fierce persecutor of his fellow-men was on his knees before the great altar of the cathedral, on his knees before Him who has said, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice."

Arbues knelt there in the flood of brightness from the lighted altar, and his enemies gathered up around him in the gloomy shadows of the surrounding darkness. Suddenly there was a muffled shout—a cry. He raised his head;—too late,—escape was impossible. Already the arm and hand were streaming with blood that had signed so many warrants for the torture and death of others. Then came the fatal blow.

Arbues knelt there in a flood of brightness from the lighted altar. Suddenly there was a muffled shout—a cry. He raised his head;—too late,—escape was impossible.

A dagger shone, gleaming red with life-blood, in the light, from the back of the victim's neck, in the flesh of which its point was firmly embedded.

Who gave that final thrust none knew but the giver. Only Don Miguel, who stood by in the fierce crush and melée, heard the words hissed out as the deadly weapon was darted forth:

"So dies the fiend, Arbues de Epila!"

And he, too, cast a hasty glance beside him, as Montoro de Diego had done when those words were uttered behind his ear in the Auto da Fé crowd some weeks ago.

But Montoro de Diego had found no one at his elbow but an innocent, wide-eyed child; and Don Miguel only found a crowd of terrified, cringing priests, who with pallid faces and trembling limbs bore off the dying superior to his own apartments, where he lingered two days, blindly giving thanks to God that he had been accepted as a martyr in His cause!

"The enemy of our liberty, our honour, our security is dead," muttered Don Alonso in fierce triumph to Montoro de Diego, as he sought temporary shelter from the dangers of pursuit in his friend's palace. But Don Diego shook his head with prophetic sadness as he answered:

"May the Holy Virgin grant that you have not called down worse evils upon our unhappy city!"

All too soon his fears were realized. The Church was offended, and the sovereigns, at the assassination of the great Inquisitor, and terrible was the vengeance wreaked far and wide upon all who had been, or were supposed to have been, implicated in the impious deed. Hundreds upon hundreds of people died, by torture, in the dungeons, at the stake, by persecutions innumerable, and starvation; and the whole province of Aragon was still further cruelly humiliated in the persons of its nobles, who were condemned in crowds to do penance in the Autos da Fé.

Don Alonso and Don Miguel were hanged instead of burned, not in mercy, but in sign of greater infamy, and that they might feel themselves ground to the very dust by the intense degradation of their punishment. And Don Diego did not escape the general ruin of his friends.

The heat of the search for victims had somewhat abated, when the covetous desires of one of the members of the Inquisition turned upon the possessions of the wealthy nobleman.

A path to the coveted riches was soon found. Montoro de Diego's words were suddenly remembered that he uttered on the night of Don Philip's death—"If Don Philip die others will die with him." On these words he was condemned, first to lingering months in a loathsome dungeon, then to death; and his young wife was driven forth from the gates of Saragossa in widowed penury and despair. The second Montoro de Diego was born a beggar and fatherless, but he had the brave, upright spirit of his father in him for his portion; and with his fortunes our tale is, for the future, concerned.

[CHAPTER VI.]

SANCHO'S BROKEN VICTUALS.

Poverty and pride do not go well in company, and so a Spanish lad of some fourteen or fifteen years of age had begun to learn. But the lesson was hard, and one badly learnt, when one evening some broken victuals were flung to him as they might have been to a famished dog, and accompanied by the exclamation:

"There, starveling, be not squeamish, but feed those lean cheeks of thine, and give me thanks for thy supper."

"I'll give thee that for thy base-born impudence," was the passionate retort, as the youth seized the package of broken meats and was about to use it as a missile to hurl at the donor's head.

But as the muscular young arm was raised it was suddenly grasped from behind, and a sweet, soft voice said hurriedly:

"My son, bethink you. For those of noble blood to be street-brawlers brings as great disgrace as beggary. You have never yet so far shamed me, or forgotten the due restraints of your rank."

As the slight, pale woman spoke the lad's clutched fingers loosened their hold of the parcel; it dropped back into the dusty gutter; and with burning cheeks he suffered himself to be led away from the neighbourhood of the half-angry, half-contemptuous man whose well-intentioned gift had been so spurned. When the mother and son had disappeared the man turned, with a short laugh, from watching them, and addressed himself to a neighbour.

"Easy to see who they are. Holy Mother Church has had something to say to their belongings in the past, I wager. But noble though they may be still, and rich though they may have been once, they are clearly starving now, and had better accept good food when they can get it."

And in this declaration the worthy Sancho was certainly most right, although the bread of charity, even when most delicately bestowed, tasted bitter in those hungry mouths; for the man was further right in his belief that mother and son were of high birth, and the mother had also been reared in luxury.

However, the little incident over, with the alms-giver's comment upon it, the worthy burgess of the small town of El Cuevo, upon the very borders of Aragon, turned his thoughts to matters of greater interest and importance.

"What thinkest thou, friend Pedro, of the new expedition preparing to set out for yon troublesome new-found island of Hispaniola—has it thy approval?"

The friend Pedro thus addressed was busily engaged in inspecting various samples of foreign spices. He now raised a solemn pair of eyes from his aromatic treasures as he replied:

"Troublesome it may be to those who govern it; but so long as my son doth continue to send me home a sufficiency of these marketable commodities, it is not he nor I that shall grumble at its finding."

The burly Sancho laughed.

"Ay, ay, neighbour, I know thee of old. A well-lined pocket thou ever holdest good recompense for a few thwacks. Would that the grand old Admiral Columbus could find comfort for ingratitude and sorrows with such ease!"

"But so he might do if he would but try," was the shrewd answer. "You see our brave Genoese hath ever been more needful for empty-handed honour and glory, than for gathering together good store of worldly spoil, to fall back upon when men should begrudge him the shadow-prizes he desired. Now it seemeth that he may chance to have neither."

"Well, well, I know not," continued Sancho. "The queen hath ever a good will to the great man. And although he is not to be commissioned to go himself to the punishment of that Jack-in-office Bobadilla, men say that the Commendador of Lares, Don Nicolas de Ovando, who is now preparing to set out thither, hath all the virtues under the sun. Wise and prudent and abstemious, and of a winning manner."

"Umph!" grunted the spice-dealer. "Don Ovando had needs be a second St. Paul if he is to win justice and mercy for the poor natives out yonder, at the hands of the off-scouring of our streets; and that is what our gentle-hearted queen hath most at heart."

Master Sancho nodded his head gravely.

"Ah, friend Pedro, I say not but you are right. And that minds me: if my head were not so thick, I might have bethought me to advise yon lad, with the great eyes and the short temper, to seek fortune, like many another of his peers, in those far-off lands across the ocean. I daresay he would have accepted that advice with a better grace than he did my scraps."

His neighbour looked up this time more fully than he had yet done, and let his hands rest for a few moments idle on the samples with which he had been so occupied, as he exclaimed with genuine astonishment:

"Why, friend Sancho, verily it seems to me that you have taken some queer true interest in yon ragged piece of impudence. I have noted you more than once, ay, than twice, watch him of an evening as he went by till out of sight. And now, when he would have flung your kindness back at you, still talking of him, forsooth. Nay then, had he so treated me he would have been roundly cuffed, I tell thee; and so an end."

Broad-shouldered, easy-going Sancho laughed and gave a shrug.

"I am not fond of being ready with my fists, friend Pedro; my hands are large, and might hap to be over heavy; besides, I have a broken thumb. But you judge rightly; I have taken a fancy to that set-up, handsome-faced young beggar. And I have watched him, not only of an evening past these doors, but at other hours in the town; and although he rejects help for himself, many a time have I seen him give it to those weaker or more helpless than himself."

Meantime, while he was being thus discussed, that same "set-up, handsome-faced young beggar" was remonstrating with his mother against her oft-reiterated lectures to him on humility, and on a studied avoidance of everything that should draw observation upon them.

"I will not slink into corners like a thief, nor hide myself in holes like a rat," he exclaimed at last, with haughty indignation. "Hast thou not told me thyself, my mother, that I am an Aragonese?"

But Rachel Diego replied with a lip that trembled while it curled:

"In truth art thou, my son, a child of a barren land. The heir of territories so stricken from the Maker's hand with poverty, that perchance we waste life's breath in lamenting that treasures so miserable should be wrested from us."

But the mother's new line of argument, to soothe her son's dangerous agitation, was fruitless as the other. His eyes flashed still more brilliantly with his burning indignation, as he retorted again:

"You say right, my mother. The land of Aragon is so poor and barren, that perchance her sons and daughters might all long since have forsaken their churlish, niggard-handed mother, and finally renounced her, but that she gives them liberty. Even in our oath of allegiance we tender no slaves' submission to oppression."

The widowed mother turned her sad eyes upon her proud-spirited boy.

"My son, no oath of allegiance has as yet been called for from thy lips."

The flush deepened on the young Spaniard's face. He pressed his teeth into the crimson lower lip for some seconds to strangle back a groan that sought escape from his own over-burdened heart. He had heard of the tragedies of those months before his birth.

"No," he muttered at length bitterly. "No. It is true. I am esteemed too contemptible to have even vows wrung from me that are counted worthless. But the oath that my father spoke is registered in my heart; the oath due from us, whose proud heritage it is to call ourselves the nobles of Aragon. And such is the oath that I, in my turn, tender to my sovereign, Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile."

The lad paused a moment, and then, with folded arms, and in low, firm tones, repeated the proud words of the Aragonese oath of allegiance.

"We, who are each of us as good, and who are altogether more powerful than you, promise obedience to your government if you maintain our rights and liberties, but if not, not."

As he spoke Rachel Diego dropped her face into her hands, and as he ended she murmured in stifled tones:

"Your father pronounced that haughty vow, and what availed the boast?"

What indeed! The young Montoro gazed for a moment at his wan mother, at the bare room, and then, with all his haughtiness lost in a flood of sudden despair, he darted from the miserable apartment to wrestle with his agitation in the wild darkness of a stormy night.

That his heart should be torn with bitterness and grief was little wonder, for all too well he knew how it came to pass that his mother was fatherless and a widow, and how he himself had been robbed of his parent and his patrimony. Something of the dismal tale of Don Philip's tortured death, and of the base villain who had grasped at his daughter's fortune, had been told the boy from time to time by his mother. Something, also, of the avarice and barbarity that had wrested a few despairing words to the destruction of his own father, the noble Don Montoro de Diego.

But much fuller details of those dismal days of 1485 had been given to the disinherited son of a blameless father by the old priest Bartolo, who had secretly aided the outcast young widow and her infant when they were first driven from their home, and who had continued to give them all the assistance in his power until his death, some months ago; in that very month of December, in fact, of 1500, when the hearts of so many in Spain, and elsewhere, throbbed with indignation at the news that a vessel had arrived in the port of Cadiz with the great discoverer on board, in chains like a common malefactor.

While the young Montoro was mourning over the dying priest, however, he little heeded the gossip going on around him about one who, during the remaining five years of a well-worn life, was to have a far greater influence on the orphan lad's career than ever the good old priest would have had the power to exercise.

But the days of December passed on. The old priest was buried. Columbus was delivered from his chains by hasty order of the king and queen, and was further invited in flattering terms of kindness to join the royal Court at Granada; a thousand ducats to defray expenses, and a handsome retinue as escort on the journey, being sent in testimony that the friendliness of the invitation was sincere. And so the saddened heart of the glorious old Admiral was once more warmed with half-fallacious hope. Not so with poor Rachel Diego and her son.

Life had been hard enough while Father Bartolo lived, but after his death the struggle for existence became well-nigh desperate; and by the time the months had come round to this following December of 1501, more people, in the obscure little town of El Cuevo, than the worthy burgess Sancho, had come to the conclusion that the unknown young widow and her handsome son were dying of starvation.

But death was evidently preferable, in the minds of the helpless couple, to degradation. Work they could not obtain, and charity they would not accept.

"And small blame to them after all," muttered Master Sancho to himself, a few days after his vain effort to bestow a supper on the objects of his interest. "I don't believe that I, either, should relish the taste of other men's leavings. Thanks be to the virgin that I have never had to eat them. But yet—to starve? Umph! I know not whether I should like the flavour of starvation any better."

And he folded his arms across his portly person with a slightly mocking laugh of self-consciousness.

This short soliloquy had been occasioned by the sight of young Montoro Diego passing the end of the street. His reappearance now, in the street itself, with a large loaf of bread in his arms, brought the soliloquy to a sudden stop; and Sancho left his post of observation in his own doorway, and hurried as fast as his weighty figure would allow to the pedestrian, finding no very great difficulty in barring the lad's further progress along the narrow roadway with his broad form. Montoro threw back his head impatiently.

"What now?" he demanded, with flushed cheeks. "Have you some more dog's meat that you wish to be rid of?"

The burgess laughed.

"Verily, my son, there is a bold spirit hidden under those rags of thine. But a truce to laughter; for verily I feel angered with you now, and I have a right?"

"Because I would none of your mean gifts?" asked Montoro hotly.

"Nay, indeed; that was your affair. But I am angry, and have a right to be, that you should accept aid from others which you will not have from me."

"Accept aid!" repeated the lad wonderingly. "Of what are you speaking? What aid have we received since the only friend died of whom we would accept it?"

But even as he spoke he caught the eyes of his companion fixed upon the loaf by way of significant answer, and he added shortly:

"This I have earned. It is no gift."

Then slipping under his questioner's arm he thought to have escaped; but Master Sancho caught him by the shoulder and held him fast.

"Look here, my son, by your air and looks I judge you to have been born to a rank far above my own and so if it be your pleasure I will speak to you with uncovered head by way of deference. But speak to you I will, for I have taken a fancy to you; and if you are not as set against work as against alms I may help you."

There was a spasmodic twitch of the shoulder at those last words; and the boy's face was so turned away that his captor could not read it. But after a moment's silence the worthy-hearted man continued, with a different accent of somewhat impatient anger:

"Hark ye, lad, ye may be as indifferent about thyself as it may please thee; but I cry shame on thee to refuse aught that may provide needful nourishment for that sweet and gentle mother of thine. To nourish thy false pride—ay, I will even call it by a juster name, thy base pride—thy mother is offering herself a sacrifice."

There was a gulping sound in the boy's throat, and then with a choking gasp he muttered:

"She could not, she would not, live on charity."

"No," instantly agreed the burgess of El Cuevo; "that I begin to believe. But she could and would live on the honest earnings of your hands. And be you noble or no, you'll find ne'er a priest in Spain to dare tell you that it is more honourable to let a mother starve than to work for her."

For the first time Montoro Diego let his eyes fairly rest on his mentor's face. There was something so genuinely true in the ring of the voice that the boy's anger and indignation dwindled away he scarce knew how, and gave place to a growing trust. With an effort he crushed down his emotion as he replied in low tones:

"I have no coward scruples against work, believe me. But I am noble, as you say. The son of one who died wrongfully for the death of Arbues de Epila. It was at the peril of their lives that any helped my mother, even with work, at the time that my father was thus barbarously mur—"

Burgess Sancho sharply clapped his hand over the boy's mouth, muttering with half-angry solicitude:

"Knowest thou not, my son, that a still tongue is wisdom? Keep thy information of the past for those who ask for it, and to those who do so give it not. You, a starving boy in the streets of El Cuevo, I can help. You may have dropped from the clouds for aught I know. Dost thou not comprehend me?"

Montoro's dark eyes gleamed with a flitting smile. The Aragonese of those days were not wanting in intelligence. But at the same time his native pride, and even his nobility of character, forbade him to accept aught at the expense of his identity, and so he quickly let his new friend understand.

"I have no inheritance but my father's name and my father's unsullied memory," he declared firmly; "and I will bear that openly. I have earned this loaf to-day, and more, by grinding colours for the great painter staying yonder; but first I told him who I was."

"More foolish you," remarked Master Sancho, with a shrug. "But what said he to thy news?"

"Even as thou—that I had more truth than wit. But he gave me work all the same, for he said that he need have no fear. The king could replace heretic nobles with other nobles, but he could not replace a painter, and so he would be wise enough to keep the one he had."

"Ay, then," agreed Master Sancho, "the Señor is right; and if I were you I would turn painter also, for the royal ordinance of last September did not name that amongst the many things you may not be."

"No," returned Montoro with a bitter laugh; "that last ordinance of persecution only excludes me from such employments as would be possible, not from those needing gifts vouchsafed only to the few. But I must say adios, for my mother will already have feared some mischance has come to me."

"To our next meeting, then," said the worthy burgess. "And meantime I will cudgel my brains till I find some means to help you, for all you are so self-willed and impracticable, my son."

The friendly look and the confident nod that accompanied these gruffly good-humoured words were full of such pleasant encouragement that Montoro Diego flew home with a heart suddenly grown as light as though he had already regained the power to use the title of 'Don' before his name, and had already won back the heritage of his ancestors.

We say "already," for of course Montoro, like all brave-spirited, properly-constituted individuals, was perfectly convinced, even in the lowest stage of rags and hunger, that the day would most positively come when he should re-enter his fathers home as the publicly-acknowledged Don Montoro de Diego. Meantime there was good bread for his supper that night, and for his mother, together with a handful of roasted chestnuts and a bottle of thin wine, grateful in that warm climate from its very sourness.

"And to-morrow," he said cheerfully, "the great painter says, my mother, that I may work in his studio again. And, if only you would go with me, he would not again sigh that there were none beautiful and tender-faced enough in the land to sit to him for the Holy Mother."

Rachel Diego said hastily, "Hush, my son," and shook her head at him; but at the same time she smiled, and a delicate flush tinted the pale cheeks, for her boy's loving praises were so sweet in her ears that they turned the humble supper into a feast.

The mother and son were very happy together that night; but had those two who so greatly loved each other known that even then schemes were being revolved in a shrewd and busy brain that would result, within a few short months, in placing a wide and storm-tossed ocean between them, one at least of the couple would have found the bread given to her turned to ashes in her mouth, and would have changed her smiles to weeping.

Happily for them, however, no prevision marred the rare joyousness of those few hours, nor disturbed the sleep that followed, gladdened with bright dreams.

[CHAPTER VII.]

CONSULTING A SWEET TOOTH.

"Friend Pedro!"

"Ay, what now?"

And the spice-dealer looked up from a small pile of curiosities, lying on a tray on his knees, with a more than half-betrayed idea that nothing his neighbour had to say could be so important, as calculating how much he might hope to make by the sale of those uncommon wares.

But this belief was somewhat lessened when his eyes rested on his friend's countenance. "Hey, then!" he ejaculated; "our painter yonder saith that thou art never a true Spaniard, for thy face is too round, but were he to see thee now he would surely tell a different tale."

"It is but lengthened by the height of my considering-cap," was the answer, with a laugh that speedily restored his visage to its usual good-humoured breadth.

Master Pedro appeared greatly relieved by the change. To say truth, in that land of solemn faces and staid deportments, a cheerful neighbour was as refreshing as a sunlit breeze in the early days of spring; and the spice-dealer, although the solemnest of the solemn himself, duly appreciated the fact, not to mention that he had a true though hidden affection for this especial neighbour, and would have grieved greatly if sorrow had befallen him. But long faces only due to considering-caps—well, that was another thing, and really not worth wasting the minutes of a working-day upon. He bent his head once more over his tray of West Indian treasures, as he asked with diminished interest:

"And pray then what has led thee to the wearing of a cap so weighty? Have the good fathers of St. Jacomb refused the purchase of thy Venice lustres, or will not they give thee a fair price for them?"

Burgess Sancho laughed again. "Nay, neighbour, trouble not thyself to guess, for thy guess is wide of the mark. The good fathers closed eagerly with my offer of the lustres, and the maravedis I demanded in exchange are already in my pouch. But hark ye, friend Pedro!—with the lustres came to me also two Venice glasses of the most changeful pearly hue, tall and thin, and of a good capacity. And I have a mind to keep them to myself, and, moreover, to try to-night how the flavour of a good wine from Madeira goes with them. Come thou in, when the sun hath gone down, and help me with my judgment."

"And also with my judgment on a matter of far more moment," muttered the worthy trader to himself, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye at having thus cleverly angled for his neighbour's company.

For the spice-dealer was one difficult to entice farther than his own doorway; and nothing short of those promises of choice wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira, to be drunk out of yet choicer goblets, would have tempted him on the present occasion to break his rule. As it was, the last glimmer of daylight had disappeared more than an hour when a cloaked figure stepped from one door to the next, and gave a tap upon the nail-studded panels.

"Better late than never, friend; come thy ways in," said Master Sancho heartily, as he acted the part of his own door-porter, and ushered his neighbour into a room brightly lighted with fire and lamp; for even in that sunny land of Spain the cold, damp winds of December made the blaze of crackling logs pleasant after sundown. What would not have been so pleasant to English ideas, was the overpoweringly pervading odour of burning lavender, a bundle of which was slowly smouldering on the hearth, by way of giving the atmosphere of the apartment that special tone and perfume considered desirable by its occupants.

On a small table in front of the cheerful hearth stood the beautiful Venice glasses, tall and slender, shimmering with opal tints in the ruddy glow, which also shone through a flask of golden-tinted Madeira, and danced hither and thither over various dishes daintily set forth with sweet-meats. For, ascetic-looking as Master Pedro was in appearance, he had as sweet a tooth as any Roman, and Master Sancho was too anxious to gain his aid or counsel to neglect anything that might tend to put him in good humour.

But although Pedro's eyes gleamed with a certain satisfaction at sight of the festive preparations, he was shrewd enough to read between the lines; and as he stretched his feet comfortably towards the fire, and put back his delicate glass after a contented sip, he asked with grim humour:

"And now, friend Sancho, that you have baited your net and caught your fly, tell me, what wouldest thou seek from out it?"

The merchant's face flushed at the unexpected question, and he began hastily: "Now, by the Holy Virgin, I protest that good fellowship—"

"And some perplexity besides," interrupted Pedro with a knowing smile, "made you anxious for my company. But tell me without hesitation what you would have of me, for I would stretch many a point to serve so good a neighbour."

"Thou sayest so!" exclaimed worthy Sancho, as he rose hastily to his feet, and with hand resting on the table bent over his companion, eagerly scanning his countenance. "Thou sayest so, and would hold to that thou hast said?"

"Ay verily," was the calm answer. "Almost, maybe, to the extent of putting my limbs in danger of the rack, if they might save thine from the like peril thereby."

However, in spite of his declaration, Master Pedro was somewhat taken aback when his companion dropped again into his chair, muttering thoughtfully:

"Nay then, not quite so bad as that, I hope; not quite so bad as that; although—" and he raised his voice slightly once more, and raised his eyes to his friend again as he added—"although I certainly did think it were prudent to seek your advice in the privacy of my own home, rather than to proclaim my desires to the ears of the whole town. It is now three weeks since you accused me of taking an interest in a certain large-eyed vagrant boy—"

"Ay indeed," with fading interest, "of watching the bundle of rags as a dog might watch a rat."

"Even so. And when you have watched anything in that way for the space of months, you end by either loving it, or holding it in abhorrence. I have ended by loving it. And unfortunately I love where the law hates. Father and grandfather of that bundle of rags have perished at the mandate of the Holy Tribunal."

Master Sancho ceased, and bestowed a long, silent stare upon the glowing logs, while his companion took a long, slow sip of the rich wine. At last the spice-dealer put down his glass, placed his hands slowly, outspread, on his knees, and said in slow, muffled tones:

"Friend Sancho, I have some rules for life which I have found good. One of them is, 'Never give advice.' But this once I will depart from that rule, and advise thee to rid thy heart of this unlucky love, and for the future ever to wear thine eyes within thy cloak when yon lean-cheeks is within sight."

"Umph!" calmly ejaculated the host, still staring into the fire. "I knew that would be thy first well-meant advice; and, to tell thee the truth, I reckon that it may be as well for me not to be gazing at the lad quite so much as I have done of late. It is with that belief that I have turned to you to help me to get quit of the poor starveling."

At these last unexpected words the guest started, and cast a keen, swift glance of almost angry wonder upon his entertainer, as he said hastily:

"Nay, neighbour, what is that thou sayest? I advise thee to have nought to do with the lad, that is true; but canst thou think, even for thy safety, that I would aid thee to get rid of the poor fatherless one?"

A smile began to steal over the merchant's broad countenance, as he replied coolly:

"Ay, verily, and that is what I can and do expect. But not, as you seem to fear, to the lad's hurt. Here, in our Spain, it is not easy just now to set him on his feet. But if you will give him some commission to your son—nay, be calm and hear me out—if you will do that for the comfort of his mother, I will furnish him clothes and a fair purse, and trust me, I will also find means some way to smuggle him on board one of the ships, now fitting out in the southern port of Cadiz to carry the Commendador to Hispaniola. That is my scheme; many a good hour that I might have enjoyed in sleep have I bestowed upon it, and now you are going to aid me to carry it through."

"Never!" exclaimed Master Pedro, excitedly; "never, never! Not for all the maravedis that ever fell into the coffers of the Holy Office will I help thee to help one who inherits its suspicions. Dost hear me, neighbour Sancho?—I say, never!"

"Ay, ay, I hear thee," calmly replied the individual addressed. "I heard thee say that same 'never' in my dreams two days ago, and answered thee with 'ever.' Now I hear thee say it actually with thy lips, and still I answer it with 'ever.' But take another taste of the wine, friend Pedro; fill thy glass again, if but to see the mingling of the colours, and draw in thy chair closer to the warmth. No need to neglect the comforts of the body because thy mind is perturbed."

"Ah!" growled the other. "Thou hast well put into words the doctrine of thy life, I warrant me."

Master Sancho laughed.

"And if so, neither words nor doctrine, can any say, have served me shabbily. If it should so fall out in the future that even in this world I must suffer for my sins, or for other folks' caprices, nevertheless in the past my face hath had its share of rejoicing in the sunshine of its own smiles."

"It is in the sunshine of the smiles of others," retorted the spice-dealer, "that most men would fain be able to rejoice."

"Ay, even so, and that is where most men fall into error," was the calm reply. "Comfort from the smiles of others is like the fleeting comfort a sick beggar gets from the glow of another man's fire. A healthy man has the abiding glow in his own veins, and he carries it about with him where he goes. Thus is it when the spring of smiles is within thine own heart, man, and thou art led to accept gratefully blessings as they fall to thy hand."

The spice-merchant's eyes opened somewhat roundly as he heard this short philosophical-sounding speech, so very unlike his jovial neighbour's ordinary conversation, but before he could utter the sarcastic words of surprise hovering on his tongue, he was recalled to his recent anxieties by his friend continuing in a more earnest tone:

"And thus, as I like to grasp at the blessings as they come—the blessings of good fire, good friends, good food; good fun—so I can even open my hand wide enough to take hold of another sort of blessings, when they are thrust upon me so plainly that I can but see they are being offered. Do you mind the text upon which Father Ignatius preached to us on Christmas Day?"

Master Pedro considered a moment, and shook his head. To say truth, when that sermon began, his head was occupied with the doubt of whom he should trust to send with his next consignment of money, glass beads, and other things, to his son.

"It was appropriate to the occasion," he said at last with a clever evasion worthy of the Delphic oracle.

But his companion was too much in earnest now to smile. He replied quietly:

"The text was this: 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not to me. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.'"

So sternly solemn was his utterance of those two final words, that the other was thrilled with it, and moving uneasily on his seat, he muttered:

"One would think you were talking of the Holy Tribunal itself, to hear you."

"Only," ejaculated Sancho, "that I am talking of something infinitely more terrible. The one fire is for five minutes, the other—everlasting. I prefer the five minutes' one, if it must come to the choice. But, if you will help me, I think not we shall run much risk of either. Those who are in danger of their lives over here, and endanger those who aid them, are perfectly welcome, I have discovered, to imperil those same lives on their own account in the other hemisphere, for the glory of our country. And, on this I am resolved—yon black-eyed rascal shall have his chance with the rest."

[CHAPTER VIII.]

A POWERFUL FRIEND.

"Come with me, and ask no questions."

Such was the oracular order addressed by Master Pedro to his friend, Master Sancho, the morning after the conversation over that wonderful new wine of Madeira, and, with great alacrity, the merchant prepared to obey, exclaiming, with a joyous rub of his hands:

"Ah, neighbour, have your will in that matter of the questioning, for well I guess you would not think to fetch me from my business at this hour of a working-day but on account of our last night's confab."

However, for all so sure as he had felt on the matter, he began to be uncomfortably doubtful when his companion led him from his own door into the next, from which issued the mingled odours of every known spice under the sun, and none of them, to worthy Sancho's thinking, deserving to be compared with the sweet airs wafted over the fields of their own native lavender.

"Come in then," testily exclaimed Master Pedro, from the interior of a room just within the house, and at the entrance of which his friend had been arrested by the snarlings of two particularly vicious-looking pups. "Come in; they'll not hurt thee. They know better than to touch a Spaniard. They are to teach manners to the natives out yonder."

"Ah!" ejaculated Sancho, with an involuntary shudder, and a look expressive both of disgust and anger. But he quickly concealed these emotions. For the present he had one great object in view, and for its furtherance he must keep his companion in good humour, although his own was tested to the uttermost, not only by the dogs and their purpose, but by Master Pedro's employment for the next twenty minutes or so.

The trader with Venice well enough understood the merits and beauties of crystal-clear lustres, coloured vases, and golden goblets, and he had a fair taste in the velvets from Genoa and the fine straws from Tuscany, but of what use or value all those Moorish tags and rags could be, which the curiosity-dealer was turning over, save to patch the holes in the cloaks of the beggars who lay around the doors of the neighbouring church of San Salvador, he could not imagine.

"Nay, friend Pedro," he exclaimed at last, with an effort to show no temper, and to still speak pleasantly; "nay, friend Pedro, if thou hast brought me here to get a bid from me for yon small rubbish-heap, I tell thee frankly I value it at nought, seeing it will not even serve to feed a fire with. Nevertheless, I will even take it, to pleasure thee and to save mine own time, and at what price you list."

"Wilt thou then that?" said the other, with a grim smile, as he slowly lifted himself up from stooping over the pile of lumber, of all hues and textures, rich and sombre-coloured, thick and fragile. "Another time, neighbour Sancho, I would warn thee to be more chary of passing thy word to a blind bargain, lest one more cunning than thyself should hold thee to the promise. To purchase the rare wares of this small rubbish-heap would take many more than all the maravedis paid thee yester morn for thy lustres, by the fathers of San Jacomb. This veil alone hath been purchased of me for a fair round sum."

Master Sancho stared at the filmy texture, disfigured here and there with rents, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Thy wife, Doña Carlina, would not wear it."

"She will not have the chance. That veil, now many years since, shrouded the form of a Sultana—the ill-used queen of Aba-Abdalla, the last king of the Moors in Granada, thanks to the Virgin, our good knights, and Queen Isabella. And now Señor Antonio del Rincon hath hired it, and various others of these draperies, for the finishing of his great picture of the Life of the Blessed Virgin."

"And when he hath done with it?" inquired the good merchant, with something of growing reverence.

"Then it hath been purchased by a party of the ricos hombres,[1] who have vowed it to St. Jago, in memory of that grand day ten years ago, when our valiant Spanish knights adventured themselves, in the disguise of Turks, within the walls of Granada, as champions of their enemy's helpless queen. But come, friend, time passes, and Señor Antonio will be waiting for his stuffs."

As it was not good Sancho, but Master Pedro himself who had been delaying the expedition, the friends were soon enough on the road now that he was ready; and a hope began to dawn again in the mind of Montoro's new patron, that made amends to him for the loss of minutes from his daily toils.

"Señor Antonio del Rincon stands high in favour at the Court, neighbour," he observed at last, meditatively, as they walked along, side by side, to their destination; and Master Pedro answered shortly:

"Ay, neighbour; even so. He doth."

The reply was given in a tone not exactly inviting to further converse, but that zealous Sancho nevertheless continued, still thoughtfully:

"Ay, ay. And doubtless being a favourite he hath influence to obtain a favour if so be he could be influenced to ask one."

A shrewd, quick glance from his companion's eyes rewarded this conjecture; but they and the bundle of "properties" had now arrived at the temporary abiding-place of del Rincon, known to after-times as the father of the Spanish School. And Master Pedro's face assumed its usual solemn business aspect.

"Mind ye," he muttered hastily, as he paused outside the door of the studio for a moment, to pull and pat his great package into an orderliness somewhat destroyed by its carriage from his house—"mind ye, neighbour, I have brought thee hither, and the rest of the business ye must manage for yourself; for never another step in so craze-pate an affair, and one so near akin to rack and faggot, will you get me to stir, though you should promise me the free gift of your next freight of Venice glass entire."

"Nay then, friend Pedro, I'll do more," was the laughing whisper; "if my hopes succeed, I'll even 'you' thee in gratitude, as thou dost me for repression."

A little further compression of the wrinkled lips, a little further wrinkling of the furrowed forehead, gave the only sign of that mocking speech having been heard; and an instant later jovial Master Sancho appeared as sedately ceremonious as his companion, for they had entered the studio, and stood in the great man's presence, from whom both hoped great things; the spice-dealer for himself, the trader with Italy for another.

A man between fifty and sixty was the Señor Antonio del Rincon, the gravity of genius somewhat tempered in his countenance by the suavity learned from contact with that sweet woman, as she was noble Queen, Isabella of Castile.

At the artist's elbow stood the handsome young Montoro, who raised his great earnest eyes with a swift smile of recognition as Master Sancho entered, and then bent them once more over the colours he was grinding with most diligent care, for his employer. Never once again did he cease work during the animated discussion that ensued between the painter and the owner of the curiosities, although his friendly well-wisher marked the eager flush that crimsoned his whole face when a few words were spoken over the veil, of the splendid daring of Don Juan Chacon, Ponce de Leon, and their two companions, when they stood victors over the four false-hearted Zegries within the walls of Granada.

"Humph! He is worth better things than such a task as that," ejaculated the burgess, unconsciously uttering his thought aloud.

The painter turned to him surprised.

"Hey, master merchant, what is it thou sayest? That the veil is too honourable to take a subordinate place on my canvas, thou thinkest? Well, maybe thou art right," beginning to relapse into abstracted contemplation of his work; but with eager deference Master Sancho stepped forward, putting into words the first thoughts that occurred to him. Pointing a trembling finger towards a somewhat coarse dish holding gifts presented to the infant in the manger, he said hastily:

"It was not of the veil I was thinking. But if Señor Antonio would be pleased to accept of a dish of crystal, curiously chased, and worked with gold and gems, for use instead of yon, I would gladly bestow it for the grand picture's sake, and for the Virgin's honour."

And thus cleverly did Master Sancho, and with true unselfishness, slip his dexterous finger into the pie; and in the course of conferences that day, and a few succeeding days, over the costly dish and similar articles, he pulled out a goodly plum for Montoro Diego. The last use the dying Antonio del Rincon was ever to make of his Court influence was in the service of his young colour-grinder; and soon after the opening of the new year 1502, good Sancho treated himself to a holiday, and set out on a journey across Spain to the port of Cadiz accompanied by Montoro, and bearing a written recommendation of his protégé from the benevolent Queen to the great Admiral himself.

"I thought the Virgin had decreed, my son, that I should have to smuggle thee out of Spain in a cask of the Madeira wine, or in a Venice flask," said the generous-hearted burgess laughing, and rubbing his hands, as they proceeded on their first day's journey in fearlessness, and such comfort as even in those days a well-lined purse commanded.

The lad answered him with sparkling eyes. His emotions were as yet too strong for many words. Sorrow at parting with his beloved mother for the first time was somewhat soothed by having left her in the kind care and friendship of Doña Carlina; but wonder at his suddenly changed fortunes, and dazzling hopes of the future, filled his heart almost to suffocation.

[CHAPTER IX.]

FROM THE NEW PRINTING PRESS.

"And I am surety for you, my son; so if you owe me any thanks for my pains, be honest."

Such was the parting injunction of Master Sancho, as he bade his protégé farewell in the harbour of Cadiz on the morning of the 8th of May, 1502. And with a hot flush in his cheeks, and sparkling eyes, the youth replied quickly:

"Honest! Am I not noble? How should a noble of Aragon ever sully his name with dishonour?"

"How indeed?" replied Master Sancho as he laid his hand on the lad's shoulder and continued gravely: "One may well wonder that any bearing the name of man should sully his manhood by aught that is base; but you will henceforth be surrounded by many a companion who knows nought of honour but the honour of grasping more than his neighbour, who cares for no shame but the shame of being thought capable of virtue. See that you become not one of them."

"You have said that the great Admiral is far from being one of such blots on Spain," said the lad more humbly. "And as I am to be on his own ship, so I will trust to show myself deserving of the honour. And"—he added after a moment with a sudden burst of gratitude—"deserving of all your noble generosity towards me, and your most helpful trust. The memory of that will be a strong guard to me from temptation."

"May St. Jago grant it!" ejaculated the good-hearted man with affectionate fervour.

And then patron and protégé had to exchange hasty farewells, for Ferdinand Columbus, a boy a year or two younger than Montoro, came to summon him on board. Kind-hearted Queen Isabella, in her good-will towards the old and trouble-worn navigator, had given up the services of her young page that on this occasion he might accompany his father, and comfort him with his mingled love and enthusiasm.

To Montoro also it was some secret relief to see that there was one even younger than himself about to brave the very many known, and many unknown, perils of those far-sought adventures and discoveries; for more than his timid, grieving mother in El Cuevo had sought to persuade him that, in leaving that humdrum, safe little town for untried paths, he was foolishly relinquishing all chances of growing up to man's estate. That the Admiral was about to take one of his own two sons seemed a tolerable proof that matters could not be so altogether desperate as that.

Meantime, while these thoughts were flashing through Diego's brain, the merchant's eyes had been attracted by a great iron-bound, iron-clasped book under the boy Ferdinand's arm, and he at once remembered his friend Pedro.

Meantime, the merchant's eyes had been attracted by a great iron-bound, iron-clasped book under the boy Ferdinand's arm.

"My lad," he said, with one of his most winning smiles, "I have left a neighbour behind me in my own town who loves curiosities, and things from past times, not only for their value as articles of merchandise, but for their own sakes, and I would gladly pleasure him with some worthy gift, on my return, after his own heart. Thinkest thou that I could purchase yon great old tome of thee? Missal or Moorish prayers, songs or quaint sayings, I care not, so it be but rare and of a far-gone date."

He put out his hand as he spoke to examine his wished-for bargain; and as Ferdinand Columbus courteously yielded it for inspection he accompanied the civil act with a smiling:

"See for yourself, Señor, if it be old enough to suit an antiquary. Rare it is, certainly; but for the age—it cannot boast as many years as I. It is one of the Bibles printed, by the king's permission, in our own tongue, by Theodoric the German, at his printing presses in Valencia. This copy my father took with him on his first voyage, ten years ago, across the Atlantic, and he would not think of undertaking any great expedition without it."

"And doth he greatly study it, and do you?" inquired Master Sancho, as with mingled awe and wonder he turned the leaves of a book upon which his eyes had never before rested.

But its bearer appeared to think that it was being treated with too much freedom, and rather anxiously held out his hands to receive it back as he murmured in a shocked voice:

"I study it, Señor! The holy saints forbid. That is for the priests. It is taken with us that by its blessed power may be exorcised such spirits of evil, and baneful influences, as we may meet with in those unblessed regions of the West."

So saying, with a formal bow to the merchant, and a sign to Montoro to follow him, the son of the great discoverer of a new world, but not of a more enlightened faith, returned to the small boat that was to carry them on shipboard.

Master Sancho stood on the busy strand watching with many another, until they were drawn up the vessel's side, and then, with a tolerably deep sigh for the loss of his young companion, he wandered away into the streets of the bustling city, and soon became the owner of many curious treasures brought from all parts of the known world, and far safer possessions in that land of the Inquisition than the one he had made an attempt, in ignorance, to buy for his timidly cautious neighbour.

Indeed, with all his own honest courage shown on behalf of the orphaned and beggared young noble, the worthy merchant himself would not have cared to risk travelling with a copy of the Scriptures in his bales, unauthorized.

In those days the Bible was for the priests, as Ferdinand Columbus had said; and the priests took good care not to let the fountain of light out of their hidden keeping. They loved darkness to reign in the land rather than light, because their deeds were evil. But when the boy passed the book for a few minutes into Montoro's charge, as soon as they got on board, that he might the more readily go in search of his father, he was not again giving it into the hands of one so ignorant of its contents, nor to whom it was an affair of so much mystery.

One small, unsuspected portion of her inheritance had Rachel Philip saved from the rapacious grasp of the vile informer, Jerome Tivoli, the Italian. It consisted of three rolls of vellum closely written over in Hebrew characters, and when Don Philip's father became a Christian he did not declare his possession of these rolls; but, on the contrary, closely concealed them, lest he should be deprived of the pearl without price—the Word of God.

In a secresy that the more fully impressed the lessons upon his mind had Don Philip's father taught his son to read these rolls, and to write "in his mind and in his heart" God's law. In like manner had Don Philip, in his turn, taught his daughter; and in like manner had Rachel Diego taught her son to read those three rolls—the Pentateuch, the Psalms of David, and the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Through all her troubles of widowhood, wanderings, and poverty she had kept those books, and she still kept them, for she dared not risk her child's life with their transfer to him. But it mattered not, for their truths were imprinted in his soul, and his faith was a living faith, pure and free from superstition, being built upon the knowledge of God's own Word.

Many of those Jew converts who fell at the mandate of the Spanish Inquisition were the truest Christians, the most upright men, and the best citizens of their age, for they knew what they believed.

From his mother's secret teaching, and his own reading, the young Montoro had become wise unto salvation before the new career began that had been opened up for him by the merchant's benevolence; and when he stepped on board the world-renowned Admiral's ship it may be safely said that the young sweet-voiced, earnest-eyed lad was the mental superior of most of those with whom he was surrounded. He had now a great curiosity to see what might be the contents of the Christian parts of the Bible; and while he awaited his young companion's return, and was pushed with scant ceremony out of the way of the rough sailors, only to be hustled yet more imperiously aside by the penniless but haughty hidalgos who were setting out, as they fondly believed, on a royal road to fortune, he had the opportunity to gratify his desire.

Partly by others' driving, partly by his own good management, he at length got comfortably stowed away into a quiet corner, and there, dropping himself down on to a bale of goods, he carefully unclasped the great book, and turned towards the latter half.

