Seventh, and a good carrier of his kingship!"

"That for him!" said the alcalde. "Let him stay in his foggy island! But Spain is too small for King Ferdinand." "All kings find their lands too small," said the lawyer.

The shipmaster spoke again. "The King of Portugal's ship sails ahead of ours in that matter. He's stuck his banner in the new islands, Maderia and the Hawk Islands and where not! I was talking in Cadiz with one who was with Bartholomew Diaz when he turned Africa and named it Good Hope. Which is to say, King John has Good Hope of seeing Portugal swell. Portugal! Well, I say, 'Why not Spain'?"

The student looked up from his book. "It is a great Age!" he said and returned to his reading.

When we had finished dinner, we paid the tall, gaunt woman and leaving the robbers, if robbers they were, still at table, went out into the street. Here the friars, the alcalde and the lawyer moved in the direction of the small, staring white and ruined mosque that was to be transformed into the church of San Jago the Deliverer. That was the one thing of which the friars had spoken. A long bench ran by inn wall and here the shipmaster took his seat and began to discourse with those already there. Book under arm, the student moved dreamily down the opposite lane. Juan Lepe walked away alone.

Through the remainder of this day he had now company and adventure without, now solitude and adventure within. That night he spent in a ruined tower where young trees grew and an owl was his comrade and he read the face of a glorious moon. Dawn. He bathed in a stream that ran by the mound of the tower and ate a piece of bread from his wallet and took the road.

The sun mounted above the trees. A man upon a mule came up behind me and was passing. "There is a stone wedged in his shoe," I said. The rider drew rein and I lifted the creature's foreleg and took out the pebble. The rider made search for a bit of money. I said that the deed was short and easy and needed no payment, whereupon he put up the coin and regarded me out of his fine blue eyes. He was quite fair, a young man still, and dressed after a manner of his own in garments not at all new but with a beauty of fashioning and putting on. He and his mule looked a corner out of a great painting. And I had no sooner thought that than he said, "I see in you, friend, a face and figure for my 'Draught of Fishes.' And by Saint Christopher, there is water over yonder and just the landscape!" He leaned from the saddle and spoke persuasively, "Come from the road a bit down to the water and let me draw you! You are not dressed like the kin of Midas! I will give you the price of dinner." As he talked he drew out of a richly worked bag a book of paper and pencils. I thought, "This beard and the clothes of Juan Lepe. He can hardly make it so that any may recognize." It was resting time and the man attracted. I agreed, if he would take no more than an hour.

"The drawing, no!—Bent far over, gathering the net strongly—Andrew or Mark perhaps, since, traditionally, John must have youth."

He had continued to study me all this time, and now we left the road and moved over the plain to the stream that here widened into a pool fringed with rushes and a few twisted trees. An ancient, half-sunken boat drowsing under the bank he hailed again in the name of Saint Christopher. Dismounting, he fastened his mule to a willow and proceeded to place me, then himself found a root of a tree, and taking out his knife fell to sharpening pencil. This done, he rested book against knee and began to draw.

Having made his figure in one posture he rose and showed me another and drew his fisherman so. Then he demonstrated a third way and drew again. Now he was silent, working hard, and now he dropped his hand, threw back his head and talked. He himself made a picture, paly gold of locks, subtle and quick of face, plastered against a blue shield with a willow wreath going around.

I stood so or so, drawing hard upon the net with the fishes. Then at his command I approached more nearly, and he drew full face and three-quarter and profile. It was between these accomplishings that he talked more intimately.

"Seamen go to Italy," he said. "Were you ever in Milan? But that is inland."

I answered that I had been from Genoa to Milan.

"It is not likely that you saw a great painter there Messer Leonardo?"

It happened that I had done this, and moreover had seen him at work and heard him put right thought into most right words. I was so tired of lying that after a moment I said that I had seen and heard Messer Leonardo.

"Did you see the statue?"

"The first time I saw him he was at work upon it. The next time he was painting in the church of Santa Maria. The third time he sat in a garden, sipped wine and talked."

"I hold you," he said, "to be a fortunate fisherman! Just as this fisher I am painting, and whether it is Andrew or Mark, I do not yet know, was a most fortunate fisherman!" He ended meditatively, "Though whoever it is, probably he was crucified or beheaded or burned."

I felt a certain shiver of premonition. The day that had been warm and bright turned in a flash ashy and chill. Then it swung back to its first fair seeming, or not to its first, but to a deeper, brighter yet. The Fisherman by Galilee was fortunate. Whoever perceived truth and beauty was fortunate, fortunate now and forever!

We came back to Messer Leonardo. "I spent six months at the court in Milan," said the fair man. "I painted the Duke and the Duchess and two great courtiers. Messer Leonardo was away. He returned, and I visited him and found a master. Since that time I study light and shadow and small things and seek out inner action."

He worked in silence, then again began to speak of painters, Italian and Spanish. He asked me if I had seen such and such pictures in Seville.

"Yes. They are good."

"Do you know Monsalvat?"

I said that I had climbed there one day. "I dream a painting!" he said, "The Quest of the Grail. Now I see it running over the four walls of a church, and now I see it all packed into one man who rides. Then again it has seemed to me truer to have it in a man and woman who walk, or perhaps even are seated. What do you think?"

I was thinking of Isabel who died in my arms twenty years ago. "I would have it man and woman," I said. "Unless, like Messer Leonardo, you can put both in one."

He sat still, his mind working, while in a fair inner land Isabel and I moved together; then in a meditative quiet he finished his drawing. He himself was admirable, fine gold and bronze, sapphire-eyed, with a face where streams of visions moved the muscles, and all against the blue and the willow tree.

At last he put away pencil, and at his gesture I came from the boat and the reeds. I looked at what he had drawn, and then he shut book and, the mule following us, we moved back to the road.

"My dear fisherman," he said, "you are trudging afoot and your dress exhibits poverty. Painters may paint Jove descending in showers of golden pesos and yet have few pesos in purse. I have at present ten. I should like to share them with you who have done me various good turns to-day."

I said that he was generous but that he had done me good turns. Moreover I was not utterly without coin, and certainly the hour had paid for itself. So he mounted his mule and wished me good fortune, and I wished him good fortune.

"Are you going to Santa Fe?"

"Yes. I have a friend in the camp."

"I go there to paint her Highness the Queen for his Highness the King. Perhaps we shall meet again. I am Manuel Rodriguez."

"I guessed that," I answered, "an hour ago! Be so good, great painter, as not to remember me. It will serve me better."

The light played again over his face. "The Disguised Hidalgo. Excellent pictures come to me like that, in a great warm light, and excellent names for pictures.—Very good. In a way, so to speak, I shall completely forget you!"

Two on horseback,