With emotions which cannot be described, Lucius first examined the little torn scrap, and then met the gaze of the eager dark eyes that seemed to be reading him through and through.
"This is a leaf that has been torn from a Bible," said Lucius.
"And do you believe its contents—are they truth?" asked Alcala, his eyes riveted still on the face of his friend.
"This is the Word of the Eternal God of Truth," replied the young man with reverence. "But," he added in a different tone, "it is to me a strange, an unaccountable thing, how this paper should ever have come into your possession, if—as I cannot but think—it belongs to a book which I have on my person at this moment."
The Englishman drew his New Testament out of his breast-pocket, and opened it at the Epistle to the Romans, Alcala watching his movements with lively curiosity. Several leaves from that part of the volume had evidently been torn out, and afterwards neatly replaced with paper and gum; but of one leaf there remained but a portion. Lucius fitted the fragment given to him by Alcala to the torn edge of this leaf, and smiled to observe that the two portions fitted each other exactly.
The surprise of Alcala was quite as great as his own. "How can this be?" exclaimed the Spaniard; "when was that fragment torn from that book?"
"Last Sunday morning," replied Lepine. "It was torn by the first of your countrymen to whom I ever offered a religious book. He was a peasant, following a herd."
"A herd of fighting bulls—on the way to the Plaza de Toros?" asked Alcala with interest.
"Yes," replied Lucius Lepine. "The drover was angry; he mutilated and flung back my book. You must have picked up the leaf by chance."
"Not by chance; no, not by chance!" exclaimed De Aguilera, his lip quivering as he spoke. "Mark you, Lepine, the pencilling on the margin?—Perhaps not, the faint lines are almost effaced by the tears of her who read them. Let them be effaced!" continued the cavalier with passionate fervour; "let all be effaced that is a record of the guilt and misery of man,—God's Word is legible still,—and it is the Word of Life."