"The Bible? We are not allowed to touch it; our Church forbids; I never saw one before," and she gazed upon it with a kind of awed curiosity and interest.
"A Papist," he thought, pityingly; "peradventure it was for her sake I was sent here—that I may lead her from that darkness into the true light. If life be spared me, I will, with God's help, do my best."
She broke in upon his thoughts. "Come, señor, eat, your fish will be quite cold."
When Juanita left him, carrying away with her the remains of his repast, an old squaw paid him a short visit, looking curiously at him, and grunting out several questions which were utterly unintelligible to him; he could only shake his head and feebly sign to her that he did not understand.
She left him, and he took up his book, but found the light was not sufficient to enable him to read, for it was a very small edition which he had been accustomed to carry in his pocket.
He was heartily glad when Juanita again appeared, this time with the moccasin she was embroidering in her hand, and seated herself at his side.
"I am stronger to-day, señora," he said, "and can listen and talk; tell me of yourself."
To that she answered briefly that she was an orphan, both parents having died while she was yet a mere infant; that she had lived in the family of an uncle, where she was made to feel her poverty and dependence, and her life rendered far from happy; that some months ago the Indians had made a raid upon her uncle's ranch, killed him and all his family, and carried her off a prisoner to this mountain fastness; that she had been adopted by one of their chiefs, Thunder-Cloud, and had no hope of any better fate than a life spent among the savages.
"Too sad a fate for one so beautiful, señora," Rupert said; "but do not despair; God, who rescued Daniel from the lions' den, and Jonah from the belly of the whale, can save us also even from this stronghold of our savage foe."
"I know nothing of the occurrences you speak of," she said, "and I dare not venture to address any petition directly to the great God; but I pray daily to the Blessed Virgin and the saints to have pity upon a poor friendless girl and restore me to my country and my people, though, alas! I know not of one in whose veins flows a single drop of my blood."