While the young Montoro was mourning over the dying priest, however, he little heeded the gossip going on around him about one who, during the remaining five years of a well-worn life, was to have a far greater influence on the orphan lad's career than ever the good old priest would have had the power to exercise.
But the days of December passed on. The old priest was buried. Columbus was delivered from his chains by hasty order of the king and queen, and was further invited in flattering terms of kindness to join the royal Court at Granada; a thousand ducats to defray expenses, and a handsome retinue as escort on the journey, being sent in testimony that the friendliness of the invitation was sincere. And so the saddened heart of the glorious old Admiral was once more warmed with half-fallacious hope. Not so with poor Rachel Diego and her son.
Life had been hard enough while Father Bartolo lived, but after his death the struggle for existence became well-nigh desperate; and by the time the months had come round to this following December of 1501, more people, in the obscure little town of El Cuevo, than the worthy burgess Sancho, had come to the conclusion that the unknown young widow and her handsome son were dying of starvation.
But death was evidently preferable, in the minds of the helpless couple, to degradation. Work they could not obtain, and charity they would not accept.
"And small blame to them after all," muttered Master Sancho to himself, a few days after his vain effort to bestow a supper on the objects of his interest. "I don't believe that I, either, should relish the taste of other men's leavings. Thanks be to the virgin that I have never had to eat them. But yet—to starve? Umph! I know not whether I should like the flavour of starvation any better."
And he folded his arms across his portly person with a slightly mocking laugh of self-consciousness.
This short soliloquy had been occasioned by the sight of young Montoro Diego passing the end of the street. His reappearance now, in the street itself, with a large loaf of bread in his arms, brought the soliloquy to a sudden stop; and Sancho left his post of observation in his own doorway, and hurried as fast as his weighty figure would allow to the pedestrian, finding no very great difficulty in barring the lad's further progress along the narrow roadway with his broad form. Montoro threw back his head impatiently.
"What now?" he demanded, with flushed cheeks. "Have you some more dog's meat that you wish to be rid of?"
The burgess laughed.
"Verily, my son, there is a bold spirit hidden under those rags of thine. But a truce to laughter; for verily I feel angered with you now, and I have a right?"