at share is yours in all this?
Whose tool have you been from first to last?"

"Whose?"--the lad had regained his careless mien--"surely not that of
Dame Venus or her son, Master Cupid! It is well for me to find employ
in the wilderness--never again dare I seek service with lord or
lady!"

"Your lady lost her wits ere she made you ambassador on a love
quest!"

"Without doubt you speak truth, Excellency. I might add--(had I not
been whipped into politeness to my superiors!) that the deluded maid
had lost her wits ere she fell into love with a face seen from a
balcony--or with a voice whispering to her in the darkness of a rose
bower!"

Don Ruy looked at him without much of sweetness in the glance.

"I've two minds regarding you," he stated,--"and one of them is to
thresh you for faithlessness and a forward tongue!"

"Then I beg that you choose the other mind!" said the secretary, on
his feet, alert, and ready to make a run if need be. "Don Diego could
not well spare me in the midst of his struggles with the heathen, and
his desire that honest things be set down in the 'Relaciones.'
Moreover--Excellency, it would take many words to convince that pious
gentleman that I had been faithless in aught--to you!"

There was a pitiful little quaver in the last words by which Don Ruy
was made ashamed of his threat, for despite his anger that the lad was
over close in the confidence of the unknown Mexican maid, yet the
stripling had been a source of joy as they rode side by side over the
desert reaches, and he knew that only for him had those Indian
thoughts been given that were heresy most rank for any other ears. In
ways numberless had the devotion of the lad been manifest.

[Illustration: THE PAGE _Page 198_]

But Don Ruy had little heart to discuss the matter, he was still
flushed with the annoying thought that the young cub had been let know
every whisper of the moment under the roses. He walked away without
more words.

And Yahn who was watching the two, was very glad in her heart. She
could plainly see that those two who had laughed at her sometimes,
were having a quarrel that was a trouble to each, for Don Ruy walked
away with an angry frown, and the page stood by the terrace steps a
long time, and looked across the river with no smile on his face.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COURIER AND THE MAID

Ere the morning star saw its face in the sacred lake of the Na-im-be
mountains, Tahn-te, the Po-Ahtun-ho, had done