“Heretics indeed they call us; but we are not Jews. Don José, did your padre teach you this?” Walter’s surprise was not unmixed with amusement; but José was profoundly earnest, and moved to his inner depths. “The patre,” he explained, “is wise and good. But he dared not teach me, what none of his people would wish ours to know, that there will yet be a greater king than theirs. Nay, it may be that they themselves do not understand, or believe, that their boasted empire is doomed one day to fall in the dust before that great Inca of the West, who ‘shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth!’” A faint glimmer of light now began to break on Walter’s mind. “You are quoting Holy Scripture,” he said. José sought Fray Fernando’s Breviary, and opening at the Seventy-second Psalm, he pointed to it, saying, “You will understand it, because it is written in your own language.” “Latin is not my language,” explained Walter, “but I can read it.” And his eyes rested on the page, whilst his bewildered mind strove in vain to find a clue by which to unravel José’s tangle of ideas. José drew nearer. “Kind and good Englishman,” he entreated, “tell me who that king is, and where I shall find him.” Walter looked up from the book, and gazed at him intently. “Do you indeed desire to know?” he asked. “Does the thirsting earth desire the rain of heaven? Have I not made a solemn vow that I will lay the cause of my people at his feet, and implore him to do justice and judgment between us and the Spaniards?” Walter pondered. “I fear you will be troubled, disappointed, when you hear all,” he said at last. “Only try me.” “That King,” said Walter gravely, “is reigning even now; though not in England, nor in Spain. Hearken, Don José. Long ago He came to the people of His choice. But they rejected, insulted, slew Him. Yet He will come again, perhaps soon; and take to Him His great power, and reign in righteousness over all the earth, from the rising of the sun till the going down thereof. Of that reign, all kings who have ever reigned in righteousness and judged the poor and needy—as David and Solomon; even, for aught I know, as your own Incas—have given the world imperfect images, and a faint shadow. All the hopes they have awakened He will fulfil.” “They slew Him?—yet He will come again?” José questioned, his eyes intently reading the face of Walter. Then there was a pause. At length, drawing from its place in his chuspa, or coca-bag, a little crucifix Fray Fernando had given him, he kissed it, laid it reverently down, and made the sign of the cross upon his forehead. “Yes, you are right,” Walter went on. “_He_ is the great King. He it is who shall judge the people with righteousness, and the poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.”