Now, so it happened that the wife of his steward had, about a week before, been delivered of a child which lived out a very few days, leaving the mother in great affliction. The count gave her the infant, and the money found with it, and told her the story of the ark, with a strong injunction of secrecy, entreating her to take charge of the child and rear it as her own. The good woman doubted the story, and strongly suspected her master of having fallen into an error in his old age; she received the infant, however, as a gift from Heaven, sent to console her in her affliction, and pressed it with tears to her bosom, for she thought of the child she had lost. Pelayo, therefore, was reared on the banks of the Tagus as the offspring of the steward and his wife, and the adopted son of the count. That veteran cavalier bore in mind, however, that his youthful charge was of illustrious lineage, and took delight in accomplishing him in all things befitting a perfect hidalgo. He placed him astride of a horse almost as soon as he could walk; a lance and cross-bow were his earliest playthings, and he was taught to hunt the small game of the forest until strong enough to accompany the count in his more rugged sports. Thus he was inured to all kinds of hardy exercises, and rendered heedless of danger and fatigue. Nor was the discipline of his mind neglected. Under the instructions of a neighboring friar, he learned to read in a manner that surprised the erudition of his foster-father; for he could con more correctly all the orisons of the Virgin, and listened to mass, and attended all the ceremonies of the Church, with a discretion truly exemplary. Some ancient chroniclers have gone so far as to say that he even excelled in clerkly craft; but this is most likely a fond exaggeration.