"No, no, that is quite different, Pedro. You see the little ones have not got their tongues twisted rightly, and they can't talk plain, do as much as they will; but this young fellow could say, plain enough, what we told him. The question is, what are we to tell him? "Suppose I say to him, 'They are a curiously dressed lot of people here.' "Well, he might say it after me, but as he would not have an idea what we meant, I don't see that we should be getting any forwarder." Roger, however, had already gone through the work of learning the two native languages, and knew how to begin. He touched Juan's sword, and gave the Mexican word for it. "What does he mean by that, Pedro?" Roger repeated the action. "Perhaps he wants to know what you call your sword," Pedro suggested. "Perhaps it is that. I will try him, anyhow. "'Spada.'" Roger nodded, and repeated the word after him, and then touched his own helmet. "That is what he means," Juan said, with great satisfaction. "What he has got to do is to touch things, and for us to tell him the names." "That is capital. I had no idea teaching a language was such easy work." However, after a few more words had been said, and a method established, Roger asked no more questions; his companions being now fully occupied in gazing at the houses, the temples, and the crowd in the streets, while he himself was busy listening to the remarks of the people. It was curious to him, to hear everyone around freely discussing them, assured that no word they said was understood. Had he been vain, he would have felt gratified at the favorable comments passed on his personal appearance by many of the women and girls; but he put them down, entirely, to the fact that he differed more from them than did the Spaniards, and it was simply the color of his hair, and the fairness of his skin, that seemed wonderful to the Mexicans. "Ah!" he heard one woman say to another, "I marked that tall soldier when they came into the town, this morning. They are all grand men, and look wonderfully strong and brave with their arms and armor. I know that such fighters as these were never heard of before; for have they not, few as they are, beaten the Tlascalans? Who, as we all know, are good fighters, though they are little better than savages. But as to their faces, they were not what I expected to see. They are lighter than ours, but they are not white. "But I noted this soldier. He is just like what I expected--just like what they said the white man, who has been at Mexico for some time, is like." "I am sorry for them," the girl said. "They say that Montezuma will offer them all up at the temples, when he gets them to Mexico." "Perhaps they will never get there," a man standing next to her said. "At least, unless they enter the town as captives. "Perhaps some of them will stay here. Why should not our god have his share of victims, as well as the war god of Mexico?"