Our way now led along a rough-hewn gallery that sloped gently upwards for some twelve hundred paces, and at the end of it there was a little chamber measuring some twenty feet each way and having no apparent outlet, but in the middle of one of the walls there was another of the cunningly-constructed revolving stones which our ancient masons ever used to bar their secret ways, and this three of our men, working as I told them, turned on its hinge, and through the opening that was thus made we passed out in single file to a little rock-walled valley over which the stars were shining. The door was closed behind us, and dust and dirt were rubbed over the thin lines which marked where it fitted into the rock, and then we extinguished our lanterns and passed out of the valley on to the pampa. The place where we had come out was about a thousand paces from the walls of the Sacsahuaman. We halted on the plain and I gave my last orders to the Ayllos. Then we set out in the direction of the Fortress, and as we went one by one my followers disappeared silently into the half darkness about us till at last only four of them were left, two leading Djama and two the professor. I had been talking of many things with Francis Hartness on the way, and showing him how in the olden times we had made use of the secret passages such as those he had already seen, and when we saw that we had come out by a way different to that which we had entered, he asked me the reason of it, and I answered him in a low voice and said,-- 'Because the other way is closed. Have patience a little while and you shall see why.' Then we went on our way in silence until we came to the edge of the valley in which the Sayacusca stands. Here I halted and whispered a few words to the men who were leading Djama and the professor. They slipped off their ponchos and threw them over the heads of their prisoners, for such the two were now to be for the present. I heard a muffled cry from Djama, and I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder and said in a whisper,-- 'Keep quiet and lie down. These men have knives and will use them at my bidding.' Then they pulled him and the professor down, and they lay quiet, knowing that their lives were in my hands, and I lay down on the edge of the valley, signing to Francis Hartness to come and lie beside me. Then I pointed into the valley and bade him watch. Presently, in the dim light, we made out figures moving about the rock, and caught every now and then the glint of the star-rays along thin lines of polished metal. 'Rifle barrels!' he whispered. 'What are they doing here? I didn't know that your men had any weapons yet.' 'No,' I said, 'those are in the hands of soldiers from Cuzco. The time has come sooner than I thought for, and yet not too soon. You will see the first blow struck for the freedom of my people before to-morrow's sun rises.' FOOTNOTES: