EBIRD'S CALL

Even in the long after years in stately Christian Spain, Don Ruy was a
silent man when his serene lady in stiff brocades and jewelled shoes
would mock at court pageantry and sigh for the reckless days when she
had worn the trappings of a page and followed his steps into the north
land of barbaric mysteries.

Mystery much of it had remained for her! The life of the final days in
the terraced village by the great river had been masked and cloaked
for her. Ysobel and Jose had been silent guards, and Don Ruy could not
be cajoled into speech!

But there had been a morning he suddenly became a very compelling
commander for all of them; and his will was that the cavalcade head
for the south and Mexico as quickly as might be, and that Padre
Vicente de Bernaldez separate from them all and seek converts where he
would. A horse and food was allowed to him, but no other thing.

Don Diego exclaimed with amazement at such arrangement, and warned Don
Ruy that the saints above, and Mother Church in Spain, would demand
account for such act on the part of even Don Ruy Sandoval!

"Is it indeed so?" asked Don Ruy, and smiled with a bitter meaning as
he looked on the padre:--"Will you, senor priest, tell this company it
is at your own will and request that you remain in this land of the
barbarians? Or is your mind changed, and do you fancy Seville as a
pleasant place for a journey?"

But Padre Vicente turned the color of a corpse, and said openly before
them all, that he asked freedom to journey to other Indian villages.
Thus, white and silent he was let go. He went without farewell. If he
found other villages none can tell, but the men of a great Order
framed before the building of the Egyptian pyramids, do know that the
traces of a like Order is to-day in one of the villages of that
province of New Spain, and that there is legend of a white priest who
lived in their terraces of the mesa, and taught them certain things of
the strange outside world so long as they let him live. But his name
is not remembered by men.

What Don Ruy Sandoval said to the Viceroy of Mexico on his return, was
in private conference, but a royal galleon carried him, and carried a
strangely found Mexic bride, across the wide seas to Spain, where the
wonderful "Relaciones" were made the subject of much converse, but
never printed, and during the lifetime of the adventurer called Ruy
Sandoval, the province of New Spain along the Rio Grande del