He began to read at once the first words of the first page that opened beneath his eyes, for the disputes he had witnessed during the past few minutes between several of his self-asserting companions made them appear startlingly appropriate.

"And there was also a strife amongst them, which of them should be accounted the greatest."

Many a time did those words recur to his memory during the coming years, but just then, as he sat in his obscure corner in enforced quietude and inactivity, he read on and on with forgetfulness even of his novel position and commencing adventures, in his absorbing interest in a history then read and fully understood for the first time. We know the account of our Lord's agony, base betrayal, and awfully cruel death so well that we have not the faintest idea of how intensely it moved intelligent minds, who first quietly perused it for themselves in its own pathetic simplicity, unspoilt in its solemn appeal by any priestly shows or pageants.

Montoro Diego clenched his fists and his eyes flashed as he read of Peter's denial of his Lord and friend.

"Mean coward!" he muttered. And then his own eyes grew dim as he read how the slandered, insulted Son of man, the denied of his own chosen companion, "turned, and looked upon Peter." He seemed to feel his own being thrilled with the sad reproach, the tender compassion, and the full forgiveness of that look, and a smothered choking sob parted his own lips, as "Peter went out, and wept bitterly."

He read on undisturbed, until he suddenly, as it seemed to him, received an answer to many long-standing, half-formed questions in his mind, with the words:

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself."

That was the last of his reading for that day, and for many days to come.

Montoro's eyes were resting on the words—"And beginning at Moses," his lips were repeating a phrase that seemed for him to form the close connecting link between the religion given by God to his forefathers, and the crown of that religion as sealed by Jesus Christ, when energetic young Fernando found him out in his hiding-place. The younger boy pounced upon the volume instantly, with a half-indignant cry.

"Nay then, Diego, if that be thy name, I gave thee this volume of my father's to hold; there was no commission attached that thou shouldst read it, or even so much as venture to unclose the clasps. It is more than I have done, myself."

Montoro rose from his rough couch, and for all apology said with a long-drawn breath:

"I have found wonderful things therein."

Half-an-hour later it would have appeared that all memory of those wonderful things was lost. The anchors of the somewhat shabby little fleet of four vessels were being raised, and with flushed cheeks and eyes blazing with excitement Montoro Diego was making amends for ignorance by the most determined vigour and good-will. Such a little while ago he had been hustled on one side as a useless bit of goods, whose room was worth more than his company; but already his keen-sightedness and ready hands had reversed the judgments of those in his immediate neighbourhood in his favour.

The afternoon was wearing on, when a grave, kind voice addressed him:

"My son, I have been observing you. You have done well."

It was the Admiral himself who spoke, the grand old man who had attained to ever great heights of humility as he attained to greater fame, and who never held himself too high to see the worthy efforts of his humblest follower.

Montoro's handsome face grew brilliant with delight, and as he bent it gratefully in acknowledgment of the commendation, his heart seemed to rise to the possible achievement of deeds of hitherto unheard-of heroism. At that moment he little knew what those deeds would be; deeds not indeed wholly unmatched in the previous history of the world, but yet so rare that, not infidels, but, on the contrary, the most earnest believers in Christianity, are tempted sometimes to believe that their faith must be a fable, and those who proclaim its teachings must do so to tickle their hearers' ears, and as a pastime of the moment.

Having uttered his few words of encouraging praise, Columbus passed on, and Montoro, for whom there was no further employment for the moment, turned to lean over the side of the vessel, and watch the receding shores of his native land, the fast-diminishing lines of the harbour of Cadiz, and its throngs of traders from all nations. His mother was very present with him at that minute, and his mother's parting words:

"You, the unknown and disinherited noble of Aragon, son of a foully-slandered and slain father, are, in the world's eyes, nought. You, the boy Montoro de Diego, may be a hero, the winner of fresh glory for your name, the gainer of the highest honour from your fellow-men. The past is not your fault, the future may be your praise. Keep firm to God and the truth, and fear none."

That last injunction "to fear none" was indeed little needed in the sense in which the boy took it.

"I am not wont to fear," he said, with a touch of impatient pride, adding the next instant, as his eyes rested on his mother's gentle face, and with a mischievous smile, "I rather thought, my mother, that your counsels to me generally were against being overbold."

"That is true," was the reply, with a fleet answering smile. "But that is in matters concerning thyself, my son. Be ever backward in self-assertion, and ever fearless in the cause of justice, truth, and mercy. As thy father was, so I pray that his son may be."

"My father saith that he likes the look of thy face, and wills that we may be friends."

Such was the abrupt announcement of that courtly page and intrepid young adventurer, Fernando Columbus, breaking in upon Montoro's reverie, and joining him at his post by the vessel's side.

A third person stood there also for a minute,—a man with grey hair, and a form shrunken with old age,—and a tear rolled slowly down his furrowed cheek as he gazed for the last time at his country's strand.

Montoro's great eyes widened with questioning wonder at sight of the bowed old man, and when he withdrew he asked his companion, in low tones, what could have possibly induced one so infirm to set out upon such toilsome journeyings.

Ferdinand turned his head to look after the retreating figure, and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I suppose his inducement would be thought by many people a more sensible one than those of the rest of us, although, if we have anything of a rough voyage, I doubt he will be proved to have set out too tardily."

"Still, I hope for my part we shall not always have these smooth waters," impulsively exclaimed the inexperienced young sailor. "I want to see what a storm on the ocean is like. But that by the by. Just now I wish to know what is the inducement of that old hidalgo for leaving his own home, and the comforts he seems to need. Why do you think it is a sensible one?"

"Because," answered the younger boy more gravely, "gold without life is useless, and even glory without it is not much worth. And various of our nobles at the Court have come to the belief that the fountain of youth wastes its precious waters in some hitherto undiscovered region of this New World. The brave knight, Ponce de Leon, hath determined on an expedition to go in search of it; meantime yon wealthy Señor hopes to bribe the Indians to bestow upon him a draught of the precious water before it be too late. And my father though something doubtful of this thing, hath consented that Don Aguilar should have passage with us for the chance. He, himself, would far rather find the Holy Garden of Eden, which he tells me most surely is out yonder."

"At any rate," said one of the knightly adventurers who had now stepped up beside the two lads; "at any rate, Ferdinand, whether thy father finds the Garden or no, I trust that no flaming firebrands of the Indians will hinder him from finding, and traversing, that strait leading from this ocean into the Indian Sea, of which he seems to be so well assured. The finding of that passage will be wealth for all of us."

Unfortunately for the hopes of those days, that expected passage proved to be a land one, and is now called the Isthmus of Darien, which art, not nature, promises soon to convert into the realization of Columbus's belief.

[CHAPTER X.]

A JACK IN OFFICE.

It was the 29th of June. There was a hush on board the Admiral's ship. Yonder were visible the white low houses of San Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. Around the ship the sea lay still and grey, and the sails hung limp in the hot, heavy air.

A knot of men gathered close around a cabin, listening with lowering brows and compressed lips to bitter groaning, and sobbing cries, that were being wrung from one within, by his wounded soul. Well might the old and way-worn discoverer of mighty continents feel tempted at that moment to cry: "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?"

A storm was coming on; one of his four poor, shabby vessels—that on which his beloved brother Bartholomew held command—was in a shattered condition, and he had asked leave to take shelter in the harbour of the small island he had himself given to Spain, and Spaniards had refused him! What wonder that the noble and generous heart of the old Admiral was wrung to its very depths! What wonder that, as Montoro leant with Fernando against the cabin-door, the lad clenched his fists until the nails almost cut his palms, and muttered fiercely to his boy friend:

"Fernando, ask thy father's leave. There is not a man on board will refuse to turn our guns against those miscreants, though they were twenty times our countrymen. Only let him give the word, and he shall be speedily avenged."

"Ay, speedily," echoed two or three hoarse voices in the group, from those who had caught the tenor of Montoro's passionate request, and the Admiral's young son raised his eyes gratefully. His steadfast face was pale with emotion, his lips trembled. Even this weak testimony to his father was some comfort.

"I only wish," he exclaimed, struggling to speak with manly calm; "I only wish that, as you say, the Admiral would give the word that we should let our guns loose against the dastard hounds. We would soon teach them a lesson they should not easily forget."

"Nay then, young Señor, how about yon fleet?" asked one of the sailors significantly, pointing to a number of gay and gallant-looking ships at a short distance within the harbour. "Think you, Señor Ferdinand, that yon fleet would leave us alone if we took to avenging our insults by bombarding the town? And they are close upon twenty to one!"

"What of that?" hastily ejaculated Montoro, his cheeks still crimson with excitement. "God fights on the side of right and just—"

He stopped abruptly. The sounds of grief within the cabin had ceased during this short discussion, and at this instant the door opened, and a hand was laid on Montoro's shoulder, while the well-known slow, distinct voice said with grave earnestness:

"That is true, my son. The great Father fights on the side of right and justice. But He still better loves to espouse the cause of the merciful. Instead of seeking to destroy life let us rather try to save it, that with the measure we mete it may be measured to us again."

"That comes out of the great book I gave thee to hold the day we started," whispered Fernando to his companion, who nodded. It had been a favourite quotation of the benevolent old priest, Bartolo. Meantime Christopher Columbus proceeded to give proof that he spoke not with his lips only but from his heart.

The great fleet in the harbour of San Domingo was that which had brought out his superseder, Ovando, a few weeks since, and it was now in all the bustle of preparation for a speedy return to Spain with crowds of home-going adventurers, many ill-wishers to the just and virtuous discoverer, numbers of prisoners Spanish and native, and an immense amount of gold, pearls, and other treasures, well-nigh every ounce of which had cost a life.

On board this fleet were the Admiral's most bitter enemies; on board its grandest vessel was the narrow-minded, mean-spirited upstart, Bobadilla, who, to the ever-enduring disgrace of his own name and of his country, had dared to send the great seaman, the great thinker, the man of unbounded hopes, enthusiasm, courage, endurance, and magnanimity—the man who to Bobadilla was as a lion to a rat—had dared to send this giant hero home in chains like a vile malefactor but two years before, and had covetously grasped at his possessions, impudently installing himself in the house of his patient victim, and laying greedy hands upon his arms, gold, plate, jewels, horses, books, and even his letters and precious manuscripts.

Against that fleet, with all its proud sumptuousness contrasted with the miserable little squadron granted to Columbus, and against his base enemies on board, the company on board his own ship considered that he had a full right to feel the most vengeful wrath. It was not Montoro only who could scarcely believe his ears when, after the pause of a few moments following his sacred quotation—moments devoted to further keen, close scrutiny of those weather signs in which he was so deeply skilled—the Admiral summoned forward the crew of the boat that had just returned, and despatched them with a second message to the new governor Ovando, to entreat him to save the fleet from the certainly approaching storm, by a few days' delay of their departure.

"Better to leave them to meet their fate as they leave us," muttered Montoro, with the yet unconquered passion of his nature. But once again that firm touch came upon his shoulder. The Admiral's quick ears had caught the growl, low as it was.

"My son," he said quietly, "you shall go with my messengers. That will be a fitting rebuke for you, will it not," he added with a grave smile, "for uttering opinions contrary to those of your commander, and contrary to those of the Divine Ruler of the universe?"

Obeying a sudden impulse of veneration, Diego snatched the aged hand in his own, and pressed it to his lips. "I can never attain to your generosity, Señor," he murmured, "nor be thus forgiving to those wrongfully my enemies."

Just as the boat was starting, Ferdinand Columbus bent over the ship's side, and called mischievously:

"Diego, there, hark ye!"

"Ay, what is it then?" asked Montoro, as he lifted his head, resting on his oar the while. "What news hast thou since I left thee and the caravel?"

"Great news," was the mischievous answer. "My father gives me leave to tell thee that, since thou art doubtless feared by reason of the coming storm, he will obtain permission at least for such a whipper-snap as thou to abide on shore."

That quick, unmanageable spirit of Montoro's was set all ablaze for a moment at the supposed imputation of cowardice; and he was about to shout back an answer little in accordance with his late act of reverence, but Diego Mendez, the officer in command of the little embassy, hastily clapped his hand over the lad's mouth, as he said with a short laugh:

"Nay now, art thou not a very fool to be so taken in? Dost thou not see by thy tormentor's face that the brain of no Columbus but himself made up that message for thee?"

The friendly intervention was timely. When Fernando called down again—"Say then, dost accept the offer?"—his companion's face was brimming over with merriment like his own, as the retort was shouted up:

"Ha, Fernando, my good Señor, thou art but a sorry messenger. My absent ears have caught the purport of thy father's words better than thy present ones. The Admiral's message to me is, that since thou art feared, I must obtain a leave to land for thee. I bid thee, then, calm thy quaking heart, since I will not fail. Adios."

"And a slap o' the ear for thee when thou returnest," was the answering shout; and then the boat cast off, and was rowed with vigorous strokes to that once fertile, but already so dismal and desolated island of Hispaniola, the head-quarters of cruelty, lawlessness, suffering, and rapacity.

Montoro was very quickly to have a specimen of the deeds that had brought the island to its present wretched condition.

As the boat approached the strand, crowds of idlers gathered about, some to give the new-comers welcome, more to express their contemptuous dislike of the Admiral by covert sneers or openly-expressed scorn bestowed upon his followers.

There, flaunting in silks and brocades, which not even the proudest hidalgos dared any longer wear in Spain, stood half-a-dozen men, who had been loosed from richly-deserved felons' dungeons at home, to serve as colonists for the New World. Near them, reclining in a sumptuous litter, borne upon the bleeding shoulders of four of the meek-spirited and unhappy natives, was an ignorant, cunning rascal, whom Montoro had himself seen carried off to prison for theft in El Cuevo. Now he lay there in all the insolent dignity of riches, with a palm-leaf umbrella borne over his head by one slave, whilst another sickly-looking creature fanned him.

Closer to the edge of the soft-lapping waters was a real Spanish Don, whose poverty-stricken estate had driven him to hide his thread-bare pride in exile. To indemnify himself for leaving his beloved Castile, he spent his whole time and thoughts on the island in squeezing wealth, almost, as it seemed, even out of its very stones. His slaves died off day by day, very nearly as soon as they were allotted to him; but that was nought to their owner, so long as with the remnants of their dying strength they reaped his harvests, and brought up gold for him from the mines. They were to him as machines for making riches; and when one of the machines wore out, it must be tossed aside to make room for another.

But with all Don Alfonzo's heartless barbarities to his miserable victims, he had a warm corner in his callous heart for his own countrymen, whoever they might be. All Spaniards were friends to Don Alfonzo, while the ocean lay between him and his home. He watched the progress of the incoming boat with eyes almost as eager as those with which, week by week, he counted his golden gains; and when, from the shallowness of the water, the rowers had to stop some way short of dry ground, he looked round hastily for some one whom he could order off for their assistance. None of his own people were in sight, but a weak, wan-faced Indian lay beside him, and him the nobleman immediately commanded to rise, and go into the water to help drag up the boat.

With a moan the poor creature began to obey, but too slowly to suit the despotic impatience of the Spaniard.

"Hurry thy lazy carcase, then, thou black-skinned dog," he exclaimed imperiously; and to enforce his words he raised a bamboo cane he held, and brought it down with a fierce swish through the air, which told its own tale of what its effect should be if it came in contact with the native's tender flesh. As the cane rose the Indian crouched with a low, pitiful cry, which was echoed with an added note of indignation by Montoro from the boat.

The next moment Montoro sprang to his feet with a second cry of impulsive admiration. The stinging slash of that bamboo cane had come down upon the arm of a young Spaniard, who had stretched it out as a cover for the helpless Indian; and then, when the arm had performed its allotted task, it was quietly withdrawn, terribly cut as it must have been, and folded over its owner's chest, who as quietly turned and confronted Don Alfonzo.

"It is the command of our Sovereign, Queen Isabella," he said firmly, "that the Indians be treated with humanity, and according to law."

"Who is that?" asked Montoro, as he sprang on to the sandy shore, and pointed out the young man who had made his arm serve so readily for another man's shield.

Shyness was never one of Montoro Diego's failings; and now curiosity and a generous admiration made him put his question eagerly to the first person he came up to. All he got at first was a return question to match his own, a good-humoured:

"And pray, then, who are you? If you're come to work you are welcome; if you have come to make others work, you may as well be off again, for there are more than enough of that sort here already."

"I am going off again," replied Diego laughing. "I have not come to stay; not just yet, at least. But do tell me who that young Señor is."

"Well, he's a crack-brained young Señor, to begin with," was the reply, with a shrug of the shoulders. "His name is Bartholomew Las Casas, and he's only been out here a few weeks. He came out with Ovando. His father came out here before, with the Admiral himself."

Montoro grew still more interested.

"But why do you call him crack-brained?"

"Because he is crack-brained. Crazy as he can be about what he calls the wrongs of the black rascals out here. His father took one over for him to have as his own in Spain, five or six years ago, and comfortable enough the fellow was with such a soft-hearted master. Then comes the royal order that there are to be no more of these Indian slaves in Spain; that they are not cruelly to be kept from their own country, and they are forthwith all packed back again, to be grabbed at as fast as they arrive, and worked to quick deaths in the mines. Meantime, our young Señor Las Casas has been taught to think a whole host of nonsense about their miseries, and his duties of relieving them. If he uses his arms as their covers in his fashion just now he'll pretty soon need some one to relieve him.”

"Ay, verily," murmured Montoro musingly as he turned away from his informant and rejoined his companions. The history of his own family's wrongs had made him more keenly alive to the wrongs of others. He had a generous feeling of envy that it had been the arm of the young Las Casas, and not his own, that had taken the blow for the Indian. But, as the great American poet says,

"A boy's will is the wind's will."

Before half-an-hour had passed Montoro's will had veered round once more—from a desire to relieve injuries to a desire to inflict them. For humanity's sake Columbus had sent urgent warnings and entreaties that the departure of the fleet might be delayed a few days, to avoid the coming storm. And for his charity he received contempt. The Governor and his counsellors looked at the quiet sky, the calm sea, they felt the soft breeze on their cheeks, and the contemptuous answer was sent back:

"In this year of grace dreamers of dreams are out of fashion."

"When I see the Admiral's letters patent as the authorized reader of the heavens, and the interpreter of its signs," said the Governor haughtily, "doubtless he will find me an obedient pupil. Meantime I prefer instruction when I ask for it."

"He and all the rest of them deserve to be drowned if they are not," said Diego Mendez indignantly, as he returned with his party to the boat, and put back to the ship.

Montoro's thoughts flew back to the cannon on board. He felt just then as if nothing on earth would so well satisfy him as to see them pointed at the Governor's house, to see their flash, to hear their roar, and to witness the wholesale destruction they could cause.

"Why was there no young Las Casas to avenge this insult to the Admiral?"

But there was One mightier than Las Casas to do that, One whose artillery was mightier than the cannon in which Montoro put such confidence. Two days passed, and then the tropical storm burst in all its fury. To such poor, unforbidden shelter as he could find the Admiral had guided his battered little squadron, and there he and his followers waited, and watched the gathering gloom of earth and sea and air and sky; and well it might seem to some of those watchers that a spirit of retributive wrath was brooding over the scene of cruelty, treachery, and insolence.

"It will require all their seamanship to ride out the coming hurricane," said the pilot, Antonio de Alaminos, on the second day, as he regarded somewhat dubiously their own quarters.

And Diego Mendez answered moodily:

"I should heave no sigh if they and their ill-gotten wealth went to the bottom of the deep before mine eyes; but I do grieve to have heard that on the craziest of their barques they are carrying home the Admiral's gold, the poor remnant of his rents they have permitted him."

"Never have care for that, Señor," said the young Fernando earnestly. "It is my father's, and it will be kept safe for him."

"It is as well that thou canst console thyself with that belief, any way," muttered the man, as the boy went off to where Columbus was already issuing orders, needed by the sudden wild gusts of wind that came as forerunners of the tempest.

Then came the wild roar and whirl, and darkness made more awful by the fiery flashes that momentarily illumined the terrors of the scene. On land trees uprooted, houses flung into ruins as though made by children's hands of cards, the fields of maize changed as in an instant from fields of gold to grey, scorched deserts. Living beings struck at a breath into corpses; others crushed in the downfall of their homes. And at sea those four poor cranky vessels, which were all a great country could afford its great benefactor, tossing and toiling in the boiling sea.

Now the waters would seethe as though some hideous cauldron, prepared by evil spirits for some demon feast, and the doomed vessels shook through every plank and spar as though with living horror. And then, with a sudden shock the waters would rush together, and mount wildly into mountain waves crowned with crests of foam.

The ships lost sight of each other. Sailors and adventurers all gave themselves up for death. In a delirium of fear they confessed their sins to whoever would heed the dismal catalogue. Ave Marias, invocations of the saints, and such fragments of Scripture as they knew, were groaned forth on all sides, rather as invocations than prayers, as the days went by, and still the furious battle of nature raged.

