le devil should be moved to sacrifice
now, I would be the nearest to his hand--think you he would make ill
use of my youth and tenderness?"

"His Sanctity, the padre was indeed wise that no word of this was
breathed in the viceregal ears of Mexico," said Don Diego with a
testiness not yet subdued over the question of utter damnation for the
souls unregenerate. "Piety would carry me far--but no warrant is mine
to follow even the Highest where cannibals do wait for unholy
sustenance!" and he arose and bowed to Don Ruy.

"Oh--Name of the Devil!" said his noble ward, and laughed and
stretched his legs. "I may not be so unholy as your words would
suggest. Give not a dog a bad name in the days of his youth!"

And at this the scandalized and pious dignitary multiplied words to
make clear how far from such meaning were his devoted intentions. But
if wild tribes must be fed ere their souls could be reached,--victims
could be found other than the heir of a duchess!

At which outburst Don Ruy suggested that he save his pious breath and
devote it to prayers, and to take some of his own medicine by
remembrance that soul of king and soul of peasant weighed the same
before high God.

"After which devout exhortation from your servant, good father, we
again give ear to the tale of that devil's disciple--the Greek Teo,"
he said, "Did they find him in the sand? And did the merciful dame
hide in the sand also?--if so the prison might not be without hope.
Holy Saint Damien!--to think that the man walked these same stony
heights--and drank from that pool!"

"They never found him in the sand." The priest ignored the other
frivolous comment. "They never found him anywhere, and a slave from
the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl
was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise
men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made
a shrine for prayer on the sand beside the stone wall where he was
hidden. Their men set watch on her, she knew it, but not anything did
they find but a girl who made her prayers, and gave no heed to their
shadowings.

"When were ended her days of devotion to the false gods--then she ate,
and drank, and took the way to her own people; with moderate pace she
took that trail north, but when night came, she ran like the wild
thing she was, again to the south, crept unseen again into this
fortress, and led the rescued man as far to the west as might