"What was the task to which thou and I vowed ourselves in childhood, brother?"
Juan looked at him keenly through the dim light. "I sometimes feared thou hadst forgotten," he said.
"No danger of that. But I had a reason--I think a good and sufficient one--for not speaking to thee until well and fully assured of thy sympathy."
"My sympathy? In aught that concerned the dream, the passion of my life!--of both our young lives! Carlos, how couldst thou even doubt of this?"
"I had reason to doubt at first whether a gleam of light which has been shed upon our father's fate would be regarded by his son as a blessing or a curse."
"Do not keep a man in suspense, brother. Speak at once, in Heaven's name."
"I doubt no longer now. It will be to thee, Juan, as to me, a joy exceeding great to think that our venerated father read God's Word for himself, and knew his truth and honoured it, as we have learned to do."
"Now, God be thanked!" cried Juan, pausing in his walk and clasping his hands together. "This indeed is joyful news. But speak, brother; how do you know it? Are you certain, or is it only dream, hope, conjecture?"
Carlos told him in detail, first the hint dropped by Losada to De Seso; then the story of Dolores; lastly, what he had heard at San Isodro about Don Rodrigo de Valer. And as he proceeded with his narrative, he welded the scattered links into a connected chain of evidence.
Juan, all eagerness, could hardly wait till he came to the end. "Why did you not speak to Losada?" he interrupted at last.