The fellow to that storm not even the veteran navigator of all seas had experienced before. At times during the blackness of the night it would seem to the affrighted mariners as though hell itself had opened its jaws to swallow them. Making a pathway for themselves through the darkness, the raging billows would suddenly rush onwards brilliant with light, and surround the ship and its awe-struck occupants with a sea of flame. For a day and night the heavens glowed as a furnace; and the reverberating peals of thunder sounded to the distracted sailors as the last despairing cries from the other ships of their sinking comrades. What was becoming of the wretched, foolhardy creatures on board Ovando's proud fleet they had no longer care to think. Drenched with the ceaseless sheet of rain, which poured down day and night throughout that long week of storm continually, exhausted with toil, worn with fears, Columbus and his company were to be still further tried by the majestic terrors of those southern seas.

Wildly tossed as was the whole ocean, it suddenly became observed, with deepening dread, that in one spot the agitation was still redoubled. Even as they looked the waters reared themselves higher and yet higher, grim and terrible as a giant pillar of molten lead; while a livid cloud bent down from the heavens to meet it. Thus joining, and ever gathering fresh size and force as it sucked up the waves in its headlong course, the dreadful column rushed on towards the ships.

The Admiral came forth from his cabin with the iron-clasped Bible open in his hands, to exorcise the evil spirit abroad for their destruction. Men hardened in callousness fell on their knees in silent prayer. Antonio de Alaminos stood gazing with fixed eyes at the invincible enemy. His skill and knowledge were powerless in the presence of that foe. As he stood there waiting for the end he was startled by a voice beside him so clear, so calm, that it was distinct even in the midst of that wild tumult.

"Alaminos, thinkest thou that we shall live through the storm?"

Starting, the pilot turned his gaze for a moment from the advancing column, and exclaimed:

"Montoro! boy, hast thou no fears?"

"None," was the low, soft answer of his lips. "None," was the answer of his rapt, earnest eyes, full of a beautiful awe and reverence. "He holds the storm in His hand, and us."

Even as the boy spoke the vessel swerved, the waterspout passed on beside it, and they were safe.

"The Admiral's Bible has saved us," exclaimed the mariners, as wild with joy as they had been with fear.

Alaminos, the pilot, looked at Montoro de Diego, and said nothing. For the first time in his life the thought had stolen into his mind whether the faith to be learnt from the teaching of the Bible might not be a more precious thing than even its print and paper.

The force of the long-protracted tempest was at length spent; the sea subsided, and Columbus's scattered caravals, none of them lost, gathered together again to offer thanks to God for their preservation, and to seek the shelter and refreshment no longer denied them, in the ports of Hispaniola.

The storm had passed, but it had left behind it sorrow and shame and gloom on the countenances of Ovando the Governor, and those about him. The gay, grand fleet, despatched against the Admiral's advice, was lost, with all those many hundreds of souls on board, and all that wealth. The Admiral's enemies had perished; Bobadilla, the mutinous Roldan, and many another. Those gallant ships were gone. Only that poor, mean, weak little barque, inferior to all its consorts, that had been thought good enough to carry the Admiral's grudged revenue, that lived through the storm, and took its little treasure safe into the Spanish port.

"It is my father's; I told you that God would guard it," said Fernando Colon, some months later, when the strange, good news of that survivor reached his ears.

[CHAPTER XI.]

THE FIRST FIND.

Great storms are very terrible, and weeks of drenching rains, Montoro de Diego, and his friend Ferdinand Columbus, had time to discover, were most disagreeable accompaniments to travels whether by water or land. As for poor Don Aguilar, the hardships of the way killed him, as Fernando Colon had foreseen, before he had a chance to purchase a draught from that dreamt-of fountain of youth. And long-continued dismal weather very nearly also killed the courage at least of most of the old hidalgo's companions.

After that first great storm, a few days were passed at Port Hermosa, to refresh the crews, and repair the caravels, and then Columbus started forth again to find the wished-for, but non-existent, strait through the Isthmus of Darien. Having spent about five months in this fruitless search he gave it up, greatly to the delight of the whole of his companions. They were much more anxious after what they considered the infinitely superior quest for the gold mines of Veragua, distant about thirty leagues from Porto Bello.

What with cross currents, however, contrary winds, and bad weather, those thirty leagues took nearly a month in the traversing, and it was not until the day of the Epiphany, 1503, that the Admiral reached the mouth of a river, to which he gave the name of Belen, or Bethlehem. In the immediate neighbourhood of this river was the country said to be so rich in the precious mineral that Columbus felt convinced that, as further discoveries would find the Garden of Paradise in the new-found world, so also he was on the borders of that land of Ophir whence king Solomon had drawn his stores of the valued treasure. Meanwhile, every one but himself, and his son Ferdinand, was very eager to get similar treasure for his own purse, and so soundings somewhat less cautious than usual were taken, the four caravels crossed the bar at the mouth of the river Belen, now swollen by past months of rain, sailed some little distance up it, and there cast anchor for a season of exploration.

Montoro was as wild with eager excitement and delight as any one, when he obtained leave to go with the first boats sent on shore.

"Do you then, too, care so much for gold?" asked his friend Fernando, in a disappointed tone, as he saw his companion's glowing face. "I had not thought it of thee."

"Nor need now," was the quick answer. "I go not to hunt for gold, but glory. My father's wealth they robbed him of. The glory he won on the walls of Alhama will cling as long as time shall last to the name of Don Montoro de Diego. Such glory, and not gold, would I win also."

"Nobly spoken, my lad of the quick temper," said Señor Diego Mendez, in smiling allusion to the time when he had hindered hasty words by putting his hand over the boy's mouth. Since that day Diego Mendez had many times taken note of his young companion. Neither Montoro's ability, courage, wit, nor readiness were lost upon him, and the occasion was soon to come now when he was to show his appreciation of them.

As the boats' crews stepped on shore, one or two of the eager seekers after fortune gathered up handfuls of the glistening sand, eyeing it sharply, as they did so, in such a way that Diego Mendez exclaimed with a laugh:

"Why now, comrades, would it not be well, think you, just to set to work, and shovel the shore pell-mell into the boats, and carry it off at once to Spain? Of course you'd be rich then, no doubt, without further trouble."

"Well, we've had enough of that, at any rate, already, to deserve some pay," grumbled one, while a couple of others sulkily enough dropped their glittering burden to avoid further ridicule.

"How pretty it is though," exclaimed Montoro, who stood watching the wet grains as they fell shining in the sunlight. "And here is some more up here!" he cried in astonishment half-an-hour later, suddenly stopping short from his companions, in their progress through the forest, and dropping on his knees beneath a tree.

"Some more what?" asked half-a-dozen voices at once, as their owners crowded round in amazed watching of their young comrade, who was most busily grubbing away at the tree's roots.

"Ay, indeed, some more what?" repeated the Adelantado, in equal surprise. "What is it that you have found?"

"Why some more of that shining sand," was the ready reply. "And of course it is nothing worth really, only that it is somewhat strange, methinks, to find it up here so far from the sea wet and shining."

"Strange! ay, strange indeed," echoed Diego Mendez, now quickly pressing through to his namesake's side. "Passing strange, my lad, if it be indeed, as you say, shining because, this dry, hot day, it lies there wet. But—is it so?"

Just as that question was put Montoro raised his stooping face with almost a startled glance at the questioner. He had told Fernando, and told him truly, that it was glory, not gold, that he desired. Still treasure meant power to return to his mother, power to give her comfort, power perhaps to win back his ancestral home. And he knew now that his hand was full, not of grains of sand, shining because they were wet; but of grains of gold, shining with their own lustre.

"No," he breathed, for a moment awed by his discovery. "No, my Señor, this is no sand heavy with the spray of sea waves. This is the treasure you are seeking."

Montoro's find put a stop to all further explorations for that day, excepting explorations about those roots. The entire party fell into a state that might, far more literally than usual, be termed one of 'money-grubbing' excitement. More diligently than the greediest pigs ever grubbed for a feast round about oak trees or beeches, or Spanish pigs grub for truffles, did those Spanish gentlemen grub with fingers and nails round about the trees of that wild American forest.

Montoro put a crown to the triumphs of his keen-sighted eyes by finding quite a fair-sized little lump of gold at the edge of a streamlet, which he put by carefully for Fernando; and then he employed himself in gathering a supply of the abundant fruits to carry back to the ship for the general benefit.

"Nay then," said Antonio de Alaminos, gratefully accepting a bunch of bananas, "but these are worth all the gold that was ever found or fought over, my lad. Our God gives us these as loving gifts. I sometimes think that He has given us gold as He gave the forbidden fruit—to try us."

Montoro raised his eyes for an instant and then lowered them again, as he murmured:

"Often hath my mother said that there are many things more worth."

"Truly are there," was the assent. "But hark!" he added in a louder tone and more quickly, "here is the Admiral. He is calling for us."

The summons was an important one. So satisfactory were the accounts brought back of the country, not only as regarded the promise of gold, but as to its general appearance of fertility and beauty, that the Admiral forthwith resolved upon the establishment of a colony.

"You think not," he demanded as Montoro and the pilot drew near; "you think not, Mendez, that it is the finding of this glittering dust only, that hath dazzled your eyes with respect to the virtues of the land?"

Mendez was about to reply with due gravity when his friend, Rodrigo de Escobar, broke in boldly, exclaiming:

"Nay then, as the Jewish spies said of old so can we say now, that it is a goodly land and a pleasant; and if it overfloweth not with milk and honey, neither is it inhabited with a people akin to the Anakim; and it has at least the grapes of Eshcol, and many a pleasant thing besides."

The Admiral smiled gravely.

"All which meaneth, I take it, Señor Rodrigo, that whosoever else believeth thy report, thou believest it thyself."

De Escobar bowed, while one beside Montoro muttered with a low laugh:

"Most assuredly friend Rodrigo would believe everything favourable of a land that flowed with that best of all sweet golden honey, the real gold itself, even though all else were desert."

"And small blame to him," retorted Tristan, captain of one of the other caravels, who had just come on board to hear the news. "Señor de Escobar is much of my own way of thinking—that life united with poverty is but a poor sort of an affair, not worth the trouble of the guardianship."

This being the general opinion, and a very slight amount of questioning eliciting the universal adhesion to Rodrigo's proposition, that a land where gold was to be gathered, even about the roots of the trees, was a good land to stay in, it was not difficult to obtain volunteers for the new colony.

Besides, even for those who were not so madly eager for gold Veragua had many attractions, seeing that the land abounded in rich fruits, the water in fish, the soil was fertile, and the Cacique and his people friendly.

"And what more can you want?" said Amerigo Vespucci decisively.

"What more can any men want?" said another, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Especially men like us, who have had for these weeks past to munch our biscuit in the dark, lest our stomachs should turn at seeing how many and how fat were the other eaters we were obliged also to devour."

"Bah!" ejaculated De Escobar, as he flung over a morsel of the said biscuit at the same time into the water. "It is too abominable of thee, Tristan, thus to remind a hungry wretch of the foul nature of his food. For thy barbarity thou shalt owe me thy first—"

"Nay, Señor," interposed Montoro Diego out of the dusk; "here is somewhat to make amends for thy lost supper. These great nuts have hard outsides; but within they are better than our little ones of Spain."

[CHAPTER XII.]

SURGEON TO THE REDSKINS.

Colonists for the proposed new settlement having proved so easily forthcoming, the next step in the business was to provide them habitations, and shelter of some sort for the needful stores. Accordingly the next morning, almost as soon as it was light, a number of men were sent on shore, as builders of the first European town to be founded on the mainland of America. Bartholomew Columbus went with them to choose a site for the place of which he was to be the Governor; and amongst the number of his companions were Diego Mendez, Diego's special comrade Rodrigo de Escobar, and of course Montoro.

"I cannot get on at all without my sharp-eyed namesake," said the notary good-naturedly, when he pleaded with the Admiral for Montoro's company. And thus, some little it must be confessed to Ferdinand's vexation, Montoro was once more of the land-going party, proving of as much service on this occasion as on the last, although the results were not so immediately apparent.

Cutting timber, clearing ground of a troublesomely-luxuriant vegetation, and driving stakes, had progressed for some time merrily enough, to the evident wonder and interest of an ever-increasing crowd of natives, men, women, and children, when Diego Mendez, looking about him for a help in a hard piece of work, discovered Montoro some couple of hundred yards or so distant from the building-ground, and apparently engaged in a very private and earnest conversation with a couple of native women, and three or four children.

"What, in the name of St. Jago, is the lad after now?" he exclaimed rather irritably, for he had got his fingers pinched in a split bamboo he had wanted his protégé to help him in sundering, and small annoyances were more trying to these brave Spaniards than great disasters. "Montoro," he shouted, "Montoro, you come here, can't you!"

Montoro was back like an arrow.

"Ay, Señor Mendez; what would you with me?"

"What would I?" was the hasty answer. "Why everything; all manner of things. But thou'rt such a fellow! Thou'rt never at hand when needed. At least,"—still growling, but with a grim dawning accent of compunction for injustice,—"at least not always. Here thou'st left me to well-nigh lose the half of my hand, while thou'st been trying to wheedle gold mine secrets out of those poor fools yonder, with that soft tongue of thine."

"No such thing," exclaimed Rodrigo de Escobar with his usual volubility, before Montoro could answer for himself. "You are mistaken, Mendez. Had the lad been using a soft tongue so usefully his absence might be the more readily forgiven him. But it is a stupid soft heart that deserves the blame this time. Because gold-seeker, discoverer, navigator, builder, and half-a-dozen other things are not trades enough for the young jackanapes to take to at once, he must needs be taking a turn now at surgery."

"Nay then, Rodrigo," said his friend incredulously, and looking alternately from the laughing accuser to the half-troubled accused. The face of neither tended in any way to relieve the notary's curiosity. "Speak out, man," he said at last. "With what is it that you charge the lad?"

"With what I say," replied de Escobar with another laugh. "With playing the surgeon unauthorized, Children and monkeys are all alike—they must needs imitate what they see others doing; and consequently, one of those monkey-children yonder got hold of my hammer awhile since, and of course contrived to hammer its own fingers pretty sharply."

"Terribly!" broke in Montoro impulsively, forgetting his temporary shyness in the recollection of his pity. "The poor little creature, my señor, has hammered his fingers perfectly black, and the poor ignorant mother could only cry over it, and do nothing; and so—and so—"

And so, and so Montoro Diego once more grew shy as his own part in the business drew to the fore, and came to a stammering conclusion, and Diego Mendez with a smile took up the tale.

"And so, and so then, my friend, I suppose you do really confess that Don Rodrigo de Escobar has laid only true things to your charge, and that you have thought, by adding your ignorance to the woman's ignorance, to make one wisdom. Hey, my modest young friend, then is it so?"

Montoro looked up now, with flushed cheeks it is true, but with some returning boldness also, as he replied sturdily—

"My ignorance, at any rate, my señor, has had this good result—that the child no longer cries. But if you would spare me yet another five minutes, I would fain return to him, just to make my bandages more secure than I left them in my haste upon your call."

"Come then, have your way," said his new patron good-humouredly. "I confess I am not a little curious to see what sort of surgery you have evolved from that daring head of yours, and whether it be not a gag in the squaller's mouth that has produced this peacefulness."

But there was no gag in the small redskin's smiling mouth, neither, assuredly, was there one in the mouth of the small redskin's mother, who poured forth a perfect torrent of incomprehensible words as she alternately kissed Montoro's feet and her child's injured hand, or rather the great bundle of wet leaf-poultice in which it was most scientifically enveloped.

"Umph!" muttered Diego Mendez, as he looked at the bound-up limb and the grateful mother. "And pray how hast thou come by thy skill, my friend? Is St. Luke thy patron saint, and has he instructed thee?"

"My mother has been my teacher," was the quiet answer. "And she had much learning of many various uses to mankind, from her father."

The notary cast a keen glance of sudden intelligence at his companion, and then said slowly—

"Ah, now thou hast let me into a secret as to thy birth that I had partly guessed at before. Now I know from what race thou hast drawn much of thine intelligence, and the bookishness that hath ofttimes surprised me. But hark ye, lad, for I have a kindness for thee. Tell to none others of our companions what thou hast thus told to me; for remember, Spain has decreed just now that she will have no dealings, save those of the fire and the rack, with the great race that is too wise for bigotry to let it live. And the favour thou art sure to win, and the good fortune, will make men but too ready to use ill tales against thee. But now—leave thy patient, and let us back to our building again, for the day wears fast."

So saying, he turned his steps back towards the rising settlement; and when Montoro had managed with some difficulty to disengage himself from the thankful woman, he followed his patron, the native child clinging to him with his sound hand, and contriving to make his short legs keep up with his companion's long ones.

A general laugh greeted the truant when he returned thus accompanied; but Montoro tossed up his handsome young head very independently as he shouted—

"Laugh as you may please, my señors; but when you desire a guide and an interpreter, do not then think to borrow mine."

"Ah! ha!" exclaimed Diego Mendez, not at all displeased at his protégé's readiness. "My friends, methinks the lad hath had the best of it; and we were wise not to provoke him to register a vow to keep his useful new acquaintances to himself."

"If he did," muttered Rodrigo, "there would but need to draw a long and doleful face to make him break it. For no oath's sake would he ever be got to cut off a John Baptist's head."

"I'll cut off thine, though," grumbled Juan de Alba, "if thou keepest not those bamboo points to thyself, instead of using them to pierce mine eyes. Thou art a clumsy carpenter, in very deed, as ever I saw."

"And I rejoice that thou shouldst have to say so," retorted the other. "The fingers of Rodrigo de Escobar scorn this servile work."

"Do they also scorn to peel bananas?" asked the Adelantado, coming up with a great ripe bunch at an opportune moment to stop a squabble from growing into a quarrel. He had enough to do to keep the peace among his gang of noble workmen.

[CHAPTER XIII.]

FOR LIFE OR DEATH.

For some few days the work of building progressed merrily enough. The seemingly ubiquitous Montoro Diego, with his beautiful voice, his bright eyes, and his untiring activity, inspired the whole party with a portion of his own spirit; and his grateful native friend, the mother of his small patient, proved of the greatest comfort to the new colonists by keeping them plentifully supplied with fruit, fish, birds, and food cooked after the native fashion, but very acceptable to men who had lived hardly too long to be fastidious. Besides, they were very desirous of sparing as much as possible their own small remaining stores of biscuit, cheese, wine, oil, and vinegar, of which the Admiral could only leave so small a quantity for the civilized provision of the colony.

At the outset of the new undertaking, others besides the mother of the child had shown most hospitable alacrity in bringing gifts for the white strangers' larder; but by degrees these gifts ceased, and at last, whilst all the others of the Spaniards still looked gay enough, Montoro's face began to grow very grave. He still had many good things brought to him, but he noticed that they began to be brought with an air of secresy, and at last the poor creature proved her gratitude by giving him signs as plainly as she dared, that Quibian, the Cacique of Veragua, was not altogether so friendly as he seemed.

"It was not his own gold mines, but those of a dreaded neighbour chief, that he had pointed out to the Spaniards on their first arrival," she declared; "and now he was noting with jealous eyes, and an angry heart, the preparations of the white strangers for taking up their abode on his territories."

Poor Cacique! Had he known the dismal fate that was so speedily to overwhelm him and all he cherished, his jealousy and wrath must have burnt with a fierceness to consume his heart. But for the moment the Spaniards were but a handful of men in an unknown and populous country; moreover, the water in the river had fallen, dry weather had set in, and threatened to continue, the bar at the river's mouth was visible at low tide, and the ships were shut in beyond the possibility of present escape. It behoved the Admiral and his band of followers to be careful, and each individual felt it incumbent on him personally to watch for the safety of all; even to sleep, as the saying is, like a dog with one eye open.

Under these circumstances it is little wonder that Mendez noticed with some uneasiness the unusual gravity of Montoro's face one morning, after a short interview with his Indian patient, and the child's mother.

"Hey, then, master Long-face" he exclaimed, with half-affected gaiety, "say, what treason is it thou hast been concocting with thy dark friend yonder? Hath she been offering thee the kingdom of the Cacique Quibian, if thou wilt engage to share the throne with her?"

Montoro threw back his head for an instant haughtily. Boy as he was, he did not like such jests. But he too much admired Diego Mendez for his anger against him to be long-lived. Besides, he had a weight upon his mind of which he desired to unburden himself. After the momentary pause, he said hastily—

"The woman's communication, Señor Mendez, had no reference to me further than as I am one of us. But if I at all rightly comprehend her signs, this Quibian, the Cacique of Veragua, under his smoothness to us has designs of the deepest treachery. Even now I believe that we are being surrounded on all sides by his warriors."

Señor Mendez stroked his chin thoughtfully. To say truth, he was deeply startled by the suspicion thus presented to him; but he was a Spaniard, and therefore chary of displays of any other emotion than that of pride. Moreover, he was a notary by profession, and had thus learnt caution: to hear all he could, to see all he could, to think much, and to say little.

His meditations were undisturbed by Montoro. At last he took the boy by the arm, leading him farther away from their companions before he said quietly—

"You have done well, my namesake, in bringing your tale to me. Let it rest there for the present, and see that you show the woman no great belief of her news, and no shadow even of a fear."

"But—" began Montoro eagerly, and then he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.

His companion looked at him doubtfully.

"Well, Diego, 'but' what? Wouldst say thy fears are too strong to be dissembled?"

"Even so," was the startling answer, with flushed cheeks, but with such a bold, brave look in the uplifted eyes that the unexpected reply was still more bewildering.

