[Illustration: HUALPILLI THE LORD OF TEZCUCO REVEALS HIMSELF,--"NOW WHO SHALL SAY ME NAY?" HE ASKED.] With a loud whistle the 'tzin summoned the slaves who bore his litter. They came hurrying to his call, and soon, followed by the youthful and somewhat sobered band of boy-soldiers, wondering townsfolk, and a mass of royal spearmen, the wild young cacique accompanied his father to the great palace of the kings of Tezcuco. Upon the map of modern Mexico you can readily find Tezcuco, now an insignificant manufacturing town, some sixteen miles north-east of the city of Mexico, near the shores of the salt lake of Tezcuco. Its _adobe_ or mud houses shelter scarce five thousand squalid inhabitants, and of the former grandeur of the "Imperial City" of the old Aztec days there remains, as one traveller remarks, "not a wreck--not even an epitaph." But, according to the historians of that wonderful achievement of four centuries back--the Conquest of Mexico--Tezcuco, "City of Rest," was, in the year of our story, 1515, the mighty capital of one of the most fertile and lovely sections of the old Aztec land of Anahuac, a city of over one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and second only in population, power, and magnificence to the royal "City of the Cactus and the Rock"--Tenochtitlan, known ever to Europeans as the City of Mexico. Temples and palaces, schools and gardens, aqueducts, causeways, streets, and walls adorned and defended the beautiful "City of Rest," and so great was its culture and refinement that, as Tenochtitlan, or Mexico, was called the Venice, so Tezcuco "claimed the glory of being the Athens of the New World." In one of the long and richly decorated arcades which led from the king's apartments to the baths and gardens of the low-walled but far-reaching palace of Tezcuco, two boys with their scorers were playing at _totoloque_ the day after young Ixtlil's street combat. Now _totoloque_ was the favorite ball-game of the Aztecs, young and old. It consisted simply of pitching balls, made of some hard and polished substance, at a mark, at long or short distances, according to the expertness of the players, the first complete score of five throws to take the prize. The game was frequently close and exciting, as was the case in this particular game in the arcades of the palace. And the brown-skinned little Tula was scoring for the cacique Ixtlil', while the young prince Cacama scored for the cacique Tecocal', the opponent of Ixtlil'. Now the prince Cacama was the eldest son of the 'tzin 'Hualpilli, and, as older brothers often will--modern ones as well as ancient--he liked to assert his authority and superiority over his younger brothers and half-brothers. For that great palace in old Tezcuco held a large family of boys and girls.