Through all her troubles of widowhood, wanderings, and poverty she had kept those books, and she still kept them, for she dared not risk her child's life with their transfer to him. But it mattered not, for their truths were imprinted in his soul, and his faith was a living faith, pure and free from superstition, being built upon the knowledge of God's own Word.
Many of those Jew converts who fell at the mandate of the Spanish Inquisition were the truest Christians, the most upright men, and the best citizens of their age, for they knew what they believed.
From his mother's secret teaching, and his own reading, the young Montoro had become wise unto salvation before the new career began that had been opened up for him by the merchant's benevolence; and when he stepped on board the world-renowned Admiral's ship it may be safely said that the young sweet-voiced, earnest-eyed lad was the mental superior of most of those with whom he was surrounded. He had now a great curiosity to see what might be the contents of the Christian parts of the Bible; and while he awaited his young companion's return, and was pushed with scant ceremony out of the way of the rough sailors, only to be hustled yet more imperiously aside by the penniless but haughty hidalgos who were setting out, as they fondly believed, on a royal road to fortune, he had the opportunity to gratify his desire.
Partly by others' driving, partly by his own good management, he at length got comfortably stowed away into a quiet corner, and there, dropping himself down on to a bale of goods, he carefully unclasped the great book, and turned towards the latter half.
He began to read at once the first words of the first page that opened beneath his eyes, for the disputes he had witnessed during the past few minutes between several of his self-asserting companions made them appear startlingly appropriate.
"And there was also a strife amongst them, which of them should be accounted the greatest."
Many a time did those words recur to his memory during the coming years, but just then, as he sat in his obscure corner in enforced quietude and inactivity, he read on and on with forgetfulness even of his novel position and commencing adventures, in his absorbing interest in a history then read and fully understood for the first time. We know the account of our Lord's agony, base betrayal, and awfully cruel death so well that we have not the faintest idea of how intensely it moved intelligent minds, who first quietly perused it for themselves in its own pathetic simplicity, unspoilt in its solemn appeal by any priestly shows or pageants.
Montoro Diego clenched his fists and his eyes flashed as he read of Peter's denial of his Lord and friend.
"Mean coward!" he muttered. And then his own eyes grew dim as he read how the slandered, insulted Son of man, the denied of his own chosen companion, "turned, and looked upon Peter." He seemed to feel his own being thrilled with the sad reproach, the tender compassion, and the full forgiveness of that look, and a smothered choking sob parted his own lips, as "Peter went out, and wept bitterly."
He read on undisturbed, until he suddenly, as it seemed to him, received an answer to many long-standing, half-formed questions in his mind, with the words: