not a
cheery thing! As for the daughter--I dare call myself her foster
brother, and I dare pray for her that she finds the chance to die in
the open!"

"What a little world it is!" said the adventurer. "Do you mean that
you did come with a message--and that your heart failed you as to
consequences? You failed the lady--my unknown lady of the tryst?"

"Excellency:--the maid thought you a person of adventure, and she
dared hope to buy your services--then--you two know best what you
whispered in the dark!--but she no longer thought of purchase money in
exchange for helping her escape to a ship;--God knows what she thought
of, for you must not forget that she is called mad, Senor! But with
all her madness she would not have approached your highness with the
same freedom had she dreamed that your rank was high as the camp
whispered to me the day I came for speech with you! That rank told me
a story I could not go back and tell her, Senor--so--I used my forged
letter written on viceregal paper, and secured service with a man
instead of a maid."

"And left her waiting?"

"I could do her no help by going back--she is no worse off than if I
had not come."

"She sent you for the silken broidery?"

"She said if you could come to her service, the scarf or a certain
page of a certain book would serve as a sign:--letters are difficult
things--boys who carry them are tripped up at times and learn the
might of a lash. To send a jewelled bauble and ask for the silken
scarf was a less harmful thing for the messengers."

"You imp of an Indian devil! a souvenir was sent me--and a message--and
I am hearing no word of it until now in this pagan land!"

"Excellency:--the message is of little moment now--it was only a
matter of a tryst--and you were too far on the journey! But the ardor
of the Capitan Gonzalvo may bring us all strange moments,--and it may
be some graves! If mine should be among them, and you should live to
go back, you can take from my neck the bauble trusted to me by the
lady. It is one of the records of her madness. But you will not quite
laugh at it, Senor--and you will forgive me that I could not give it
to you as she had dreamed in her madness that I could easily do."

"Mad? By our Lady!--there has been no madness from first to last but
my own when I was tricked away from her by lies pious and politic!
Oh--oh!--our padre was in it deep, and I have served their purpose!
And you--you girl-faced little devil--wh