* * * * * HARDLY had he left when Azcopil arrived with Itza. She seemed even more beautiful than before and rushed to my arms with a happy cry. Holding her close, I received the Prince’s salutations, told him I wished him to dismiss the present retinue of the palace and provide persons of his own selection, and then, feeling perfect confidence in him, I told him of my suspicions of the priest. I was not sorry I confided in him. He was as frank with me as I had been with him. He had no doubt that Kinchi Haman was my enemy, though he declared that the priest would not dare to do anything to arouse the enmity or the wrath of the son of Kukulcan (for of course the prince believed me such) but, he added, it might be different with Kinchi Haman’s attitude towards him and his friends. However, he had no fear of the priest. The royalist party was very strong and powerful. With me as his friend, he feared nothing, and he doubted if the old rascal would dare defy me or show his enmity towards the prince, as long as I favored and honored him. He also confirmed all my suspicions regarding Kinchi Haman. The priest had run things to suit himself. He had practised human sacrifices upon the temple altars, he had oppressed the people; he had declared himself supreme, and he had become overbearingly cruel, vindictive and ruthless. And as he talked and acquainted me with the conditions and affairs, I learned of the terrible fate to which Kinchi Haman had doomed my beloved Itza. She had spoken of being betrothed to Kinich Ahau, of being pledged to wed him on the moon of the Tonalmatl, but what this meant had not occurred to me. Obsessed with my love for her, and with so much else to occupy my mind, I had failed to realize what it meant. But now, as Azcopil referred to it, I wondered that I could have been so dull. Kinich Ahau was the Sun God. Itza was a Virgin of the Sun, and she had been selected to wed the god in symbolic form by being cast alive into the yawning black depths of the sacred well! Cold shivers ran down my spine at the mere thought of that possibility and I fervently thanked God that I had come to Mictolan in time to save her. She had spoken of it calmly, quite as a matter of course. But, I realized later that this was only natural. To her and her fellow maidens it would have been an honor. By thus dying in the sacred well they would--they believed--become the mates of the Sun God; they would dwell forever in paradise; it was a martyrdom they sought with religious fervor.