Two hours after sunset, the sound of the trumpet assembled the Spanish soldiers by torchlight in the great square of Caxamarca. It was the evening of the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. The clanking of chains was heard as the victim, manacled hand and foot, toiled painfully over the stone pavement of the square. He was bound by chains to the stake; the combustible fagots were piled up around him. Friar Vincent then, it is said, holding up the cross before the victim, told him that if he would embrace Christianity he should be spared the cruel death by the flames, and experience in its stead only the painless death of the garotte, and that the Inca did, while thus chained to the stake, abjure his religion and receive the rite of baptism. In reference to this representation Mr. Lambert A. Wilmer, in his admirable life of Ferdinand De Soto, says: "As the traducers of the dead Inca were permitted to tell their own story without fear of contradiction, it is impossible to assign any limits to their fabrications. And their testimony is probable, only when it tends to criminate themselves. Perhaps the greatest injustice which these slanderers have done to Attahuallapa's memory, was by pretending that he became an apostate to his own religion and a convert to Catholicism just before his death. "If this story were true, how could Pizarro justify himself, or how could the Pope and the king of Spain excuse him for putting a Christian to death on account of sins committed by an infidel. Surely the royal penitent, when he entered the pale of the Holy Catholic Church, would be entitled to a free pardon for those errors of conduct which were incidental to his unregenerate condition. We are told that when the Inca had consented to be baptized by Father Vincent, Pizarro graciously commuted his sentence, and allowed him to be strangled before his body was reduced to ashes." These fictions were doubtless contrived to illustrate Pizarro's clemency, and Father Vincent's apostolic success. The probability is, as others state, that the Inca remained firm to the end; the torch was applied, and while the consuming flames wreathed around him, he uttered no cry. In this chariot of fire the spirit of this deeply outraged man was borne to the judgment of God. De Soto soon returned. He was almost frantic with indignation when he learned of the crime which had been perpetrated in his absence, and perceived that his mission was merely an artifice to get him out of the way. His rage blazed forth in the most violent reproaches. Hastening to the tent of Pizarro, he rudely pushed aside a sentinel who guarded the entrance, and found the culprit seated on a low stool, affecting the attitude of a mourner. A large slouched hat was bent over his eyes.