ngs and make
his way to you or send you appeal." She paused, then said in a quiet
voice, "Should that happen, Don Enrique, on your allegiance, and as a
good Christian, you will do all that you can to put him in the hands of
the Holy Office."

She waited with her blue eyes upon him. He said, and said quietly, "It
was long ago, Madam, when I was a young man and careless. I will do all
that lies in me to do. But Spain is wide and there are ships to Africa
and other shores."

She said, "Yes, I do not see such an one daring to come to Santa Fe! But
they say that ten demons possess a heretic, and that he crosses streams
upon a hair or walks edges of high walls."

With her ringed hand she made gesture of dismissal. He bowed low and
stepped back to his former place.

The sun flooded in at window. Manuel Rodriguez painted steadily. The
Queen sat still, with lifted face and eyes strained into distance. She
sighed and came back from wastes where she would be Christian, oh, where
she would be Christian! and began with a tender, maternal look to talk
with her daughter.

CHAPTER VI

THE door giving upon the great corridor opened. One said, "The King,
Madam!" King Ferdinand entered quietly, in the sober fashion of a
sober and able man. He was cool and balanced, true always to his own
conception of his own dues. The Queen rose and stepped to meet him. They
spoke, standing together, after which he handed her to her chair and
took beside her the other great chair which the pages had swiftly
placed. After greeting his daughter and the Archbishop he looked across
to the painter. "Master Manuel Rodriguez, good day!"

There fell a moment of sun-drenched quiet in which they all sat for
their picture. Then said the King, "Madam, we are together, and here are
those who have been our chief advisers in this affair of discoveries.
Master Christopherus is below. We noted him in the court. Let us have
him here and see this too-long-dragging matter finished! Once for all
abate his demands, or once for all let him go!"

They sent a page. Again there was sunny silence, then in at the door
came the tall, muscular, gray-eyed, silver-haired man whom I had met the
day King Boabdil surrendered Granada.

He made reverence to the Queen and the King and to the Archbishop. It
was the Queen who spoke to him and that gently.

"Master Christopherus, we have had a thousand businesses, and so our
matter here has waited and waited. Today comes unawar