Montoro had been wandering with a vivid interest through some of the numerous apartments of the temple, opening on to the courtyard where the rest of his comrades were assembled, and he was standing within one of the halls, and alone, when the woman caught sight of him. The bringing of the maize bread was but a pretext for an interview. "Be comforted. Trust me; I will do what I can," said Montoro, with the flush of deep excitement on his face, after listening for a few moments to the poor creature's broken utterances. Then he dismissed her, and made his way to Cortes, asking a private audience. But the General was in something less than his usual cordial mood. Cortes was preoccupied, and oppressed with many anxieties that night, and little disposed to speech or interviews with even those whom he most esteemed. "What is it, Diego?" he asked rather hastily--"any news of treachery without or within? For matters of high importance one must have always leisure; for others--I crave your pardon,--they must wait." Montoro bowed with a certain degree of haughtiness. "I am not accustomed to seek private interviews concerning trivialities. But,--I will crave your pardon as you have craved mine,--methinks, now I give second thoughts to the affair, that thou mightest even pronounce my present matter unworthy of your present favourable attention, and with disfavour I can well dispense." "As I with thine unseasonable anger, friend Toro," said Hernando with grave reproach. But the angered cavalier had already retired. "To brood over his fancied causes of complaint against me, no doubt, like the most unreasonable amongst my company," muttered Cortes in a tone of vexation. Union was so abundantly necessary just now. CHAPTER XXIX. _MONTORO AND CABRERA RESCUE A HUMAN SACRIFICE._ "Cabrera." "Diego!" The one name had been spoken with a sort of eager hush in the voice; the second with an accent of startled interrogation. The hour was about ten at night. Cabrera and Diego had been on sentry duty since Diego's short, sharp interview with the General. One of them had just been relieved, and the other was about to be so, when Montoro called to his friend, who passed him on his way to shelter and sleep. Cabrera stepped up closer to his friend. "Why, Toro, what is it? Of all men in the world to hear thee speaking as thou hadst some mystery to whisper!" "And so I have," came the hurried return. Juan's big round eyes grew bigger and rounder than ever. "Well, and if thou hast, there is ne'er a redskin about can understand thee if thou dost but speak fast, and with some of those long words thou knowest so--" "Hush thee, then," muttered Montoro hastily. "It is from no redskin that I would hide the matter that I have in hand, at least not for the moment, but from the keenest pair of Spanish ears that either thou or I are likely to have met with."