Truly the punishment, if it were a punishment, was a fearful one; but the Indian girl laid a firm, determined clasp upon Montoro de Diego's arm as she pointed to the young man on his fiery bed.
"He too is my brother," she said, with stern pride—"my eldest brother. That is his final trial. When he wins through that he will be enrolled in the noble order of our knights. Now you know why the Indian warrior fights well."
"You are a noble race, and worthy of a noble fate," murmured the Spaniard; and many a sigh escaped him as they wended homewards.
And now we must pass on quickly to the occupation of Mexico itself, and there, in that island city of flowers and palaces and temples and turrets, take our final leave of Hernando Cortes, its great, world-famous conqueror.
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
ACROSS THE CAUSEWAY.
Scarcely any one in this nineteenth century, who pretends to the name of traveller, neglects to visit the world-famous and beautiful water city of Italy, the white-robed bride of the Adriatic.
When the Spanish discoverers set out for the lands of another hemisphere they little dreamt that they were to find out there another Venice, even more strange, more wonderful in its sweet, flowery, marvellous beauty, than the Venice on their own side of the Atlantic.