Eye to eye the two youths stood for a brief space in silence, then the weapon was let fall, and Bruno gripped the Indian's hand and shook it most cordially. “Strike you, Ixtli? I'd just as soon smite my brother by birth!” “And that's mighty right, too!” cried Waldo, impetuously. “I really begin to believe that you are all in the right, while I alone am left in the wrong,” frankly admitted the professor. CHAPTER XXII. A DARING UNDERTAKING. Still, that point was of too vital importance to justify hasty decision, and the professor did not make his surrender complete until the shades of another night were beginning to gather over the land. Meantime, partly for the purpose of keeping the youngsters employed and thus out of the way of less harmless things, the professor suggested that the huge grizzly be flayed. If the proposed scheme should really be undertaken, that mighty pelt, if uncomfortable to convey, would serve as a fair excuse for the young brave's as yet unexplained absence from the Lost City. As a matter of course, Cooper Edgecombe felt intense anxiety through all, but he contrived to keep fair mastery over his emotions, readily admitting that he himself could do naught towards visiting the Lost City. “I know that my loved ones are yonder. I would joyfully suffer ten thousand deaths by torture for the chance to speak one word to--to them. And yet I know any such attempt would prove fatal to us all. The mere sight of--I would go crazy with joy!” There is no necessity for repeating the various arguments used, pro and con, before the final agreement was reached. Enough has already been put upon record, and the result must suffice: Professor Featherwit yielded the vital point, and, having once fairly expressed his fears and doubts, flung his whole heart into perfecting the disguise which was now counted upon to carry Bruno safely into and out of yonder city. He was carefully trigged out in the warlike uniform secured by Cooper Edgecombe at the cost of a human life, and, with fresh stain applied to his face and hands, the slight moustache he wore was not dangerously perceptible. “'Twould take a strong light and mighty keen eyes to see it at all, and even if a body should happen to notice it, he'd reckon 'twas a bit of smut, or the like,” generously declared Waldo. Under less trying circumstances, Bruno might have answered in kind, but now he merely smiled at the jester, then turned again to receive the earnest cautions let fall for his benefit by the professor. Above all else, he was to steer clear of fighting, and, without he saw a fair chance of winning speech with the white women, he was to keep in such hiding as Ixtli might furnish, trusting the young Aztec to post the Children of the Sun as to what was in the wind. Tremulous, almost incapable of coherent speech, so intense was his agitation, Cooper Edgecombe sent many messages to his loved ones, begging for one word in return. And if nothing less would serve--