"Nay, then; thou art audacious enough in confessing cowardice," ejaculated the notary, with eyes so widening with wonder that they seemed to monopolize his face.

Just a flash of a smile shot across Montoro's face at having for once thus overbalanced the self-possession of the shrewd man of business. But he replied almost in the same moment—

"In truth, Señor, I can afford to be bold in confessing to these fears, seeing that they are not for myself, but for others, and for the honour of our expedition. Verily I think that it would break our great Admiral's heart, should terrible mischance happen to us who are with him now in his neglected, sorely-tried old age. And that must not be."

"And how then do you purpose to prevent it?" asked Mendez, once more the cool, self-contained notary. "Do you propose to call out the Cacique to prove his honourable intentions by single combat, after our own Spain's knightly fashion?"

"Would that it were possible!" was the reply with kindling eyes. "But no, Señor, my meaning is more simple. I have told you my fears. But if you mean to treat them as idle fancies, or to stand by to see what comes of them, I shall forthwith carry them to the Admiral himself."

"Umph!" said Diego Mendez deliberately, "you would so, would you? And you would do well. But hark ye, youngster—I neither intend to treat you nor your tale as nought, so with that assurance rest thee satisfied a while. I too have noted somewhat of late, upon which your news throws fresh light. But be wary. Tell no one what you have told to me, and show no sign of trouble."

Convinced at last that his warning was received as seriously as he desired, Montoro returned to his task amongst the amateur house-builders, and displayed considerable ingenuity as a constructor of neat roofs out of palm leaves. His alacrity at his work was the more cheerful when, from his position on the hill above the mouth of the river, he saw the accountant for the new settlement put off in one of the boats to return to the Admiral's ship. This happened within half-an-hour of their conversation on the native woman's intelligence, and increased Montoro's good opinion of his own wisdom in choosing Señor Mendez as the recipient of his confidence. Cautious as he was, he could evidently act quickly enough in an emergency. In a short time he was rowing rapidly back to the building-ground, bringing half-a-dozen fully-armed men with him, and making signs to Montoro to meet him on the shore.

Down went tools and palm leaves, down from the roof with a bound sprang the tiler, and a minute later a second flying leap had carried him into the boat beside Diego Mendez. A few rapid words were exchanged between the two, and then the notary said gravely—

"Well, I have made you the offer of coming with me by the Admiral's consent; but remember, our undertaking is one of life and death."

"I understand," was the quiet answer. "But if we die, our deaths will be a sign to all these others to prepare for defence; if we live we shall at any rate have discovered the nature of our danger. I go with you gladly."

And of that latter fact his earnest, animated countenance gave abundant evidence as they proceeded on their perilous enterprise. Passing from the river Belen, they rowed along the sea-coast until they reached the Veragua, at which point the real peril of their enterprise began, and the first proof was obtained of the woman's veracity.

There upon the shore, within a few yards of them, was a great encampment of the Indians, the warriors of their tribe, and fully armed. The number of the Spaniards was eight, the number of the Indians more than as many hundreds. For one moment the Europeans rested on their oars in silence. It was no preconcerted act, but one of involuntary homage paid by all things living, however daring, when brought face to face with imminent death.

The half-whimsical, unbidden thought darted through Montoro's brain that his mother had declared she should never see him again on earth, and so she could not reasonably feel hurt if her words came true. What unconnected thoughts flashed for that same supreme instant through the mind of Diego Mendez none can say. It had scarcely passed when he sprang into the shallow water, walked on shore, and with an air of the most dignified composure advanced alone into the very midst of the great fierce gathering.

Utterly overawed by the white man's astounding temerity, the Indians fell back, with wonder and irresolution depicted on their countenances. They answered questions with trepidation.

"Yes; they were on the war-path. Their Cacique had enemies in the neighbourhood."

"Ah!" replied Diego Mendez with cool courtesy, "then our coming is well-timed. In return for your Cacique's attentions to us we will now aid his arms against his foes. We will accompany you on your expedition."

"Not so," was the Indian chiefs angry reply. "We are strong enough to fight our own battles; we seek no help. Only leave us: that is all we desire."

By manifold signs his followers equally betrayed their impatience to be rid of the new-comers, and strenuously declined to have anything to do with the boat, or its crew. Seating himself in the small barque with his face toward the Indian camp, and closely wrapped in his cloak, Diego Mendez calmly sat, hour after hour, and watched the dusky warriors.

The day waned; the short twilight drew on. One of the occupants of the boat began to feel his courage cooling under this tedious inaction, and he ventured to mutter somewhat anxiously—

"The night is coming, Señor Mendez. We shall be wholly at their mercy in the darkness."

"Even so, Juan," was the calm answer; "and yet we must remain. We set out with no thought of going in search of child's play. It is our lives or the expedition."

And so they sat on in that boat, watching and watched, and the night fell. Easily could the Indians have slain them all, but they were afraid. The spirits of a thousand warriors were quelled by one man's fearlessness. And as the blackness of night began to fade away into pale dawn, the chief and his army faded from the scene—stole back to Veragua stupefied and conquered. Moral power had won its strange, bloodless victory. Then the watchers in the boat roused up, took their oars again, and returned with their news to the ships.

"And thus the woman's truth is proved," said Montoro eagerly.

But his convictions were something lessened when the Admiral said slowly—

"You are more sure than I, my son. That you saw an army of the natives I fully believe. But that they had any purpose to attack us I strongly doubt. Quibian has given many proofs of his friendly feelings towards us. And even to-day he has sent us a plentiful supply of fish, and game, and cocoa-nuts, maize, bananas, and pine-apples."

"And even to-day," interrupted Mendez with unusual heat, "even to-day, Señor, the Cacique Quibian is meditating our massacre. Give me but this cool-headed boy to go with me, and we will penetrate to the very head-quarters of his people, to his very residence itself, and learn the truth so fully that you shall no longer be able to doubt our testimony."

There was a pause. The veteran navigator gazed with keen eyes at his two excited companions, and at length said slowly—

"I send you not on so perilous a quest, but you may go."

The faces of his hearers lighted up as though he had endowed them with some new-found gold mines, and with a hasty farewell from Montoro to his half-jealous friend Fernando, the two companions were rowed back again to land, and at once set out alone on their desperate expedition.

For nearly an hour they walked on rapidly side by side in silence. At last Montoro asked doubtfully,—

"Why keep we thus to the seaboard, Señor? Surely we have learnt that the residence of the Cacique is far away up yonder, beyond the forest. We should be turning inland if we wish to reach it."

Mendez turned his shrewd face towards his questioner with a slight smile.

"Ah, my friend, thou art bold and brave beyond thy years, and ready, to boot; but thou hast not yet quite an old head on thy shoulders, I perceive. If our foes are watching for our destruction as we suppose, how long thinkest thou, I and thou should live, bewildered, trapped, and helpless, in yonder jungle? No, we will keep to the shore till we reach the Veragua, and then we will follow the Veragua till it leads us to this Cacique's village, and his own abode. Light, and a clear space, are valuable to us just now."

Diego Mendez was willing to sacrifice his life freely for the general good, but he had no idea of wasting it. Montoro did not wish to waste his either, but to his impetuous nature this winding round, instead of making a straight dash, was becoming very tedious, when they at length reached the river's mouth, and at the same time came upon two canoes and a party of native fishermen. Whether subjects of Quibian or of his rival, the Spaniards could not ascertain, but whoever they were, they showed themselves so kind and hospitable that the tired and footsore pedestrians made signs to be taken into the canoes, when they were about to set out on their return voyage up the river.

Making sure of consent, the notary went so far as to put his foot on to the end of the canoe ready for stepping in. But the owners sprang forward to push him back, with most vigorous shakings of the head, and still more significant pointings towards the village, and the bundles of arrows in their own canoes.

Mendez and Montoro exchanged glances. There was no longer, then, much doubt of the fate intended them, and ere many minutes had passed they had learnt that the disconcerted warriors of last night were only waiting for the next day, before making a fresh descent upon the white intruders, shooting them, and burning the new settlement.

"Even so," said Diego Mendez at last. "We have but learnt afresh what we were well assured of before. But we will not wait for the doom intended us. It better beseems Spaniards to be the first aggressors."

As to the general humanity or morality of that sentiment young Montoro might have taken exception at a quieter moment; but just now he was infinitely too excited for tranquil thought, and eagerly seconded his older companion in so urging to be taken up the river, that at length the kind, simple-hearted fishermen consented, although with great reluctance.

The poor people's astonishment was still greater when, on reaching the village, picturesquely situated on the banks of the river, and now in all the bustle of warlike preparations, their two passengers insisted on landing, and putting themselves into the power of their enemies.

Still Diego Mendez preserved his cool presence of mind. Having learnt that Quibian had been wounded by an arrow, he gave out that he was a surgeon come to heal the injured leg; and demanding immediate admission to the Cacique, he mounted the hill to the very walls of the royal residence.

Arrived at the summit of the eminence, he and his companion paused a moment to take breath, and Montoro, for all his courage, could not wholly suppress a shudder at the hideous ornamentation of the royal domain. Three hundred human heads, recently torn from their trunks, were arranged in circles, in all their grim horribleness, before the Cacique's abode, the trophies of his valour, and significant warnings to his adversaries.

Mendez also glanced at these heads, and from them to the handsome lad beside him, so rich with the blessings of vigorous youth and health, and a shade of regret passed over his face.

But it was too late for such reflections now. The die was cast, and they must advance, and resolutely. The slightest token of hesitation or fear would most assuredly be fatal.

But however brave they might be, others were cowardly enough. They had scarcely moved forward a dozen steps on the plateau of the hill when a crowd of women and children caught sight of the strange new beings, and throwing their arms wildly above their heads in a very abandonment of terror, they fled in all directions, startling the echoes with their shrieks.

It soon became evident that they had startled more than the echoes, for a son of the Cacique, a tall, powerfully-built man, rushed out to ascertain the cause of the commotion, and looked ready enough to add the Spaniards' heads to his father's collection when he perceived them thus braving him, as it were, on his own ground.

Not being versed in the laws of chivalry, he took the notary at unawares with a blow which nearly sent him headlong down the hill, and Montoro almost as suddenly dashed forward with doubled fists to revenge his companion; but Mendez was far from desiring to be so championed. Recovering his footing, he grasped the boy by the shoulder and pulled him back, saying hastily,—

"My friend! patience is a virtue—when it is expedient."

Thus pocketing the affront for the present in a way that was very astonishing to Montoro, the notary by signs complimented his antagonist on his vigour, and ended by winning the powerful young savage over to the side of peace and good-will by presenting him with a comb, a pair of scissors, and a looking-glass, and giving him a lesson in hair-dressing. So delighted was the great Quibian's heir with that new accomplishment, that he fairly hugged his instructor, and although he could not obtain the bold Spaniards an interview with the angry, invalid monarch, he sufficiently showed his gratitude by despatching them safe back again to the waiting Admiral, and their anxious comrades.

He ended by winning the powerful young savage over to the side of peace and good-will by presenting him with a comb, a pair of scissors, and a looking-glass.

Thus began and ended Montoro de Diego's first great adventure in the New World, and from henceforth he was marked out as one of those for whom the new scenes were to be scenes of renown. With the bitter termination, for others, of that exploit he had no concern. He was lying in his berth in the unconsciousness of fever when, a few days later, the Adelantado and eighty men, guided by Diego Mendez, seized the unfortunate Cacique, and carried off his wives, children, and chief friends to die miserable deaths of despair and broken-heartedness. Well might the poor creatures long to prevent even the least cruel of the white invaders from landing on their shores.

Even in the present day it is hard to teach civilized people that the uncivilized have rights equal with their own, and as sacred. In those days it was impossible.

[CHAPTER XIV.]

MASTER PEDRO'S DOGS IN DANGER.

It was still high day when Mendez the notary, and Montoro de Diego, returned from their expedition to the heart of the Cacique's territory, and reported themselves once more on board the Admiral's ship; but by the time the history of their doings and discoveries was ended, it was too late for any further undertakings in the building line that afternoon. Fernando got hold of his chosen friend and comrade as the interview with the Admiral came to an end, and said resolutely—

"Come now, Diego, I take upon myself to say that thou hast earned a holiday for the next twelve hours, and those not given to sleep I intend shall be devoted to me; or, if it please you better, to me and those dogs of thine."

"My dogs, indeed!" laughed Montoro. "I have told thee before, and I tell thee again, that they are no more mine than thine. Had I but known in time that I was to go ashore at Hispaniola, they should have been landed there for their rightful owner, I can tell thee, and I had been quit of their care once for all."

"Ay, and of their love too," retorted Fernando slyly.

Montoro shrugged his shoulders; but his affectation of indifference went for nought. The mutual affection existing between the couple of young bloodhounds, and their young keeper, was too well known by every one on board for his occasional pretence of carelessness about them to go for anything. His companion soon proved its present shallowness.

"Oh, well," he said, in his turn shrugging his shoulders, "if you have left off caring about them it's all right. But I do pity the poor brutes a little myself, having nothing to eat for the past—well, there's no saying how many hours. But you know you didn't feed them before you went off yesterday."

"Of course I did not," returned Montoro angrily, all his coolness utterly vanished. "It was much too early then to feed them; but I did not suppose I left behind me a set of heartless wretches, who would let poor dumb animals suffer."

Fernando Colon's lip twitched with something uncommonly like a smile as he expostulated—

"Nay then, you know perfectly that you choose always to feed them yourself. You have ever given small thanks to those who have dared to do so in your place."

"Ah!" exclaimed Montoro with rising passion. "And so because, forsooth, I choose to attend to the dogs myself, when I am on board, if I were dead you would let them starve?"

"Nay, for I should not then have to fear your scowl," was the answer ending with a laugh. But Nando added the next moment with a good-natured smile—

"Even the Admiral himself was not afraid of your wrath anent those doggies, when you were safe out of the way, for he fed them with his own hands."

As those last words were uttered Montoro turned sharply away and brushed his sleeve across his eyes. He turned back again almost as quickly, and laid a tolerably hard grip of his strong fingers on his companion's arm as he muttered huskily—

"You'll never let me get a hold over my temper, Nando, if you torment me thus. But did—did thy noble father in very truth think upon the wants of the poor doggies?"

Ferdinand's eyes were glistening too as he replied—

"Ay, that he did indeed. And know'st thou, Toro, half I feel jealous of thee, for verily I believe that it was as much on thy account as for the dogs' sake that my father did them so much honour. But hark to the storm they are making. They have found out thou art on board. Come away, and let them loose."

The next minute the two dogs of Master Pedro, the spice and curiosity dealer of El Cuevo, were bounding up on deck, giving vent to a succession of excited hurrahs in their own especial tongue.

Those half-unconscious caresses bestowed upon the hounds by Doña Rachel Diego at the hour of parting, those tears with which, in trying to conceal them, she had bedewed the dogs' heads, had so endeared the animals to her son, that from the outset of his long journeyings he ever considered their comfort before his own, and reaped the just reward in their fidelity and strong attachment to himself. But that evening he was destined to pay a somewhat heavy penalty for the friendship.

"Toro, you never give the dogs a swim," said Ferdinand suddenly, when, after a regular romping match, boys and animals had tumbled themselves down together in a promiscuous heap, to get back breath and energy for further proceedings. The dogs were so enormously strong that playing with them was not easy work like playing with kittens.

"I feel as if I had been engaged in a pretty stiff wrestling match," said Montoro, laughing, and stretching his arms, "and oh! how warm it's become, or I."

"You may as well add that 'or I,'" laughed back the other; "for I suspect, as the sun is going down, that the air must be somewhat cooler than when you came on board. But the hounds really do look hot, poor creatures, and they could get such a splendid bathe here in the river—and so could we."

"Umph!" growled that rather tired-out young Don Diego. "I think it would have been a much more sensible suggestion that we could have a splendid turn-in to our berths. But you are such a horrible fellow. I don't believe you ever know what it is to feel done up."

"Nor you either, generally," said Ferdinand with another laugh.

But his companion was not going to be weak enough to echo it, not he.

"'Generally' isn't 'never,'" he returned. "But here goes, you energetic plague. In with you as hard as you like, I'll follow."

And so saying he rolled himself over with a very good imitation of used-up laziness, and got himself slowly up from his hands and knees on to his feet, with the wind-up of a solemn, self-satisfied "Oh!"

"Oh, indeed!" came the mocking echo from half-a-dozen deep throats, followed by shouts of laughter.

Montoro was just a trifle disconcerted. He had not known of these extra witnesses of his performance.

"Pity but thy mother were here," said Diego Mendez, one of the group. "Then wouldst thou have surely had such another lollipop as must have rewarded thy first triumph in this exhibition."

"Nay then," came the reply, for the performer had not taken long to recover his self-possession; "nay then, Señor, if you are pleased to bestow that lollipop for the show it will be the first, seeing that on that other past occasion of which you speak I returned myself to the floor with a suddenness that bumped my forehead, and my reward, therefore, was a plaster."

"Thy impudent mouth deserves a hot plaster now, methinks," muttered a surly hidalgo in the background.

But fortunately hot-tempered Montoro did not hear the mutter, and no one else heeded it. The group of men moved off, and left the lads once more to their own devices. Montoro stepped up to the side of the vessel and looked over at the clear, bright waters of the river. The dogs shook themselves and followed him, Don rearing himself up on his hind legs on the right hand to look over, and Señor resolutely pushing himself in between the two boys, and rearing himself up on Montoro's left hand, with forepaws resting on the vessel's edge.

"How different the river looks now to the dingy-coloured, troubled stream we sailed up such a short time ago," said Montoro.

"Yes," answered Ferdinand; "the fair weather has given the mud and sand time to settle. That is why I think it looks so tempting for a bathe."

The dogs gave their answers also in an expressive fashion of their own, like the hurrah business, hunching up their shoulders, and settling their heads down between them with noses pushed forward, and intent eyes that meant anything you like to imagine, except disagreement with their friend. Still that same friend hesitated. His human companion glanced at him with some wonder.

"Toro—"

"Ay, Nando, what now?"

"Only—the banks are very nigh on either hand, and thou canst swim now, I take it, as well as any one on board these caravels?"

"Hey, what sayest thou?" said Montoro, with a bewildered stare in his eyes, which was very nearly reproduced in the other pair when he suddenly recollected himself, and exclaimed with a short laugh—"Why now, Nando, you may fairly think that I have lost my wits; but in truth they had but gone travelling on their own account hence to El Cuevo, and—Come. I can swim, saidst thou? Truly can I then, and I'll prove it by beating you and the dogs in a match from here to the shore yonder, and back again."

"Done with you," exclaimed the sailor's son, beginning his disrobing with eager haste as he spoke. "Antonio," he shouted to the pilot, "Antonio! be good-natured; drop us over a rope, and bide here to summon us back if we are wanted."

"A crocodile, maybe, will have you first," answered Alaminos as he sauntered up.

"In saying so you belie your own boasted knowledge that these ugly brutes will not, unprovoked, attack a human being," was the quick retort.

"Even so," was the calm reply; "neither will they. But I said not they would hesitate to make a snap at imps."

However, there were no crocodiles—to give the alligators the name given to them at that time—to be seen, neither were other more dangerous enemies to be seen, when the two boys and the two dogs took their simultaneous plunge, with a splutter and dash and commotion that drew two or three of the crew to keep watch beside the pilot.

Once in the water, Montoro quite forgot that he was tired, and struck out vigorously for the shore. Unfortunately, however, for the fulfilment of his boast, his four-footed admirers would insist upon trying to help him, first to get back to the caravel, which they appeared to consider the wisest proceeding; and when he had at last thoroughly convinced them that he intended to keep his face for the present turned the other way, their attentions were little less retarding. One would get a whole bunch of the curly black locks between his teeth firmly, if not exactly comfortably to their owner, while the other made perpetual lip-nibbles at his ears and shoulders. Montoro was not at all sorry at last to join the laughing and exultant Ferdinand on the river bank.

"Don and Señor shall go back first when we return," he said with a reproachful shake of his head at the four-footed individuals in question. "I should have beaten you easily but for them."

"Poor old doggies!" said Ferdinand, stroking the great head nearest to him as he spoke. "Good old fellows; you'd better far make friends with me, as he is so ungrateful to you."

As though the dogs understood the address made to them, when Nando took his hand from Señor's head, and rolled himself down the bank back into the water again, with a great souse, and forthwith set to work floundering and swimming and diving and jumping, Señor jumped up, gave a hasty lick to Diego's hand, and then followed the other boy into the water, and the two together began to hurry back to the ship, actuated at first by a spirit of mischief, and then, by the sharply-uttered orders of the Admiral.

And while Columbus shouted his commands to his young son to return to him, others were trying to obey the orders to man a boat instantly, and put off from the ship for the shore Fernando and Señor had just left.

"But there is no boat! they are all yonder!" groaned Antonio de Alaminos as he wrung his hands. "And the bravest and brightest spirit of us all will die unrevenged."

[CHAPTER XV.]

NOISE TO THE RESCUE.

That Montoro Diego should die 'unrevenged' was Antonio the pilot's only moan. To wish for his life might well seem useless. How should he live without aid, and how should aid be got to him in time, even should there be a dozen boats available! Arrows were flying around him, and arrows fly faster than any rowers yet heard of can ply their oars.

