"_I_ study it, Señor! The holy saints forbid. That is for the priests. It is taken with us that by its blessed power may be exorcised such spirits of evil, and baneful influences, as we may meet with in those unblessed regions of the West." So saying, with a formal bow to the merchant, and a sign to Montoro to follow him, the son of the great discoverer of a new world, but not of a more enlightened faith, returned to the small boat that was to carry them on shipboard. Master Sancho stood on the busy strand watching with many another, until they were drawn up the vessel's side, and then, with a tolerably deep sigh for the loss of his young companion, he wandered away into the streets of the bustling city, and soon became the owner of many curious treasures brought from all parts of the known world, and far safer possessions in that land of the Inquisition than the one he had made an attempt, in ignorance, to buy for his timidly cautious neighbour. Indeed, with all his own honest courage shown on behalf of the orphaned and beggared young noble, the worthy merchant himself would not have cared to risk travelling with a copy of the Scriptures in his bales, unauthorized. In those days the Bible was for the priests, as Ferdinand Columbus had said; and the priests took good care not to let the fountain of light out of their hidden keeping. They loved darkness to reign in the land rather than light, because their deeds were evil. But when the boy passed the book for a few minutes into Montoro's charge, as soon as they got on board, that he might the more readily go in search of his father, he was not again giving it into the hands of one so ignorant of its contents, nor to whom it was an affair of so much mystery. One small, unsuspected portion of her inheritance had Rachel Philip saved from the rapacious grasp of the vile informer, Jerome Tivoli, the Italian. It consisted of three rolls of vellum closely written over in Hebrew characters, and when Don Philip's father became a Christian he did not declare his possession of these rolls; but, on the contrary, closely concealed them, lest he should be deprived of the pearl without price--the Word of God. In a secresy that the more fully impressed the lessons upon his mind had Don Philip's father taught his son to read these rolls, and to write "in his mind and in his heart" God's law. In like manner had Don Philip, in his turn, taught his daughter; and in like manner had Rachel Diego taught her son to read those three rolls--the Pentateuch, the Psalms of David, and the book of the prophet Isaiah. 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.