The lad flushed, then shrugged his shoulders and regarded the toes of
his sandals.

"Excellency--if you require that I tell you--I am most certain never
to get the commission to carry message to lady of yours!" he said so
whimsically that the excellency laughed and promised him constant
employment on such embassies if fortune found him ladies.

"Then:--I must speak myself a failure! A damsel did trust me with some
such message to her cavalier and seeing that the love was all on one
side--and that side her own--I dared not go back and face her--not
even her guerdon could I by any means steal from him; brief:--I saved
my neck by following you and leaving the land!"

"Was she so high in power?"

"Yes:--and--no, Excellency. She was, with all her estates, so close
under the guard of the Viceroy that she could win all favors
but--freedom!"

"How?" queried Don Ruy with wrinkled brow--his thoughts travelling
fast to the converse of the gentle maniac as told him by the padre.
"Has the Viceroy then a collection of pretty birds in cages--and must
they sing only for the viceregal ear?"

"I cannot tell as to other cages, Senor, but this one was meant to
sing only for a viceregal relative:--if she proved heretic, then the
convent waited and her lands were otherwise disposed of."

"Hum! Then even in the provinces such rulings work as swiftly as at
court! Well, what outer charge was there?"

"The strongest possible charge, Excellency. The mother of the girl had
Indian blood, and, despite the wealth and Christian teaching of her
husband--returned to Indian worship at his death. For that she was
called mad, and ended her days in a Convent. The daughter of course
will also be mad if she refuses to be guided by the good friends who
select her husband--that husband was her only gate to freedom, knowing
which the maid did certainly do some mad things:--to strangers she
tried to speak--from her duenna she slipped out in the night time--oh
there is no doubt that all the evidence will show plainly in court
that she is more mad than her mother--"

"Chico!"--The hand of Don Ruy rested on the shoulder of the lad--"You
are telling me the hidden part of a story to which I have listened
from other lips--and your eyes have tears in them!--Tush!--be not
ashamed lad. You yourself have heart for the lady?"

"Not in a way unseemly," retorted the lad, dashing the water from his
eyes,--"to think of the mother dead like that behind the bars is