"The oppressions of Montezuma, with the frequent insurrections of his people," concluded the Antiquary, "when in the latter part of his reign one-half the forces of his empire are said to have been employed in suppressing the commotions of the other, disgust at his arrogance, and his outrageous fiscal exactions, reduced his subjects to that condition which made them an easy prey to Cortez, whose army at last overpowered the emperor and swept the Aztec civilization from the face of the earth." "I find it strange," said the Journalist (in the little talk that followed Mr. Morehouse's able paper), "that civilized nations have held an idea so monstrous as the necessity of vicarious physical suffering of a victim to appease the wrath of a divine being with the erring creatures who, such as they are, are the work of his hands. "That unenlightened races, from time immemorial, should have supposed that the shedding of blood propitiated their angry god, or gods, is but the natural outcome of ignorance and superstition; but, that in this twentieth century, civilized worshippers should sing-- 'There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains'-- passes my understanding." "In the ruins of Palenque there is," said the Antiquary, "a scene portrayed on its crumbling walls, in which priests are immolating in a furnace placed at the feet of an image of Saturn the choicest infants of the nation, while a trumpeter enlivens the occasion with music, and in the background a female spectator, supposed to be the mother of the victim, looks on." "The sacrifices to Moloch (or Saturn)," interpolated the Minister, "were marked features of the Phoenician idolatry. In the Bible account we read that even their kings 'made their children to pass through the fire to Moloch.'" "Well," commented the Grumbler, "it may be said of a portion of this evening's entertainment that it is distinguished by the charm found by 'Helen's' sanguinary-minded 'baby,' in the story of 'Goliath's head,'--it is 'all bluggy.'" "Right you are," responded the star boarder with a shudder. "Cold shivers have meandered along my poor back until it has become one dreadful block of ice; and, judging by the horror depicted on these ladies' faces as they listened to the details of the Aztec sacrifice, I fancy that they too have supped o'er-full of horrors." The Minister's eye rested for a moment affectionately on his stanch little wife. He sighed, and looked with mild rebuke on these godless triflers. And now the Koshare (some of them stoutly orthodox) wisely put by the question of vicarious atonement, and summarily adjourned. CHAPTER IX It was but the next week when, unexpectedly as thunderbolts now and then surprise us on days of serene, unclouded sky, an unlooked-for domestic calamity startled Alamo Ranch.