The fact of the matter was this. Very few people care now-a-days, nor ever have cared, for uninvited guests; and the Cacique of Veragua and his people were no exceptions to the general rule. When Columbus and his four caravels appeared off their coasts, they were as pleased with the novel exhibition as we are with a sight of the Persian Shah, an elephant called Jumbo, or a king of the Cannibal Islands. And they treated the exhibitors very well, giving them much more than enough for one feast; and then, when they were satisfied with the sight, and had found that enough of that was certainly, so far as they were concerned, as good as a feast, they gave their visitors some very valuable little presents, and courteously hinted—"Now you may go."

But, instead of taking the unacceptable hint, they didn't go. On the contrary, they coolly took possession of other people's land, built a considerable number of houses upon it, and showed plainly enough that they meant to take up their abode there without an invitation. These Spaniards would never have dreamt of trying to treat their home neighbours, the Portuguese or the French, with such scant ceremony. But these Veraguans were "only savages, heathen, miserable dark-skinned creatures, with no rights at all." No claims to halfpence, only to kicks.

Unfortunately, these poor heathen savages thought differently. Quibian, with his bad leg laid up in his uncivilized palace, growled forth his orders to his painted warriors to expel the impudent intruders; and all his able-bodied subjects turned themselves into volunteers for the furtherance of the same purpose. Here, there, and everywhere around that bit of coast, and between the two rivers, lurked the Spaniards' foes, and half-a-dozen particularly malicious ones were concealed just within the borders of the forest, facing the Admiral's ship, when Montoro and Ferdinand forsook its safety for their ill-advised bathe. The spies grinned at each other with silent delight when they saw the boys swim straight for the bank, mount it, and actually place themselves in the full power of the enemy. The arrows would have left the bows at once, and both the lads might have suffered but for the dogs.

The Veraguans, like their neighbours on the great new continent, had no domestic animals, and the gambols and tricks of Don and Señor were most fascinatingly wonderful to those hidden spectators, who almost forgot their desire to kill the dogs' companions in delighted attention to the dogs themselves. But suddenly Fernando, in that very unexpected way, rolled himself down the bank and disappeared,—he and one of the four-footed friends,—only to reappear to their eyes half-way back to the ship. The Indians were furious at his escape and their own stupidity, and, darting out of their hiding-place, shot off all six arrows simultaneously at the two hoped-for victims still remaining in their power.

Rather, it should be said, the one hoped-for victim, for the Indians would have rather preferred to spare Don had it been possible. But the animal, obeying its instincts, sprang forward on seeing the strangers, and received three out of the six arrows in its own body. The others fell harmless, for Montoro, on seeing the unexpected adversaries, had obeyed his natural human instincts, and sprung on one side.

In so springing he involuntarily followed Fernando's example, and rolled down the bank. Had he then and there set off swimming back to his friends, he would in all probability have got off uninjured; but the help Master Sancho, the merchant, had many a time in El Cuevo seen him render to those more helpless than himself he was ready with now, almost as much as a matter of instinct as the actions that preceded the unselfish act.

As he disappeared down the bank the Veraguans uttered yells of disappointed rage; but through those sounds there fell upon his ears, with an accent of bitter disappointment, a most piteous moan. Poor Don had given his body as a shield for his companion, and now that he lay suffering, perhaps dying, his companion was forsaking him. Don felt that to be very hard lines, and so he howled out his sorrow. He certainly would not have treated his friend so, and though his friend was only a human being, and not a faithful dog, he had imagined this especial human being to be different to most. It seemed he was mistaken, and so he howled for his disappointment. And Montoro heard the mournful howl, and understood all it said as well as if it had been the very longest and most comprehensive German word that even Bret Harte ever got hold of.

Ten seconds later the spectators on board the ship saw the lad remounting the bank with a wild bound, actually returning towards his enemies—one unarmed, defenceless boy against half-a-dozen fierce warriors.

"And all for the sake of a dog," said Alaminos to him some time later with a touch of anger.

"All for the sake of a creature that cried to me for aid," was the reply. "And ere I cease to care for such, I trust that I may no longer cumber the earth."

But during those present moments, while Montoro was climbing the bank, the pilot was standing with wide eyes gazing across at him, and wondering greatly as to the motives for his strange proceeding. He had forgotten about the dog, or thought it was dead and done for.

Poor old Don himself knew better. He was lying there helpless, with three arrows in his faithful side; but he was not yet too dead or done for to be able to give vent to an ecstatic weak squeak of a bark when he caught sight again of his beloved master.

So astounded were the Indians that they beat a momentary retreat into the forest, while Montoro knelt down and pulled the arrows out of the dog's wounds, Don the while alternately licking his hands and moaning. But it was no time just then for delicate handling. The three arrows were out in little more than as many seconds, and then with an inspiriting "Hi, good dog," Diego roused up the poor animal and pulled it down the bank with him once more, just as a second flight of arrows sped more truly to their intended mark. This time Diego quivered, and uttered one sharp, irrepressible cry as four of the darts struck and pierced his unprotected flesh. Pulling out the one most accessible, he plunged into the water, the dog with him. The Indians rushed forward. For those past few seconds they had imagined he must have some means of defence at hand to make him so daring, but now they were undeceived, and proportionably brave, themselves. Another flight of arrows was launched, this time happily with such eager, excited haste as to be harmless. But what advantage was that? The foe had plenty more arrows, and would apparently have plenty more time to shoot them at their wished-for target, for both the lad and the dog were evidently much hurt, and were swimming very slowly and feebly.

Then it was that Antonio de Alaminos wrung his hands and groaned over his favourite's impending fate. But the Admiral did something better than groan. There was no possibility of getting a boat across from the building-ground in time to be of any use, and the position was imminent. One more glance was cast by the father at his young son rapidly nearing the vessel, and still unconscious of his friend's danger, and then the order was shouted forth—"Fire off the guns—wait not to take aim."

Answering shouts of comprehension greeted the order, and as the guns were now always in a state of readiness for immediate use, it was obeyed with almost incredible speed, so great was the eagerness to save the young life now in jeopardy. Even while the exhausted Montoro was plunging himself and Don under water to escape another shower of arrows, there came the flash, the roar of the four falconets, followed by peal upon peal of the most frantic screechings from the Indians. Whether they were hurt was very doubtful, but it was evident enough that they were madly terrified. Flinging away their weapons, they decamped into the shelter of the forest again, and it was only by the fading sound of the continued shrieks that the direction of their retreat towards the village could be learnt.

"That was a lucky thought—to fight by fear," said Diego Mendez with a sigh of relief, as he prepared to spring into the river to the further aid of the rescued Montoro; but the Admiral checked him one moment, saying reverently—

"It was a blessed thought, my friend, for it was inspired by God."

Twenty minutes later Montoro was safe in his berth; the arrows had been extracted, and the wounds dressed, and poor Don lay dozing uneasily at his feet. It had just been suggested that the dog should be put out of its sufferings forthwith by a blow on the head. But Columbus would not have it done. The lad had nearly lost his life to save the animal's, and it should not prove such a useless service.

"You will at any rate, my father, allow me a little time to try to get him well?" said Ferdinand eagerly.

"Most assuredly, my son," answered the Admiral. "For thy friend's sake, and for the dog's, it shall be so."

And thus it came to pass that while Montoro lay ill of fever from his torn wounds and over-fatigue, many weighty things befell his companions and the Indians of Veragua, and faithful Don lay at his master's feet and licked himself back into wholeness. In fact, Don's surgical appliances did him good far more speedily than those made use of on behalf of Montoro. And when his comrade Señor's bones lay bleaching in the American forest some few weeks later, he was bounding about the deck in full strength and health, and utter disregard of the calamities that had befallen nearly every other living creature any way connected with him.

When Montoro again recovered consciousness the Admiral's caravel was once more on the way to Hispaniola. The settlement at Veragua had been half destroyed, wholly abandoned; the poor Cacique of Veragua and his people were slain, dead or dispersed; and once more Montoro de Diego, and many of his companions, had to turn their hopes of fortune to the island colony that had already, in the short space of eight years, been so frequently the hotbed of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

[CHAPTER XVI.]

I AM 'DON ALONZO.'

It was a splendid evening one day towards the end of the year 1503, when a tall, plainly-attired, handsome youth drew near the home of a Spanish colonist to whom he had notes of introduction. He had walked out to it from San Domingo, a distance of some five miles, and now stood still to survey the scene, his hand resting on a dog's head the while that had accompanied him.

"It is a glorious place, old Don," he muttered in a tone of considerable satisfaction, although it betokened great surprise as well.

And a glorious place it was, and most especially beautiful now that the long, low houses of stone and earth, the waving palms, and all the other luxuriance of that southern clime, were bathed in the golden glory of a southern sunset. In a cushioned reclining chair, placed in a shady spot of the broad verandah, lounged a young man, handsome, but for a Spaniard coarse-featured and rather thick-set. However, all defects of person were thrown into the background by a sumptuousness of attire that fairly startled the youth as he at length approached, and delivered his letters.

"And you are the son of Master Pedro, the spice-dealer of El Cuevo!" he breathed forth at last.

The words of that ejaculation were common-place enough, but the tone in which they were uttered, and the look with which they were accompanied, made them so inexpressibly gratifying, and at the same time comical, to the man to whom they were addressed, that he burst into a loud, long laugh before vouchsafing them any other answer.

"Yes, yes," he said at last, recovering himself with an easy nonchalance. "Yes, yes, youngster, I do not mind confessing to you, since you know the fact before my confession, that the worthy old gentleman yonder, with his frugal fare, and his better stuff cloak for holidays, is my father, and a rare good old miser he is, to save the maravedis for my spending. But mind ye, that is between you and me and Saint Peter."

A wondering gaze from a great pair of thoughtful, brilliant eyes was the questioning reply to this intimation. "And for the rest of the world," asked the owner of the eyes after a short pause, "who is your father for the rest of the world?"

Another laugh greeted this query.

"Why, for the rest of the world, being what you have found me, Don Alonzo de Loyala, my father is, like thine own, some long-deceased grandee of Spain, who neglected his duty towards his son as regarded the due endowment of riches to maintain my rank in mine own land."

As this mocking speech ended, Montoro de Diego's cheeks flushed angrily, and he exclaimed—

"Do you then imply that my claims to noble birth are thus also assumed? By St.—"

"Nay then, nay," good-humouredly interrupted the other. "In these latitudes it is not well for health to heat thyself for nought. Keep thy passion for the red rascals, who are so lazy that they'll die rather than live and work. I imply nothing to thy detriment. Wert thou placed as I am, then wouldst thou also have a wealthy father at thy back, to help thee to maintain that rank out here it should pleasure thee to claim. Meantime, I do no more than half of those around me, and with better right; for I am no released felon, and I deal honestly by those I trade with. I will deal honestly with you. Twice have I had advices from my father, and from good master Sancho, that I should try to secure you for a companion and aid, should you elect to remain here on the Admiral's return to Spain. And I like you at first sight well enough to be willing to take their advice. Will you stay with me then, or shall I help you to find friends elsewhere?"

Montoro looked at the man from head to foot slowly and earnestly, as he lounged there before him, so great a contrast to himself, and then as slowly and earnestly said—

"I agree to stay—for a time."

"Umph!" muttered the self-styled Don Alonzo, somewhat taken aback in his turn. "Umph! my noble youngster, methinks from your air you suppose the obligation to be rather more mutual than I esteem it. You are a beggar and friendless, and I—am not."

However, Montoro was not now so friendless as his new colleague assumed. Had he returned to Spain, even there he might now have been found some sort of employment, and out in the Colony the spirited young adventurer, with a pair of hands both able and willing to work, could have easily found some more indolent seeker after wealth willing to go into partnership with him. But Rachel de Diego was sheltered under the roof of the spice-merchant, and her son had a hidden eagerness that he might be able to find shelter under the roof of the spice-merchant's son. It was to that motive that 'Don Alonzo' owed the easy settlement of his agreement with his new young partner, and not, as he imagined, to the promising air of luxurious comfort in his surroundings. That offered more allurements to a third party to the affair.

Don threatened for a few minutes to upset the amiable arrangements between his real owner and his self-adopted master, for poor Don had very faint notions of the rights of property and ownership, and Don was thirsty and Don was hungry, and, moreover, Don was as fond of grapes as any Christian Don, real or pretended, to be found in or out of Spain. All of a sudden, while Montoro was gazing thoughtfully out at the silver line of distant sea, and Don Alonzo was muttering to himself the remark mentioned above, tired Don caught sight of a piled-up dish of grapes on a table in the verandah. He licked his dry lips, and went on eyeing them. Then he licked his dry lips again, and ventured upon a small whine. That sound recalled Montoro's wandering wits so far that he turned round and nodded to his four-footed friend, and said dreamily—

"Yes, yes. All right, good old Don."

That was enough. Don was in that state of longing that a very small amount of encouragement was enough to induce him to help himself to the desired feast, and before either of his companions knew well what he was about, he had bounded up to the table, scrunched up one juicy, deliciously refreshing bunch of grapes, and had a second in his mouth about to be treated in the same way. But "there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip," and in this instance there proved to be a slip 'twixt the lip and the throat.

Don Alonzo quickly became aware of what was going on, and, seizing a heavy bottle, he flung it with full force angrily at the dog; and it hit, not the dog, but the dog's champion, happily only a touch, and then fell crashing on the floor of the verandah.

The next instant Montoro's first dash forward to save the dog was followed by a second to save Don Alonzo; for the huge animal had made a furious spring at his antagonist, accompanied by a growl that gave full promise of his intentions. Montoro's most resolute and stern command was needed before the hound was brought to crouch down by his side, with red-lit eyes still glaring at his unrecognized owner.

"That brute shall be shot before he's an hour older," came the surly declaration at last, as Montoro knelt on the stone pavement soothing the animal back into good temper. At the sharp announcement he looked up quickly.

"Then you shall shoot him through me," he said passionately, "as you struck me just now instead of him. He is my only friend out here, and we will live or die together."

Don Alonzo shook himself irritably. He was good-hearted enough if over-indulgent parents in the first instance, and superabundant good fortune since, had not rather spoilt him. Besides, four years' sojourn on the island of Hispaniola had not tended to teach regard for any life but his own; that he esteemed at quite a high enough rate, and he answered Montoro now with angry remonstrance—

"It is all very fine to talk heroics, youngster; but thinkest thou that I am going to be browbeaten into keeping my own dog, to stand in danger of being mauled by it any time its tempers up, as if I were a wretched native!"

Montoro stood up and folded his arms.

"Neither you nor any other man, Indian or European, shall suffer from Doffs teeth. Or, if perchance that sounds too proud a boast, for the first human being that Don injures he shall die. He shall be as a lamb to you now—see—hold out your hand."

With some scarcely-disguised trepidation Alonzo obeyed. Don cast a beseeching glance of remonstrance at his friend; but instead of any encouragement to rejection of the offered fellowship, he got a grave shake of the head; and with a very crestfallen aspect he rose, walked dolefully along the verandah, and put his paw into the outstretched hand, and looked up with mute appeal for forgiveness.

Don Alonzo was wise enough to seal the new compact with a freely-generous gift of more of the coveted grapes. If Montoro for Don, and Don for himself, would engage that Don Alonzo should never feel the sharpness of that animal's teeth, his owner was only too willing that it should live. For it was quite the fashion now to use these powerful dogs out in the new world, not only as terrible aids in battle against the poor, half-defenceless Indians, but also to hunt down the miserable, wholly-defenceless slaves who sometimes dared to run away to die in peace in their native forests, instead of beneath the short-sighted, as well as brutal, taskmaster's lash.

The young Diego had declared that Don should never be so employed, but that declaration Don Alonzo comfortably decided in his own mind was all nonsense. He himself had had qualms about the treatment of the natives when he first came out, but he had long since got rid of all such inconvenient scruples; and so of course would this new arrival get speedily rid of his. Every one did, with the exception of that impracticable idiot of a neighbour of his, that young fellow Las Casas, who had come out from Spain with his head so full of theories and bookish ideas that he had no room in it for common sense.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

GOOD OLD DON.

Time passed on. In Spain good Queen Isabella died, and two years later the poor, neglected noble-hearted, pious old Admiral, Christopher Columbus, recommending himself to God, and his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, to King Ferdinand's tardy justice and each other's brotherly love, also bade a final farewell to an ungrateful world.

And in Hispaniola also time passed on. Many there grieved over the Admiral when he was dead, who had tormented him in every possible way when living,—that is the way with poor, stupid human nature. But he had one true mourner, who had loved and served him with all his heart during the year that they were together, and whose memory for those he cared for was not a short one. Montoro de Diego, amidst his many new interests, felt a very keen pang of sorrow when the news was brought out to the island, towards the end of the year 1506, of the loss the world had sustained.

"Ah! Señor Las Casas," he sighed one morning, some months later; "ah! then, if he had lived, and the queen, you might then have had hope even yet to work some good for these wretched, rightful owners of these lands. But now—"

"Ay, indeed!" exclaimed Bartholomew Las Casas with heaving chest, as he rose and strode hastily up and down his terrace. "You may well pause upon that but now, Diego. For now one might more wisely waste breath in calling upon wolves and wild cats to cease from fierceness, than in pleading with one's fellow-men for mercy, justice, or compassion. 'Give us yourselves,' is the fierce cry that echoes all around us. 'Give us yourselves, your wives and daughters, for our humble slaves; give us your gold, your lands, all you hold most valuable; resign your wills, your faith, your souls into our keeping, and we will give you leave to live as long as unremitting toil and cruelty will let you. But resist us, fight for your country or your liberty, contradict our lightest caprice, and we will shoot you down as though you were so many rabbits, we will hunt you to death with our dogs as though you were vermin or wild beasts.'"

The young man came to a sudden stop, with a face glowing with generous indignation, and literally panting for breath with his burst of righteous wrath. Montoro's cheeks were flushed with sympathy as he said in quick reply—

"It is so. I can but too terribly vouch for the truth of your bitter accusation. But, Señor, your brethren the priests, can they not—"

Las Casas turned upon him with sharp interruption.

"Can they not help me, you would ask? Ay, verily," with indignant scorn; "well indeed do they help the cause I have at heart! This is one of the proclamations allowed by some of those same brethren the priests—'Your souls are doomed to eternal perdition, your bodies belong to those who have conquered your soil!' Much good my brethren the priests will do!"

There was a short silence, and then he continued more calmly, and laying his hand upon a pile of papers, "But after all, Diego, I do hope to work some good for the poor natives. I have written out a strong case for them, and I am intending to return to Spain shortly, there to plead their cause myself."

"And you shall have my testimony, if you will," said Montoro eagerly. "For it is our Don Alonzo's will that I should take a journey to Spain this coming season, in charge of a somewhat richer freight than usual. And if you start not immediately we may go together."

"And Don?" said Las Casas, in smiling interrogation.

"Ay, truly," was the laughing answer, although something of a blush accompanied it. "But in faith," he added the next moment, "it is not only for love of the animal that I have it for my constant companion. Since I have discovered the horrible use to which its fellows are put, I live in fear of a coming day when I may regret having saved its life."

"Then," continued his friend, "you will leave it behind you in Spain perchance, when you return hither?"

"That is so long to look ahead," said Montoro, feeling not a little glad that he was not called upon for an immediate decision.

When it really came to the point he did what he thought much better than leaving Don behind in El Cuevo. He got Master Pedro to transfer all property in it to himself. His services to the old spice-dealer and his son had well merited so much of a reward. And as for Don, he deserved not only a good master, but almost as many bunches of grapes besides as he chose to eat, when, a couple of years later, he was the means of saving Montoro's life and a bag full of gold-dust to the value of many thousand pesos.

Diego's first return journey to Spain proved so successful, owing to his scrupulous honesty and intelligence, that Don Alonzo speedily sent him on a second, and others also most eagerly availed themselves of so upright a messenger to transmit their golden gleanings to their own country.

But, as it happened, with Diego there voyaged also to Spain three ne'er-do-wells. They had gambled away all their slaves, all their grants of land, all their gathered-up spoils, and then, having finally gambled away all their future prospects of wealth in Hispaniola, the miscreants, as mean as they were bad, slipped away from the island and their creditors on the first ship back to Spain.

"And mind ye," muttered one of the number to his companions one evening, as they drew near the end of their two months' voyage,—"mind ye, if we follow that insolent, set-up fellow Diego a day or two's journey up the country after landing, we shall not be losing time, neither shall we have cause to regret having left Hispaniola in his company."

"How so?" questioned one of the two eager listeners doubtfully. "My child yonder, little Bautista, told me when I questioned him some days ago anent Diego's gold, that the bags were to be sent by other hands to Madrid."

"And you credit the tale!" exclaimed the first speaker scornfully. "You'll believe next that the Garden of Paradise has been found."

"And so I will," was the retort, "when the news is given me by Montoro de Diego. He would not lie to save his life, and least of all would he lie to a child."

"By all the saints," sneered the third of the group, "but Don Diego hath a warm advocate in you! Doubtless it were useless to expect you to touch his gold, even though it lay by the wayside to be picked up."

"Doubtless under those circumstances," was the sharp reply, "there should be little left for you to snatch. All the same, he hath shown kindness to my boy, and he tells him nought but truth."

