"Senor mio! I am not weary, and I am not grieved," said the stripling, with simplicity, as the good-natured cavalier took him by the hand, to give him comfort. "I wept for pity of the good Don Francisco and the poor Minnapotzin; for surely it is a pity if they must die!" "Thou art a silly youth to lament for evils that have not yet happened," said Amador. "But besides, senor," said the page, "when Don Francisco made me sad, I looked at the moon, and I thought how it was rising on my country!" "It is now in the very noon of night, both in thy land and mine," said the neophyte, touched by the simple expression, and leading the boy where the planet could be seen without obstruction;--"it is now midnight over Fez, as well as Castile; and, perhaps, some of our friends, in both lands, are regarding this luminary, at this moment, and thinking of _us_." The page sighed deeply and painfully: "I have no friends,--no, neither in Fez nor in Spain," he said; "and, save my father, my master, and my good lord, none here. There is none of my people left, but my father; and we are alone together!" "Say not, alone," said Amador, with still more kindness,--for as Jacinto made this confession of his destitute condition, the tears fell fast and bitterly from his eyes. "Say not, alone; for, I repeat to thee, I have come, I know not by what fascination, to love thee as well as if thou wert my own little brother; and there shall no wrong come to thee, or thy father, while I live to be thy friend." Jacinto kissed the hand of the cavalier, and said,-- "I did not cry for sorrow, but only for thinking of my country." "Thou shouldst think no more of Fez; for its people are infidels, and thou a Christian." "I thought of Granada,--for that is the land of Christians; and I longed to be among the mountains where my mother was born." "Thou shalt live there yet, if God be merciful to us," said the cavalier: "for when there is peace in this barbarous clime, I will take thee thither for a playmate to Rosario. But now that we are here alone, let us sit by the tower, and while I grow melancholy, bethinking me of that same land of Granada, which I very much love, I will have thee sing me some other pretty ballad of the love of a Christian knight for a Moorish lady;--or I care not if thou repeat the romance of the Cid: I like it well--'Me acuerdo de ti'--'me acuerdo de ti'--" And the neophyte seemed, while he murmured over the burthen, as if about to imitate the pensiveness of De Morla. "If my lord choose," said the page, "I would rather tell him a story of Granada, which is about a Christian cavalier, very noble and brave, and a Christian Morisca, that loved him." "A Christian Morisca!" said Amador; "and she loved the cavalier?--I will hear that story. And it happened in Granada too?" "In one of the Moorish towns, but not in the royal city.--It was in the town Almeria."