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Meanwhile Manuel de Moraes, for such was the name of our Novice, after leaving the Jesuits' Close, walked quickly towards the centre of the settlement.

Born in the earlier years of the seventeenth century, the youth had been brought up by his father, José de Moraes, for the laborious life of a Jesuit missioner. It was the parent's settled conviction that this was the happiest condition of man, and the position at once the most brilliant and the most useful to society open to the only son with whom Providence had blessed him.

José, a native of Minho in Portugal, had there married Ignez da Dôres, and, driven by poverty from home, he had sought fortune with her in distant Brazil. Guided by the Jesuits, whom he fervently admired, he had applied himself to agriculture in the captaincy of São Vicente, and he had achieved the reputation of an honest man. His family numbered, besides Manuel, three young daughters, whose tender minds were trained by their mother to tread the paths of honour and religion.

José had himself intrusted his beloved son to the care of the Company, and more especially to Padre Eusebio de Monserrate, his old friend and protector.

The boy had shown early talent. No student excelled him in acuteness and penetration, in desire to please, and in willingness to learn. He had won the esteem of his teachers by his scholarly turn of