"Well, well," said Almado, the first speaker, more softly, "there is no need that we should wrangle over the fellow's virtues, they sicken me forsooth. Ne'er the less, he shall be a very saint if you will, so we do but get his merchandise. As for the gold that is to go to Madrid, that is but that small part, of what he carries, which is for the king's coffers. Of that I am well assured. So you see thy little son yonder hath been told the truth indeed, but only in part, and maybe to mislead us."

"Umph," muttered Bautista's father, also more quietly. "That may well be."

"Ay," agreed the third of the company, "that may well be."

And for the next few hours they all redoubled their efforts to be on good terms with Don. They flattered themselves, indeed, that he regarded them quite in the light of friends, for Don, like most very strong creatures, whether going on two legs or four, never troubled himself to show uncalled-for fierceness. As long as no one interfered with him or his master, and his master gave him no orders to interfere with others, he maintained the grave indifference of manner worthy of a highborn Spaniard. But woe betide those who should presume upon this calmness.

Arrived at Cadiz, Montoro delivered up the royal revenue to the authorized messengers awaiting it, and then he and his dog and his bags set out on their journey up the country, in company with worthy Master Sancho, who had come to meet him, and two or three other traders from the interior.

"Farewell, my little Bautista," said Montoro; "I shall pray for our future meeting."

"Nay," said the child hurriedly, and with a frightened look round, "do not that, Señor. I love you, you have been good to me, and so I pray the Virgin to grant we may not meet again."

Montoro opened his eyes wide.

"How so, little man? Love me, and yet pray that we may not again cross each other's paths? How is that, tell me?"

But the boy shook his head, and began to tremble violently.

"Do not ask me," he muttered with white lips; "they will kill me. Only keep away from us. They do not know I have heard——"

"Ha!" exclaimed Montoro, a look of intelligence now taking the place of bewilderment. Then he stooped and kissed the child's forehead, as he said in low tones, "Blessings on thee for thy true heart, my little lad, and my thanks. May the Lord have thee in His keeping, and guard thy hands from sin."

And so they parted, each, as poor little Bautista fondly thought, to go widely different ways, but in reality to take two routes leading to the same goal.

For the first two days' journey inland the party to which Montoro joined himself was a particularly strong one, too strong for the three gamblers to care to meddle with; accordingly they withdrew themselves from notice, until the travelling company was reduced to Montoro himself, Master Sancho and his thick-headed attendant, and a couple of poor-spirited merchants, who would have rather hidden themselves in their bales at the appearance of danger, than tried to defend them. But then—there was Don.

The third day was drawing to a close, when Diego and his companions reached a wretched little inn, the worst on their route, and with considerable grumbling on the part of comfort-loving Master Sancho, they put up there for the night. To make matters worse, the amount of available accommodation was even less than usual, for another party of travellers had arrived before them, and taken the chief and largest room.

However, there was no help for it. Master Sancho had to make the best of a bad bargain, and as nothing would induce him to share a room with Don, and nothing would induce Montoro to dispense with Don's company as a guardian under present circumstances, he and the dog had one room, and the worthy burgess of El Cuevo and the two merchants from Saragossa had to crowd into the other.

"One night," explained Master Sancho to his companions, "that young rascal I've taken a fancy to, persuaded me to share a sleeping apartment with him and that great brute, and in the night I snored,—I'm given to snore,—and the creature didn't approve, and woke me up with a sounding thump of its great paw. And there, behold! it stood reared up over me, with glaring eyes and a growling mouth. I warrant you, I prayed in one minute to more saints in the calendar than I've prayed to in many a long year before."

"Doubtless," assented one of the merchants with paling cheeks. "I have ever thought it a fearful great beast, and unsafe. But hearken! Methinks it is now quarrelling even with its own master. Ah!" with startled breathlessness—"it is shot."

Then there was a sudden rushing all over the inn. Screams, shrieks, shouts, slamming of doors, and above all, the continuous roar of Don's deep growling bark.

At length men and lights were gathered in Montoro's room, and there stood Montoro holding in a firm grip one of the smugglers. But the hero of the fray, and the conqueror, was grand old Don standing with one great fore-paw on the breast of one robber, the other fore-paw on the breast of Bautista's father, who lay weltering in his blood, shot by the other of his comrades in the attempt to shoot the dog.

"But my child, my little son," murmured the wretched, dying man.

"I will guard and care for him," said Montoro huskily.

He had been rescued from misery himself once, now he was the rescuer.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]

DEATH FOR DON.

It was the early part of the year 1511, when Montoro, become now quite an experienced islander and man of business, left Don Alonzo's place, Palmyra, one morning for the neighbouring town of San Domingo. The object of the visit was to arrange some important matters with certain foreign merchants, who had lately arrived with tempting offers to the planters for the produce of their estates.

"And don't hurry thyself," said Don Alonzo with unusual consideration. "Take thy pleasure for a few days when thou art in the town, for verily this dog's hole of a place is dull enough to make a man long to shuffle off life with a native's readiness."

"If those same natives should get the upper-hand," answered Montoro drily, "I doubt not they would help you. Meantime, I will trust to find you still in the flesh, and well, when I return, and so—adios."

"And for you, fair journeyings and good bargains," said the indolent superior, as he lay lounging in his low chair sipping a cool lime-juice beverage. Little enough of the work he did himself towards accumulating his own wealth.

But, lazy and self-indulgent as he was, it had not escaped Montoro that there was a certain scarcely-suppressed eagerness, and barely-hidden hope of some sort, underlying his present declared wishes for his subordinate's comfort. As Montoro left the verandah and passed through the house he called to his rescued protégé, who had proved useful enough to secure himself a home beneath Don Alonzo's roof. No work had seemed to come amiss to him, excepting that of aid to the overseers in the gold mines, in which he had been recently employed. But the brutal task-masters had just sent the boy back, saying that he was no good to them whatever, worse than no good indeed, for he pitied the rascally workers instead of flogging them.

Bautista came readily enough when he heard his beloved Señor Diego's voice.

"Am I to go with you, my Señor?" he exclaimed beseechingly. "Ah! but I will be to you eyes and hands and feet, if I may."

"I prefer to use my own, thank you," answered Montoro smiling, as he patted the boy's head. "But look not so disappointed, Bautista, for if I cannot trust myself to thee, I am going to leave in thy charge one I hold almost dearer. I leave thee guardian of our faithful old Don. And see thou that he comes to no harm, and—that he does no harm. I have guarded him from that sin hitherto; do thou guard him in my absence."

A deep breath, almost a groan, burst from the boy's lips.

"My Señor," he muttered anxiously, "give me some other duty to perform for you. This may be too hard."

Diego frowned.

"I trust not," he said sternly. "It shall be worse for others if it prove so. And remember, you have my orders, and if need be you must declare them."

So saying he nodded his farewell to the boy and departed, leaving Don's new guardian in a very doleful frame of mind, for he knew well enough the cause of Don Alonzo's desire to be a short time rid of Montoro.

The spice-merchant's son was good-natured enough so long as he was crossed in nothing, but Montoro's settled refusal to have Don used as a hunter of runaway slaves had roused Alonzo's spite, and for the past year, ever since the return of Montoro and the dog from Spain, he had been seeking some chance to gratify his malice. Hitherto where Diego had gone the dog had gone, but at last this expedition to the town was arranged, and for various circumstances it was more convenient to leave Don behind.

"And at last," declared Don Alonzo with a malicious chuckle, "at last the brute shall be set to its proper work."

Bautista was in the apartment at the time, as well as one of the overseers, and as a significant warning to him the words were added—"And it shall have its first taste of the flesh of any one, be he Spaniard or native, who betrays my purpose to Señor Long-face."

No wonder the boy desired that some other duty might be commuted to his charge by his patron, in test of his affection. As Montoro rode off with a party of attendants, Bautista made his way to Don, and poured out his fears to an apparently perfectly intelligent pair of ears.

"But all the same, you know quite well, Don," said Bautista reproachfully, "you do know quite well, that in spite of your good Christian bringing up, you would seize a poor redskin by the leg if you were set at him."

"Of course he would, like the sensible thoroughbred he is," shouted a well-known voice not a couple of yards distant. And Bautista sprang to his feet with a terrified look on his face, as he saw the hateful head overseer, Jerome Tivoli, had come up to him unperceived.

The man now stood intently regarding the dog, with a more sinister expression than usual upon his cruel face, and the boy could scarcely restrain himself from flying away from the spot. Nothing short of his loyal devotion to his patron could have kept him there. At last he said huskily—

"It is useless so to examine this dog, for, strong or weak, you can have nought to do with it, since it belongs to the Señor Diego, and he chooses not that it should be used for your purposes."

De Tivoli uttered a short, hard laugh, and his eyes glittered as he said slowly—

"Ah! yes. It is the Señor Montoro de Diego's dog—-his favourite. And verily it is a fine animal, and powerful, and will do a day's work well for us. That dog of a slave Guatchi has run away, and, dead or alive, yon pet of our Señor Diego shall bring him back to us."

Bautista flung himself down again beside the dog, and threw his arms about its neck, as he exclaimed with the courage of affection—

"No! I tell thee no, Señor Tivoli. Señor Diego has left it to me to guard his dog from doing harm, and I will keep my charge."

De Tivoli's thin lips curled; but ere he could reply other footsteps were heard approaching, and Don Alonzo himself appeared upon the scene.

"How now, De Tivoli," he exclaimed hastily. "Why dost thou waste time? The idle rascal Guatchi hath had start enough, I trow, to breathe the dog e'en now; why dost thou delay?"

"It is but for a minute, Don Alonzo," replied the other coolly. "Yon boy declares that, for Don Diego's sake, it shall not be sent hunting."

"And I," retorted Don Alonzo, "swear by St. Jago that it shall."

"And I, in the name of one higher," exclaimed Montoro de Diego, thus unexpectedly making his own appearance on the scene again, "I declare, with Bautista, that it shall not go."

Don Alonzo started slightly, and his face flushed for a moment with ill-restrained annoyance and uneasiness as he saw that set, resolute countenance before him; but he tried to assume an air of carelessness, and to laugh away the matter with an off-hand—

"Why, my mentor, how have you contrived to accomplish the business you had in hand so quickly? What brings you back so soon?"

"Your good genius, I feel inclined to imagine," was Montoro's answer, in tones somewhat quieter than those of his first exclamation. But the fading sparkle in his eyes rekindled as his companion replied irritably—

"Then I wish the meddlesome beast had minded its own business, instead of sending you back here to pull a long face over what I mean to do in spite of it."

As he spoke he walked up to where the dog Don lay tethered, held a strip of cotton cloth to its nose, and then muttering viciously—

"Find him, Don, find him!" pressed his finger hastily on the spring of the dog's collar, and set it free.

The great animal bounded forward. The next instant there was a howl, a moan, and Don lay dying at Montoro's feet; rather, one should say, at Montoro's knees, for the young man had sunk on to them almost as soon as his own fist had fallen with that lightning stroke, and the same hand that had dealt the death-blow was now soothing the poor brute's last agonies. It was Montoro de Diego who had killed it, and yet it was to Montoro's face that the pleading brown eyes were lifted with their last gaze of affection, and it was Montoro's hand that the dying tongue licked with the last breath.

"My poor old Don," muttered Montoro huskily, as he tenderly pressed the side quivering with the death struggle; "poor old Don."

"It's fine for thee to pity the poor brute when it owes its sufferings to thy malice," exclaimed Don Alonzo furiously, and with fingers on the hilt of his dagger, as though they itched to lay his companion beside the animal.

But Diego paid no seeming heed to the show of rage. Maintaining his kneeling position for a while longer, he replied quietly—

"Yes, it once owed its life to me, and now it owes its death to me, and better so than it should have been the innocent cause of suffering to one of our human brethren, for whom the cross rose on Calvary."

And then he rose from beside the dog's dead body, and turned slowly away with a saddened face. In spite of its ferocious nature, the animal had always been most docile with him; and besides, it had been that oft-felt link with his mother's home. How long ago now seemed that first day of parting from his country, when Rachel de Diego's slender fingers had rested for a few moments on the animal's head. Her son would far rather have a second time undergone some peril to save its life, than have had to destroy it for the prevention of a crime.

"Ah, Señor," murmured Bautista, as he crept out on to the verandah after him a few minutes later. "Ah, Señor, you have saved poor Guatchi's limbs from being mangled; but I doubt me you have made an enemy for yourself."

"You were willing to do the same in the same cause, Bautista," was the answer with a grave smile of approval. "I knew not that thou wast so staunchly ranged on the side of justice and mercy. Henceforth we are friends."

The boy sprang forward to clasp the hand held out to him, and said eagerly—

"To follow in your steps, Señor, I began to remind myself that the Indians' flesh had feelings like our own, but my past month in the mines has been a black lesson in horror that I would not repeat to escape the pains of purgatory. These Indians are tenfold weaker than we are, and their sufferings are tenfold more, for they have learnt nothing of manhood to sustain them. You have seen them die here in the plantations, Señor, and that has roused your pity; but in those mines it is not that some die, but that none survive. A few days of that dismal work beneath cuffs and lashes, and their strength is spent—"

"And then?" came the short query.

"And then," ended the boy with a sort of gasp for breath, "they sink to the ground, and the brutal kick given to rouse them up to continued labour, is the accompaniment of their last breath. It is little wonder, Señor, that I should wish poor Guatchi to get away free, now that he has escaped such toil alive."

The whole fervour of the boy's susceptible nature was aroused, and Montoro felt more than ever convinced that he was in the presence of one whose spirit was akin to his own.

"Hearken, Bautista," he said, after a short pause. "I have within the past few hours copied out part of a commission against the miserable inhabitants of this new world, lately granted by our king, and framed by the greatest divines and lawyers of our old home. Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuessa bear drafts of this commission with them, and be well assured that they will not spare its execution. But stay; I will read thee the very words themselves, addressed for peremptory orders to these poor heathen, ignorant of the very language in which we call upon them to obey our faith and laws:—'If you will not consent to take our Church for your Church, the holy father the Pope for your spiritual head, our king for your king and sovereign lord over your kings and countries, then, with the help of God, I will enter your country by force; I will carry on war against you with the utmost violence; I will subject you to the yoke of obedience; I will take your wives and children and will make them slaves; I will seize your goods, and do you all the mischief in my power, as rebellious subjects, who will not submit to their lawful sovereign. And I protest that all the bloodshed and calamities that shall follow shall be due to you, and not to us.'"[2]

As Montoro came to the end of his sheet he folded and replaced it in his pocket, and then, utterly forgetful of his companion in his reawakened indignation, he wandered away from the verandah, and betook himself to the simple dwelling of the good clerigo, Bartholomew de las Casas, who was now finally settled in Hispaniola, by royal desire, as a missionary to the natives.

"But of what use," he exclaimed this afternoon in sorrowful despair to his equally weary-hearted visitor, "of what use, Diego, to waste our time and strength, in trying to teach the sublime truths of religion to men whose spirits are broken, and their minds weakened by oppression?"

"Of what use, indeed," assented Montoro with passion, "to try to teach men to believe in a religion professing itself the religion of love and mercy, while they are slaves to those calling themselves its followers, and who are acting at the same time the part of demons!"

"You speak strongly," said the true-hearted, good Christian bishop. "But verily I cannot say you have not reason. Knowest thou, my friend, that when first we settled ourselves upon this fertile fragrant island, not yet fifteen years ago, the inhabitants numbered above three millions, and now they scarcely amount to fifteen thousand. Scarcely fifteen thousand!" he repeated slowly, and in awe-struck tones, as though he scarcely could endure to recall the awful fact to his own remembrance.

Montoro de Diego looked at his informant with a startled countenance, and then suddenly bent his eyes upon the ground as though he expected to see the 'brothers' blood' crying for vengeance from the soil.

"It is no good," he exclaimed at last. "I will stay in this accursed place no longer. To my restlessness I might have opposed a sense of duty; but to fight any longer against my miserable disgust at the scenes around me is beyond my strength."

The bishop mused awhile before replying slowly,—

"And yet, good example is valuable."

"Elsewhere it may be, but not here," returned Diego hastily. "Else, Riverenza, must your own bright example long since have turned devils into saints, murderers into good Samaritans. What good did your example do, even in the matter of the repartimientos? Did your giving up your share of these unjustly and basely-enslaved creatures serve any other purpose than that of impoverishing one who ever uses his wealth for the relief of suffering? Nay, further, your good example on this accursed island worked actually on the side of evil."

"How so?" asked Las Casas. But he looked as though he knew the answer, even before his companion said heavily,—

"Even we reaped some miserable advantage at 'Palmyra' from your renunciation. Some half-dozen poor creatures who had thriven under your mild rule were made over to us to die. But see," Montoro suddenly exclaimed, interrupting himself and springing to his feet, "the day is passing, and I should have been in San Domingo hours ago. I started early enough, but some suspicion that I was leaving mischief behind me brought me back, and now poor Don is dead."

It was only a dog that was dead, but that dog was Don—the dog on whose head his mother's tears had fallen—the dog for whose sake he had once endangered his own life; and with these thoughts suddenly recalled to his mind, Montoro de Diego was glad to beat a hasty retreat from further observation.

Las Casas remained deep in earnest ponderings long after his friend had left him, for he too had begun to think that it was vain to continue his efforts of philanthropy any longer on the island of Hispaniola, and that he would do wisely to exert his influence as protector of the Indians in new fields, less overcrowded with the refuse population of his own country.

Meantime Montoro reached the town, and was instantly accosted by a young man of about his own age, and tall, bright, and handsome as himself, but with a dash of off-hand daring about his person and manner instead of Montoro's lofty dignity.

"Diego!" he exclaimed, as soon as he caught sight of him, "you are just the comrade I most desire in our coming campaign. Throw thy paltry bales into the sea, man, and enrol thyself under our captain's standard."

"But who then is thy captain?" asked Montoro with some interest, "and what is this new campaign? Thou art ever mad, my Cortes, upon some fresh undertaking."

The handsome young notary laughed.

"Better that than sticking to the same spot till thy feet bid fair to grow to the soil, like thy money-grubber, Don Alonzo, yonder. But, I warrant thee, this undertaking now on hand is no mere pastime for a summer's evening. Our captain, Don Diego Velasquez, hath it in commission to conquer an island, the island of Cuba."

"Ay, doubtless," returned Montoro bitterly. "And hath also leave and licence, and perchance it may be even orders likewise, to kill off the inhabitants there, like so many mosquitoes, as hath been done here!"

The other shrugged his shoulders rather contemptuously.

"Verily, Diego, thou and our bishop yonder have been bitten by the same dog. But to comfort thy heart, know that Bartholomew Las Casas is to be invited to go with us to guard thy pets, lest one of us should so much as slap one of their brats to still its overmuch squalling at strange faces. So, what say'st thou now?"

Montoro's face cleared to a smile.

"This is what I say—that if Las Casas goes, then do I go also."

[CHAPTER XIX.]

THE WAY TO TREAT THE REDSKINS.

"Montoro! I say, Montoro, I have news for thee."

"Out with it then," came the answer from our friend, who was once more engaged in his occupation of eight years before at Veragua. Houses were built there for a colony that was never founded, and now Montoro and his companions were building houses on the island of Cuba, with a very fair prospect of inhabiting them.

Only one chief had offered any determined resistance to the invaders, and even his followers were not numerous enough to excite much anxiety. He had fled from his native land of Hispaniola to escape the Spanish rule, and now he was brought to bay, and compelled to make a final effort for independence. It had just been decided to send out a party against him, strong enough, as Velasquez put it, "To conquer the rebel once for all, and have done with it."

"And I am to be one of the party," said Juan de Cabrera, excitedly. "And if you choose you also are to have a hand in catching this Hatuey, and helping to make him an example."

"He is that already," replied Montoro gravely. "Would that the poor sheep, his countrymen, knew how to profit by it."

"By my faith," exclaimed Cabrera impatiently, "you are a queer fellow, Diego. Wouldst thou then that these 'poor sheep,' who are as a hundred to one of us, should know their strength, and shoot us down like vermin in a barn?"

Montoro flung down the great wooden hammer with which he had been driving stakes, and came forward, his face set with mingled sternness and sorrow.

"Ay, truly, Juan de Cabrera, less would it shame me that the heathen should thus treat us, than to know that we Christians have acted that hideous part towards them. Hast thou heard of the late campaign in Trinidad, where our countrymen have burnt alive in cold blood—to save trouble!—nigh upon two hundred men and women, and innocent babes scarcely more helpless than their kind and gentle-natured fathers? How shall Spanish tears or Spanish blood, thinkest thou, ever wash out that foul stain?"

Juan de Cabrera turned away for a moment, for he had no answer ready. When he turned round again he said, with an assumption of flippancy he was for once far from feeling,—

"Ah, well, I have not heard this shady tale before, and I don't suppose that it has lost any of its shadows by coming through thy lips. Doubtless it was but a toss up whether our brethren should be killed, or should kill."

"Not so," said Montoro, sternly. "Juan Bono hath confessed, himself, that the unhappy creatures whom he thus repaid had been as fathers and mothers to him, and to all his party; but he had been sent to make slaves, and he made them the more readily by burning part of the population before resistance was dreamt of."

He stopped abruptly, and stooped to pick up his tool. Then once more raising his eyes to his companion's face, he said slowly and quietly—

"That is all; but a ghastly all; and I would to God that the heathen had shot me ere I heard it."

