Melchior del Salto felt as if heaven had begun already for him. It was no wonder. His limbs, freed from their galling fetters, lay in luxurious rest on a couch of vicuña-skin; his toil-worn, well-nigh crippled frame was stretched at ease the whole day long; and his ears, so sadly used to blasphemies and cries of pain, had only to drink in the gentle tones of Fray Fernando, or the quiet words of José. He was very happy, and deeply thankful. Still, he did not recover. He had no disease; he was only worn out—“used up.” It was time. Sixteen years was a good term of service at the oar, even for a strong man.

Melchior’s strength had been failing for more than a year; though the lengthened swoon, that drew attention to the fact, was caused by the agitation of his interview with Fray Fernando. He afterwards told his foster-brother that deliverance from bondage had come to him just at the right moment: not too soon, else he might have had to return to a strange unfamiliar world, like a ghost come back from the dead; not too late, since it was good to rest for a little while, ere he went forth on his journey to that home wherein he should rest for ever.

Only one regretful thought troubled the calm of those declining hours. And at last, one day, when José had gone to Lima, and Fray Fernando alone was sitting by his side, the secret sorrow found words.

“Do you want anything, my brother?” the monk asked tenderly, noticing that Melchior’s eyes were fixed upon him with an earnest inquiring gaze.

“Nothing, Señor Don Alfonso. Except what I am trying to find, and cannot.”

“Perhaps I could find it for you.”

“Would to God you could!” Melchior answered with a mournful smile. “I am looking, in that worn, old face of yours, for the dear, young, noble face my heart so loved and reverenced in the days gone by.”

“Then indeed you look in vain, my brother. Don Alfonso Garçia de Fanez is dead and buried long ago; and he who sits here is only Fray Fernando, the Franciscan friar.”

“But this I would fain know, señor, and my brother—where is Don Alfonso buried, and what has he left behind him? He should not have passed away without mark or remembrance. For he was made for great things.”

“So seemed many another who has come to ruin, as he.”

“There was no other like Don Alfonso.—Nay, let me speak, señor. In the galleys I spoke but little, and very soon I shall speak no more. You were the passion, the idol, of my boyhood and my youth. And even now I do not wonder. You learned with ease all that other men learn with pain. You knew a thousand things I had never dreamed of, yet you knew all I knew also. You did all that I could do, and better than I.”

“You say too much for me, Melchior.”

“I say the truth, señor. Always you made us feel that you were more than you did; that the ready stroke and spring at the bull-feast, the thrust and parry in the tilting-ring, were but earnests given of great deeds yet to be. O brother, brother, do you not remember all those old talks in the orange-grove by the river-side? All those plans, that came to nothing? How you were to raise a corps of volunteers, and help to rend Ireland (that fair jewel, you called it) from the crown of the English usurper? And how you were then to settle and colonize, taking me with you, and getting for me also a grant of land among the saffron-kilted kernes? My brother Francisco was to be our priest, and Miguel and Ruy to till the ground.”

“Dreams—all dreams!” Fray Fernando answered sadly. “They are no more to me now than the tales José loves to tell us of his Inca forefathers.”

“But, señor, my brother, you yourself told me long ago that the dreams of youth are the flowers, the doings of manhood the fruit. Woe for the flowers that they have fallen, and left no fruit behind!”

“The tree was blighted, and is dead. Whence, then, could the fruit come?”

“That work was mine. There, señor, is the thought that wrings my heart.”

“Put that thought away from you, dear and generous brother,” Fray Fernando eagerly interposed. “It was not your work; it was my fate.”

“What do you mean by that word ‘fate,’ señor? I am a poor ignorant man, yet I know this: it was no fate that happened to me, but the will of God. How much more you—wise, learned, and a churchman!”

“I am learned in nothing, Melchior, save in sorrow.—But this is ungrateful,” he added presently. “God has healed my worst sorrow in giving you back to me.”

“He will heal the rest too,” said Melchior. “And though the flowers faded so long ago, I think the fruit will come yet.”

Fray Fernando sighed. Then his own secret trouble rose half unconsciously to his lips. “I am not at peace with God,” he said. “I have trifled with His grace in His sacraments.”

“I know but one way of making peace with God, señor. That is through Christ. He is our way, and He is our peace.”

Fray Fernando looked somewhat surprised. “How do you know that, Melchior?” he asked.

“Because, Señor Don Alfonso, I have trod the way, and I have found the peace.”

Just then José entered, carrying a pataca, or covered native basket, from which he produced some articles of food and other things that he had purchased in the city. Amongst them was a flask of wine from the old country, which he gave to Melchior, saying, “My Father smiled upon the fruits of your native land, and they have sent their best juices hither to make sick men well.”

“Don José, you are very good to me,” said Melchior gratefully.

