They had, however, more than this. Almost every day they read and re-read those mysterious words, traced with a diamond by their father's hand--as it never entered their heads to doubt--on the window of the room which had once been his favourite place of retirement:--
"El Dorado
Yo hé trovado."
"I have found El Dorado."
No eyes but their own had ever noticed this inscription; and marvellous indeed was the superstructure their fancy contrived to raise on the slight and airy foundation of its enigmatical five words. They had heard from the lips of Diego many of the fables current at the period about the "golden country" of which Spanish adventurers dreamed so wildly, and which they sought so vainly in the New World. They were aware that their father in his early days had actually made a voyage to the Indies: and they had thoroughly persuaded themselves, therefore, of nothing less than that he was the fortunate discoverer of El Dorado; that he had returned thither, and was reigning there as a king, rich and happy--only, perhaps, longing for his brave boys to come and join him. And join him one day they surely would, even though unheard of dangers (of which giants twelve feet high and fiery dragons--things in which they quite believed--were among the least) might lie in their way, thick as the leaves of the cork-trees when the autumn winds swept down through the mountain gorges.
"Look, Ruy," said Carlos, "the light is on our father's words!"
"So it is! What good fortune is coming now? Something always comes to us when they look like that."
"What do you wish for most?"
"A new bow, and a set of real arrows tipped with steel. And you?"
"Well--the 'Chronicles of the Cid,' I think."
"I should like that too. But I should like better still--"
"What!"