There was a long silence after this ere Cabrera ventured once more to ask—

"But, Diego, for all this thou wilt join us, wilt thou not? Even for the sake of thine own feelings thou shouldst do so to help in the promotion of fair play."

"If I were the Governor himself," said Montoro hastily, "I should exert myself in vain for justice where this unfortunate Hatuey is concerned. He has been as a king in his own land, and now we dare to proclaim him a rebel because he proves himself a patriot, and in the face of despair fights for his country and his people's liberty. No; I will have nought to do with 'catching' this noble-hearted heathen Cacique, and aiding to throw him into slavery."

Cabrera cast a keen, furtive glance at his companion at the utterance of that last word. Evidently, although Diego had heard that horrible Trinidad news, he had not yet heard of the doom pronounced against the troublesomely desperate Cacique of Hispaniola, when he should be once safely caught in the hands of the Cuban governor. As for Don Juan de Cabrera, he had no inclination to give the information. To turn the subject, he said after a short pause—

"Well then, friend Diego, if thou comest not with us, what is it thou hast a mind to? Something nobler, I trust, than wood-cutting, as though thou wert born a boor in a German forest rather than a Spanish nobleman."

"I feel little inclined to boast just now of my Spanish birthright, I can tell thee," said Montoro heavily. "But to answer thy question—Ay; I have other plans on hand than my present employment. I accompany Las Casas on his progress of pacification through the island, and we hope great things from our efforts, both for the natives and the colony."

Cabrera's shoulders went up in a slight shrug, almost in spite of himself.

"It is to be hoped that you and the clerigo have picked your associates carefully for your peaceful expedition," he said, with a touch of scorn. "Otherwise I fear me there may chance some rubs to your tender consciences ere it is accomplished."

"Little danger," answered Montoro, confidently, adding with a smile, "for we have, as you say, chosen our companions with due thought. You see, we have not invited you."

Juan de Cabrera laughed.

"Thanks for the compliment, my friend. I would a hundred-fold rather be found guilty of too much impetuosity, than of a calm, cold-blooded calculation."

The smile died out of Montoro's face as he now exclaimed hotly—

"It is easy at all times for men to sneer at right and justice, and to clothe evil with grand words. In Spain our impetuosity has been a sword in the hand of honour; why is it here a weapon that would be disdained even by the paid tool of an assassin? But there, Juan, I but waste my breath on thee. This is no true impetuosity, no true impulsive daring, that robs and massacres the harmless peoples of these lands; but rather is it the base, despicable, grovelling fruit of cold-blooded reckonings of ounces of gold against lives. By heaven, I—"

"There, there, Toro," interrupted the light-hearted cavalier, with unusual quietness of manner, "do not spend thy eloquence upon an unworthy mortal like me. And for thy solace learn that, although methinks thou and the clerigo draw the line too fine, I loathe some of our doings out here well-nigh as greatly as thou canst do thyself. But adios, for my party will be starting on the Hatuey hunt without me if I do not hasten."

So saying, the gay adventurer departed with an air as jaunty as though he were bound for one of the Court tournaments of Spain, to be rewarded by winning kingly smiles and his lady's scarf. And shortly after his friend Montoro de Diego, with Las Casas, departed on their Cuban tour, accompanied by a number of armed followers, who were intended, by their formidable appearance, to ensure unbroken peace, not to win it after battle. But unhappily Juan de Cabrera's prognostications proved truer than Diego's hopes.

"Well, comrade," said a soldier to a companion at the evening halt of the first day's march; "well, comrade, thou hast then recovered health and strength in time to have another try for fortune; at any rate for such flimsy fragments as our present soft-hearted leaders will permit us to accept. For my part, I had fain that I had been rather sent off after the rebel Cacique. There will be more pickings to be gathered up there I doubt, than we shall be able to find baskets for in this direction. But as for saving souls—"

"As for saving souls," interrupted the man addressed in a deep, fierce tone; "as for that matter, Guzman, we will save our own souls by clearing God's earth of these vile, idol-serving vermin. Joshua was sent forth of old, as Father Gonzalo saith, to rid the world of the heathen, and so have we the like mission now. And for one Andrea Botello will obey."

Guzman stared.

"My faith, Botello, let not the noble Señor Diego hear thee speak thus, or thou wilt most assuredly get ordered back to the settlement again!"

But Botello's eyes blazed with a yet fiercer fire, and his brow grew blacker, as he muttered:

"Against those who have a mission from on high, man's orders avail nought. The commands to slay and destroy, and leave not one remaining, have come to me from authority, supreme e'en over the Governor Velasquez himself. Speak not to me of orders!"

"Nay, then, that will I not," murmured Guzman to himself, as he went off to more cheerful companions. "I will spend no more words on thee, friend Botello," he continued in soliloquy, "so long as it appears that the remnants of thy late fever are yet burning in thy veins. It might chance thou wouldst find thou hadst an order to stick thy poniard into me."

A few minutes later the prudent soldier was consulting with some friends, whether a warning hint respecting Botello's aspirations should not be given to their priest commander.

"But say, then," laughed another, "what need to trouble the good clerigo for nought? What can one man's moody fancies do of harm, with so many against him on the other side?"

"Umph, no," said another, somewhat less confidently; "if all the rest are on the other side; but one fanatic can make an army of disciples, if his feelings be but strong enough."

"Just so," was the off-hand reply. "If they be strong enough, but not if they be the half-delirious fancies of a sick man, who ought still to be in his bed at St. Jago yonder, instead of travelling with us. But come on, let's hurry up to that party of redskins over there; they seem well laden, and for my part I prefer to dine on their providing than on my own, or that of our commanders. They treat us better."

The whole of the little expedition, including Las Casas and Montoro, appeared to be of the same way of thinking, to judge by the way the hospitable and kind-hearted Indians were soon surrounded. Whether owing to the absence of newspapers and telegrams in those days, or to the hopes of the poor inhabitants of the New World that kindness would gain kindness, at any rate in their own case, cannot now be said; but while the refugee Cacique, who had fled from the barbarities of the Spaniards on his own island, was being hunted down in one part of Cuba, in another the gentle, courteous natives were treating their invaders with the most true-hearted friendliness.

"They must, verily, be worse than the tigers of the forests who harm these simple creatures!" exclaimed Montoro one day, as a number of Indians hastened to the new encampment with the farewell offerings of fruit, rice, cooked food, and various little presents as tokens of peace and good-will, accepting smiles for thanks with inborn graciousness.

Las Casas smiled at his friend's ardour.

"I feel now," he said joyously, "that I can afford to smile, for all things here are going forward as I would wish. The natives are learning that there are at least some amongst the white men who have a knowledge of right and wrong. And for these with us, Montoro, thinkest thou not that they have begun to find it pleasant to continue in well-doing, and to awaken smiles instead of tears? For myself, I do hope so, I confess."

"And I," assented Montoro earnestly. "I do believe, my father, that thy noble example has reaped at length the good fruit it has so long merited."

The two friends passed on, nor marked a pallid-faced, fierce-eyed man, who had stood near them, and now muttered between his teeth, gazing after the clerigo:

"Tremble, thou Saul, who wouldst spare Agag, and the chief of the spoil, when thou shouldst destroy! Guard thyself, lest the vengeance that falls upon the enemies of the Cross encompass thee also, as were meet."

[CHAPTER XX.]

THE MASSACRE AT CAONAO.

Some weeks had passed, and all had hitherto gone well, when one day, on arriving at the suburbs of the native town of Caonao, Las Casas announced it to be his intention to remain there two or three days, making it the limit of his present expedition, and then to return to the head-quarters of Velasquez, with the report of their doings and adventures.

"Meantime," he said, with the cheerful good-humour proper to his nature when at ease for others—"meantime we will make holiday for the next forty-eight hours."

"And," said Diego smiling, "thanks to our good red brothers here, we can also give our holiday its proper accompaniment of feasting."

"Just so," agreed Las Casas, with an answering smile. "I confess the truth; it was the sight of the abundant supplies of all kinds with which we are provided, that led me to resolve on marking this terminus of our pleasant expedition with something of the nature of a festival. Gather the men for me, Diego, some into the surrounding houses, the remainder may well encamp out here in these gardens, fit for Paradise itself."

"And for yourself, father?" asked Montoro. "Are you bent on other explorations?"

"Not very distant ones," was the bright answer. "I am but about to explore yon temple, and endeavour to use my stammering tongue for God's glory with its inmates. They may now better believe, I trust, that we come as bearers of a message of mercy."

"Truly I hope so," replied Montoro, as he nodded the brief adieu to his friend, and then turned quickly to execute the duties committed to him. In thus hastily turning, he almost knocked over a man who, unobserved, had silently moved up close to the two chiefs of the party, until he stood almost shoulder to shoulder with de Diego.

Diego was about to administer a sharp and haughty reproof to the presumptuous intruder on the society of his superiors, but a second look at his companion checked the words on his lips; and he stood a listener instead of a speaker, as the man uttered, through drawn lips that scarcely moved, a wild denunciation of the Amorites, the Hivites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Gergashites, and the Jebusites.

Those who hear of the matter now may feel tempted to smile, but there was no smile on the countenance of the young nobleman, no feeling of mirth in his heart, as he stood facing the mad fanatic. The man's eyes were fixed in a glassy stare that saw nought then visible; and his eager, bloodthirsty curses against those he denounced as the enemies of God, and of his Christ, made Montoro's blood run cold.

"Friend," he began at last—"friend, rouse thyself. Recall thy scattered thoughts. Those enemies of God's people, and daring breakers of His laws, have perished for their iniquities more than two thousand years ago. What priestly tales from the Holy Scriptures have been startling thy ears of late?"

"He hath been ill, at death's door with malarious fever, but a few days before joining this expedition, Señor," answered another of the soldiers coming forward now, and hastily putting his hand on his comrade's arm, as though to draw him away, but at the same time with an air of secret warning which, at another time, would not have escaped the keen eyes of the young officer. Now, however, Montoro was anxious to get the clerigo's wishes carried out before his return on the scene, and he was more intent on taking a view of the ground around him, as to its capabilities for comfortable encampment, than in noting the actions of individuals.

"See," he said kindly, but somewhat absently, "yonder come our kind Indian friends with supplies of water; doubtless thy comrade is suffering from thirst. Go forward with him, and see that his wants are well attended to."

The man bowed, and quickly pulled his companion on to hinder the word answer he seemed about to give.

"Thou art a very fool, Botello," he muttered angrily, when out of earshot of Diego. "Of what good to rouse us up to help fulfil thy purpose, when thy blabbing lips must go well-nigh to betray it, to the one of all others most keen to hinder it. The clerigo hath some thoughts to spare from his red lambs to his own comfortable living, but this Señor Diego carrieth the vile heathen on his back to his own greatest detriment. Verily, methinks he would far sooner have that sword of thine pierce him than one of them."

Botello turned, with those dull-burning, sullen eyes of his fixed upon his friend.

"If it is thus with him," he said between his clenched teeth, "then will he receive due punishment in witnessing the slaughter of those he thus dares to cherish. But come, the hour has arrived, and the victims."

And suddenly, with a wild cry, he dashed forward towards a group of some hundreds of defenceless Indians—men, women, and children—laden with fruits, and jars of water for their Spanish guests. Snatching his sword from its sheath it flashed for a few moments in the sun, as he brandished it on high, and then, with a madman's howl, he plunged it into the bodies of an infant and its mother who was advancing with a timid smile to offer drink to the thirsty travellers.

Tearing the reeking weapon from his first quivering victims he rushed on over them, dealing death and wounds frantically around him. For some moments he was alone in his dread activity. The Indians were spellbound with the dismal horror. Even his own fellows were awe-struck with the impetus of the hideous onslaught.

But quickly the scene changed. In his fatal career the wretched madman cut down the beloved young squaw of a tall and unusually powerful Indian, before he could fling himself before her as a cover. Baffled of his loving effort he threw himself upon the Spaniard, utterly regardless, in his despairing fury, of the blood-dripping sword. Snapping it with his hands as though it had been a thread from his native cotton plants, he tossed away the pieces, and then, with those sinewy, disengaged fingers, throttled his antagonist, and cast the dead body of the wretched Botello beside that of the murdered Indian.

The red man's ferocious shout of triumph was the signal for answering shouts of fury from the Spaniards. They had looked on while innocent and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light, the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were piled in awful heaps around the camping ground.

To this drear, sickening sight Montoro de Diego rushed forward as he saw the tumult that was raging. Guzman, one of the few who remained faithful to his leader's trust in him, flew to the temple to summon Las Casas. The redskins' friend was just issuing from the building when his follower reached it, breathless with haste, pallid with horror, and bespattered with gore from the pitiful victims who had been falling in wholesale crowds around him. The countenance of the clerigo turned pale also as he caught sight of the panting soldier.

"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Our brethren—what of them? Is it a massacre?"

Guzman nodded. He could not speak; one word he managed to gasp out—"Go." For a massacre it was indeed, though not of the nature imagined by Las Casas; not a massacre perpetrated by ignorant heathen of those from whom they had scarce ever received ought but wrong, but a massacre barbarously committed by Christians on those from whom they had received nought but kindness and submissive respect. But Las Casas waited not to learn more from his breathless retainer. He saw the wild tumult surging in the distance; he heard the confused roar of mingled shrieks, shouts, yells, and groans; and whatever was going forward that concerned his company his place was in their midst, to die with them if their rescue were no longer possible.

In a moment of time this decision had darted through his brain, and the next instant he was flying over the ground that intervened between the temple of Caonao, and the open plain where the deadliest of the uproar was in awful progress.

Two or three huts of less pretensions than the houses in the town were scattered here and there. Close to the fighting, dying, struggling multitudes stood one of these wooden buildings somewhat larger than the rest. In it a number of the hospitable Indian women had been gathered, a few minutes since, cooking and preparing food for their cruel invaders. Now a panic-stricken, shrieking rabble of both sexes and all ages was dashing into it, Indians pursued by Spaniards—Indians, as Las Casas perceived at the first horror-stricken glance, with nothing but crushed fruits and flowers in their hands, or wounded infants moaning in their arms, Spaniards with blood-dropping, crimsoned swords. Then he knew all. A groan of bitterest anguish burst from his lips—

"Oh, my God!"

The words were a prayer, an abject prayer to the Most High for mercy. Had the earth at that moment opened her black jaws and swallowed up every Spaniard present, had fire from heaven licked them up and carried them to hell, Las Casas would have felt no wonder. He wondered more that an all-powerful God should spare.

One moment he gave to that groan, one moment to that prayer, and then, throwing himself in the doorway of the hut, he dashed aside a half-frenzied soldier who was entering in pursuit of the wretched fugitives, and uttered a mighty, furious shout:

"Back, Spaniards, back, you dastardly mean hounds, every one of you, or run your swords thus hallowed with the blood of the innocents into your leader's body. I invite you to it, fiends every one of you rather than men, that I may the more speedily close mine eyes for ever on this scene fit only for the shades of hell."

Then he looked into the hut upon the huddled flock of trembling, weeping, wounded human sheep. Some had climbed, for refuge from their bloodthirsty pursuers, to the rafters of the roof, and hung there, with their wild eyes gleaming, through their long black hair, down upon events below, and their white teeth chattering for fear.

The sudden appearance of Las Casas upon the spot, and the change of his usual mild demeanour to one of such haughty, biting indignation, had created a temporary, rapid lull about the spot where he stood. A permanent arrest of the massacre in that direction, he all too fondly believed, and so he began to soothe and reassure the poor creatures gathered together for death within the walls of that humble little dwelling. Some few words of comfort in their own language he knew, and spoke most eagerly, but the deep sympathy of his countenance, his pitying eyes, spoke still more eloquently, and above all, his fame had come before him even here, as a father and friend of the helpless.

Gradually some put back the hair from their faces and ventured to look around them, mothers loosened their convulsive grasp of their children, and the climbers on the rafters swung themselves down to the ground again. But even Las Casas could see that all was not yet achieved for the restoration of peace. At a few hundred yards' distance the horrible, shameful work of slaughter still continued, and once more quitting the hut and its defenceless multitude, Bartholomew Las Casas dashed onwards to repeat his efforts at arresting the wholesale murder of defenceless men, helpless women, the aged and the infant.

"Oh, Montoro!" he ejaculated as to himself, as he neared this fresh scene of horror. "Alas! Montoro de Diego, where canst thou have been to allow such things!"

A voice from beside his feet answered him—"I am here, my friend. Disabled at the first moment. But do not heed me. Hasten to save what poor remnant there may yet remain of these unhappy victims."

Las Casas looked at his half fainting friend, then at the dreadful mêlée beyond, and with a hurried—"I will return immediately," he ran on, and a second time hurled his furious commands at his followers to cease their cowardly slaughter of their helpless prey.

A second time the leader's voice and the leader's presence cowed the Spaniards back to order—momentarily. From the rear where the hut lay there suddenly broke upon the air wilder shrieks and yells than had been heard before. Deep oaths and curses of Spanish throats were mingled with the shrill Indian cries, and off darted the soldiers gathered about Las Casas to join their other comrades. They were like so many score of bloodhounds, with the taste for blood so aroused that it could no more be satisfied. Not again could the friend of the Indians reach the doorway of that hut until it had become a charnel-house, so crammed with the dead and dying, that the stoutest heart might turn away from the ghastly task of learning if there were yet any, amongst those heaps of mangled bodies, to whom it might be possible to speak last words of pity.

There had been five hundred living human beings crowded into that building when Las Casas left it ten minutes ago, now there lay there five hundred mangled bodies lying in crimson pools, some already stiff and stark, some writhing in the death agonies, none ever to see the sun in this world again, or to learn on earth that the religion called the Christian faith, which those white intruders came to spread, was not the religion of a demon more vile than any their untaught imaginings had ever dared portray.

A poor mother's despairing wail over her mortally wounded child, had been the slight spark needed to rekindle the blind rage of the Spanish soldiers. A soldier had held a crucifix before the infant's dying eyes, and the mother, fearing fresh cruelties, had wildly dashed it from the man's hand. That was more than provocation enough for gold-seekers who salved their greed for wealth and fame with the plea, that their journeyings were to widen the limits of Christ's kingdom.

Scarcely had the crucifix fallen to the ground ere the murdered woman fell beside it. Many a dead body had the man to move the following day ere he recovered the treasured symbol of an immortal love. All that night the leader of the expedition knelt, alone, in prayer.

All that night Montoro de Diego lay praying, faint and weak from loss of blood, shed at the commencement of the hideous fray in the vain effort to arrest the massacre. Never, so long as Montoro lived, did he hear the name of the little town of Caonao without a shudder, never did he remember the sounds of those women's wails, the sounds of those children's cries of dying agony, without a moan escaping his own lips, and a shivering horror overwhelming him that such things should have been.

One day for a day of burial, and then, in a solemn hush as though a funeral cortége, or a train of vanquished fugitives, the expedition formed again for marching, and retraced its steps to St. Jago. Montoro made one attempt to cheer his friend, but the soothing words were hurriedly put aside.

"Nay, nay, Diego. Speak not to me of comfort in our shame and bitter affliction. I came forth confident in my own strength, in my own power to rule man and to guide those under me in the ways of peace, and the Lord of Hosts has thus humbled my presumptuousness in the dust. Speak not to me of comfort; there is none save in prayer."

[CHAPTER XXI.]

THE PATRIOT CACIQUE HATUEY.

The march back to the Cuban seat of government was made more rapidly than the march out had been. Then, all had been gaiety and brightness. A band of picked men under a favourite and joyous-natured leader, peace and good-will for their motto, and friendly natives hovering ever around them as they journeyed, to turn each day into one of pleasant feastings.

Now the leader had but stern, grief-stricken eyes to turn upon those under his command, and the men walked on bowed with a sense of well-merited disgrace. Few and far between were the offerings made to them now, and those were bestowed with trembling hands, and countenances marked by abject terror. None of the circumstances of the homeward way tempted the explorers to linger.

But full as was the generous-hearted Montoro's cup of sorrow, it was not yet so full but that it was to be called upon to hold more, even to overflowing.

The shadows of the marching men were beginning to lengthen as they moved along, as though the shades had learnt the art of deception with each hour of the growing day, and wished to startle the whole race of earth's crawlers, beetles, snakes, worms, and their fellows, with the semblance of an oncoming race of giants. The air was full of humming insects, quivering heat, and the rich scent of leaves and flowers.

The Spaniards stepped onwards slowly. They were near the end of their journey now, and their eyes were tired with gazing at that

"Landscape winking through the heat."

A hot shimmer over all things, such as Tennyson had never seen when he wrote a line which almost makes one feel warm even on a cold winter's day.

Montoro was feeling depressed and weary, and sentiments of gladness and regret were pretty equally mingled in his breast as he saw the various roofs close before him of the newly-founded town of St. Jago. But personal sorrow cannot be indulged by leaders.

"Put your best feet forward, my friends," cried Bartholomew Las Casas at this moment. However bitterly he might grieve over recent occurrences, there was still sufficient of the spirit of the commander in him to rebel against the notion of reappearing before Velasquez, Cortes, and the rest of their fellow-adventurers, like a company of whipped dogs; but he need not have troubled himself, for an event was taking place at that hour in St. Jago that absorbed all interests.