"Confirmed.--Respite for twenty-four hours. "CORTES." and putting the paper into Villafana's hands, he dismissed him with the hurried charge, "Away--see to it." He then flung the reed back to the writer who had already resumed his squatting attitude, and reascended the platform. On those who surmised the cause of this sudden interruption, the agitation of Don Hernan had the good effect of banishing from their minds any lingering suspicions of his entertaining personal ill-will towards the unfortunate Lerma. All went to show that he was shocked at the young man's fate, and the necessity of ministering to it, even in the simple act of confirming a judgment, awarded by others; but, unhappily, the same feeling that exonerated the judge, still further increased the odium attached to the criminal. How great, they thought, must be the guilt of him whom it causes Cortes so much suffering to condemn.--But the Captain-General, recovering himself, gave them little time for such speculations. "Well, infidel, thou speakest well," he cried, his voice becoming firmer with each syllable; "What hidest thou in the sixth bundle?--or rather, what if I should accept thy master's niggardly offer, and depart with these baubles for women and children, as thou hast rightly called them?" "Hear the words of Guatimozin," replied the ambassador, with a careless emphasis, as if properly understanding the futility of the proposal, and, indeed, with a look of scorn, as if learning to despise one capable of Don Hernan's late weakness: "If Malintzin depart with the fifth pack, cast the sixth into the lake, and tell him, that, in its place, he shall have sent after him to the seaside, a thousand sacks of robes and four thousand sacks of corn, to clothe and feed his people as they sail over the endless sea. Say to him besides--" "Pho," interrupted Cortes, "have done with this mummery, and get thee to the sixth sack, which I am impatient to examine. What hast thou there?"