“I ought to be good to everyone to-day,” José answered, as he seated himself, and loosed the fastening of his yacollo, which was now a simple golden pin—his mother’s tupu—instead of a large and lustrous emerald, Yupanqui’s gift. “I have heard such good tidings. But I ought first to tell you, patre, that I failed to do your errand at the Franciscan monastery. The monks would not trust me with the Book, without a written order from yourself.”

Fray Fernando had sent to request the loan of a copy of the Vulgate. Perhaps his motive for this request might have been found in certain conversations he had lately held with Walter Grey, who was now permitted to come to him three times a week for religious instruction.

José went on: “Whatever may have caused their hesitation, it was scarcely the value of the Book, since I offered to leave them my gold bracelet in pledge for it. I think they feared I might do myself or some one else a mischief with it, as if it were a carbine or musket. It reminds me, patre, of the old times in Cerro Blanco, when I stood in such awe of your Breviary, believing that a spirit dwelt in it, which spoke to you when you read it.”

Then Melchior said reverently, “It is quite true, Don José, that a Spirit dwells in the Book you were to have brought to-day; and He will speak to you, if you read it with prayer and humility.”

“You are making pictures, Melchior,” José answered readily.—“I see.” He himself was quite as anxious for the Book as Fray Fernando, because he thought it would tell him of his King.

“But you have not yet told us the good tidings, José,” Fray Fernando resumed presently.

José’s black eyes kindled with a vivid inward fire, but no other feature of his face showed emotion, and his voice was calm, even low, as he spoke. “Some Spanish soldiers have just come back to Lima from the country of the Chunchos, which you call the Montaña. They have brought with them—sore wounded and sick unto death—Don Ramon de Virves. It was at his own earnest request they brought him so far, for he thought to embark for Spain. But he will never see Spain again. God has visited his iniquities on his head.”

“Take care, José,” said Fray Fernando gravely. “Long ago the wise man said, ‘Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: lest the Lord see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him.’”

“Who is Don Ramon de Virves?” Melchior asked with interest.

José turned to him and answered, still in the same low quiet voice, “When I was a child I dwelt with my kindred in a little green spot in the great southern desert—a ‘paucar,’ we call it. One day that Don Ramon de Virves came thither with his Spaniards. We were mostly women and children; we neither could fight with them, nor desired to do it. So we gave them to eat and to drink, and let them lie down in our huts to sleep. But while we slept they arose, drew their Spanish steel, and slew all—men, women, and little children—without remorse or pity.⁠[48] That was their way of ‘reducing’ Indians to the obedience of the crown of Spain and the faith of Christ. Yet it was well for those who died. Thrice more unhappy were the two spared—my mother and I. Bound and guarded, we watched the flames that burned our home to ashes. But the Children of the Sun know how to die. When night came again, my mother kissed me, and said, ‘Pacha-camac cares for the wild beasts on the mountain,⁠[49] he will also care for thee, my child.’ Then she bade me go to sleep. When I awoke, she was dead. I am a man now, and I thank God that she won her freedom thus; but I was a child then, and I wept and wailed over her lifeless form in the bitterness of my anguish. Yet I too would have died, rather than be Don Ramon’s slave, if the patre had not bought me. Judge whether or no I have cause to rejoice that Don Ramon is dying now in pain and misery—forsaken of God and man.”

“José, my son José!” Fray Fernando interposed, in a tone of grieved surprise. “Remember that vengeance belongs to God, not to us. To Him we ought to leave it.”

“I have left it to Him,” José answered calmly, “and He has taken it.”

“But did you never hear,” said Melchior, raising himself and looking earnestly at the Indian youth—“did you never hear that our blessed Lord Himself, when He hung on the cross, prayed for His murderers, and said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’?”

“No?” José said, interrogatively, and with a perplexed, discomfited look.

“How can you say ‘No,’ José?” Fray Fernando asked, a little jealous perhaps for his reputation as instructor. “You have heard it a hundred times. And what says the Paternoster,—almost the first thing I taught you?”

José struggled with a thought he did not choose to admit, and putting it from him with an effort, answered doggedly, “It says, ‘Thy kingdom come.’”

“It says also, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’”

“And,” Melchior added, “none have part in the kingdom that is to come save those whose trespasses are forgiven.”

José received these sharp arrows of truth without remonstrance, but without acquiescence. He bore their sting as he would have borne physical pain—silent and unmoved, though keenly sensible. In any other case he would have been very angry with the hands that winged them; but he knew not how to feel anger towards a dying man like Melchior, still less towards the patre. But how unreasonable, how unjust, how cruel the requirement!

Whose requirement? That he did not ask himself just yet. With a lowering brow and a heart full of bitterness he went forth; nor did either Melchior or Fray Fernando see him again that night.