José turned to him and answered, still in the same low quiet voice, “When I was a child I dwelt with my kindred in a little green spot in the great southern desert—a ‘paucar,’ we call it. One day that Don Ramon de Virves came thither with his Spaniards. We were mostly women and children; we neither could fight with them, nor desired to do it. So we gave them to eat and to drink, and let them lie down in our huts to sleep. But while we slept they arose, drew their Spanish steel, and slew all—men, women, and little children—without remorse or pity.[48] That was their way of ‘reducing’ Indians to the obedience of the crown of Spain and the faith of Christ. Yet it was well for those who died. Thrice more unhappy were the two spared—my mother and I. Bound and guarded, we watched the flames that burned our home to ashes. But the Children of the Sun know how to die. When night came again, my mother kissed me, and said, ‘Pacha-camac cares for the wild beasts on the mountain,[49] he will also care for thee, my child.’ Then she bade me go to sleep. When I awoke, she was dead. I am a man now, and I thank God that she won her freedom thus; but I was a child then, and I wept and wailed over her lifeless form in the bitterness of my anguish. Yet I too would have died, rather than be Don Ramon’s slave, if the patre had not bought me. Judge whether or no _I_ have cause to rejoice that Don Ramon is dying now in pain and misery—forsaken of God and man.” “José, my son José!” Fray Fernando interposed, in a tone of grieved surprise. “Remember that vengeance belongs to God, not to us. To Him we ought to leave it.” “I have left it to Him,” José answered calmly, “and He has taken it.” “But did you never hear,” said Melchior, raising himself and looking earnestly at the Indian youth—“did you never hear that our blessed Lord Himself, when He hung on the cross, prayed for His murderers, and said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’?” “No?” José said, interrogatively, and with a perplexed, discomfited look. “How can you say ‘No,’ José?” Fray Fernando asked, a little jealous perhaps for his reputation as instructor. “You have heard it a hundred times. And what says the Paternoster,—almost the first thing I taught you?” José struggled with a thought he did not choose to admit, and putting it from him with an effort, answered doggedly, “It says, ‘Thy kingdom come.’” “It says also, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’” “And,” Melchior added, “none have part in the kingdom that is to come save those whose trespasses are forgiven.”