r tryst earn no purses as
guard for girls of the street,--sacred walls will save them that
trouble for a time--whether maid or wife I dare promise you that! It
is as well you know. Time is wasted seeking adventure placed beyond
mortal reach."

"Convent--eh? Do your holy retreats teach the little tricks the lady
knew? And do they furnish their vestals with poems of romance and
silks and spices of Kathay?"

He drew from an inner pocket a little scarf of apple green with
knotted fringes, and butterflies, various colored in dainty broidery.
As the folds fell apart an odor of sweetness stole into the shadowy
room of the monastery, and the priest was surprised into an
ejaculation at sight of such costly evidence, but he smothered it
hastily in a muttered prayer.

After that he listened to few of the stranger's gibes and quips, but
with a book of prayers on his knee he looked the youth over carefully,
recalled the outburst of Don Diego as to origin, and the adventurer's
own threat to build a ship and sail where chance pointed. Plainly,
this seeker of trysts, or any other thing promising adventure, had
more of resource than one might expect from a battered stranger lifted
out of the gutter for the last rites.

The priest--who looked a good soldier and who was called Padre Vicente
"de los Chichimecos" (of the wild tribes) read further in his book of
hours, and then spoke the thing in his mind.

"For a matter of many years in this land of the Indies I have waited
for a man of discreet determination for a certain work. The virgin
herself led me to the gutter where you groaned in the dark, and I here
vow to build her a chapel if this thought of mine bears fruit."

"Hump! My thanks to our Lady,--and I myself will see to the building
of the chapel. But tell me of the tree you would plant, and we'll then
have a guess at the fruit. It may prove sour to the taste! Monkly
messes appealed to me little on the other side of the seas. I've yet
to test their flavor on this shore of adventure."

Padre Vicente ignored the none too respectful comment--and took from
his pocket a bit of virgin gold strung on a thread of deer sinew.

"Your name is Don Ruy Sandoval," he said. "You are in this land for
adventure. You content yourself with the latticed window and the
strife of the streets--why not look for the greater things? You have
wealth and power at your call--why not search for an empire
of--this?"

Then he showed the virgin gold wor