was
completely devoted to the Spaniards, and regarded Cortez as a hero,
almost more than mortal; and was in no slight degree relieved at
observing that, although ready to be friendly in every way, and
evidently still much attached to him, the warmer feeling which she
had testified at their parting no longer existed, but had been
transferred to her present friends and protectors.

"Come with me," she said at last. "The meal will be over, now. I
will take you to an apartment near the banqueting hall, and will
leave you there while I tell Cortez about you, and will then lead
you to him."

Seeing how confident Malinche was as to the reception she could
procure for him, Roger awaited her return, to the chamber where she
had placed him, with little anxiety. In a quarter of an hour she
returned, and beckoned him to follow.

"I have told him," she said. "It did not seem to him strange that
some vessel should have been driven by the storms and wrecked here.
He asked no questions as to how many years ago it was. I told him
you were a young boy at the time, and have forgotten all but a few
words of the language; and how, when you grew to be a man, you were
sold to some Mexican merchants, and would have been sacrificed to
the gods had you not made your escape. As I had told him, before,
that there had been a white man living at Tabasco, who had been
very good to me, he was not surprised at the story."

She took Roger to an apartment in which Cortez, and several of his
principal officers, were standing. As Malinche had told them that
he was painted, and disguised as a native, they were not surprised
at his appearance; although his height, which was far beyond that
attained by Spaniards, somewhat astonished them.

Roger approached the group, and at once fell on one knee before
Cortez, took his hand and kissed it. Cortez raised him, and
embraced him warmly.

"I am delighted to find another of my countrymen," he said; "and
all the more, since Marina tells me that she knows you well, and
that you were most kind and good to her."

"Senor," Roger said, in broken Spanish, "I do not understand. I
have forgotten."

"You will soon recover it," Cortez said.

"Tell him, Aquilar, that he will soon learn to speak his native
language again."

The interpreter repeated the words to Roger in the Yucatan dialect,
adding that he himself had been a prisoner for eight years among
the natives; and that, although a man when captured by them,