"Ay, indeed!" ejaculated Cabrera. "And if the courage of the maidens of ancient times were anything of a match to it I, for my part, feel little wonder that in those days there was a race of Amazons. Little use would there be in trying to keep a wife, after that pattern, in order with a threat of fisticuffs." Montoro turned a laughing face round from the young Indian girl, whose wounds he was examining. "Is that the way you try to rule your Cempoallan bride, my Juan? I had scarcely thought it from her looks." "Ah," was the calm reply, "thou seest, friend Montoro, thou knowest nought of women and their natures. Sour looks and savage ways always put the merry light in their eyes, and the laughter on their lips. I have taught thee a useful lesson, see that it proves profitable." "When the opportunity shall come," came the answer, but more in earnest now than in jest, "I will surely try to profit by thy teaching, but the teaching of thy ways and not thy words." And then, summoning one of the young maiden's attendants to accompany them, Montoro went with his docile and grateful patient away to a quieter apartment. The girl-heroine had been quite willing to bear the agonizing pain with uncomplaining fortitude, but she was by no means loth to have the scorched and blistered sores dressed with a skill and tenderness to which she had been hitherto a stranger. Doña Marina stood by the while, gaining a useful lesson, and acting as interpreter. As the dressing drew to a close the girl said with a sudden tone of animation,-- "The good white-face seems to think I have done something deserving praise; will he let me take him to see what my brothers, and their companions, bear ere they can enter the noble rank of knighthood?" Her eyes looked so bright and eager that Montoro would have scarcely cared to refuse the request, even had it been an unwelcome one; but as it happened to agree most thoroughly with his own desires to see, and learn, everything that was possible of these wonderful new-found countries before he quitted them, his assent was almost as eager as the offer; and a few minutes hence Montoro, accompanied by his faithful interpreter, and the Cacique's granddaughter, accompanied, as befitted her rank, by half-a-dozen attendants and Doña Marina, set forth on an expedition to one of the neighbouring temples. CHAPTER XXXV. _THE TLASCALAN KNIGHT'S PROBATION._ Fast as her nimble little gay-sandalled feet could move, the aged Cacique's grandchild danced along the well-thronged streets of the fine city of Tlascala, the capital of the Republic.