“Nay, I know not, Teule, who do not meddle in such mysteries,” she answered hurriedly. “Sometimes the god is judge and sometimes the priests judge for him. It is as it may chance. Listen now to the end of my tale and you will surely forget the rest. For one month you will live with your wives, and this month you will pass in feasting at all the noblest houses in the city. On the last day of the month, however, you will be placed in a royal barge and together with your wives, paddled across the lake to a place that is named ‘Melting of Metals.’ Thence you will be led to the _teocalli_ named ‘House of Weapons,’ where your wives will bid farewell to you for ever, and there, Teule, alas! that I must say it, you are doomed to be offered as a sacrifice to the god whose spirit you hold, the great god Tezcat, for your heart will be torn from your body, and your head will be struck from your shoulders and set upon the stake that is known as ‘post of heads.’” Now when I heard this dreadful doom I groaned aloud and my knees trembled so that I almost fell to the ground. Then a great fury seized me and, forgetting my father’s counsel, I blasphemed the gods of that country and the people who worshipped them, first in the Aztec and Maya languages, then when my knowledge of these tongues failed me, in Spanish and good English. But Otomie, who heard some of my words and guessed more, was seized with fear and lifted her hands, saying: “Curse not the awful gods, I beseech you, lest some terrible thing befall you at once. If you are overheard it will be thought that you have an evil spirit and not a good one, and then you must die now and by torment. At the least the gods, who are everywhere, will hear you.” “Let them hear,” I answered. “They are false gods and that country is accursed which worships them. They are doomed I say, and all their worshippers are doomed. Nay, I care not if I am heard—as well die now by torment as live a year in the torment of approaching death. But I shall not die alone, all the sea of blood that your priests have shed cries out for vengeance to the true God, and He will avenge.”