'No, no, my friend!' I said, quickly and sternly. 'What you would ask is impossible. His aims were deeper and his sin was blacker than it has been shown to be here. He did not betray us for gold alone, for he knew that I would keep my promise and give him more than he could want. He would have given me to my enemies to be killed--it might have been by tortures, to make me say where my treasures were hidden--so that he might have had Golden Star at his mercy.' 'It was your own fault, curse you! Why did you not give her to me?' Djama cried suddenly, breaking loose from the two who held his arms and putting his hand to his pistol pocket. The next instant my own revolver was out from under my cloak and levelled at his heart. 'Another motion and I will kill you,' I said, 'though so quick a death would be too good for you. Tie his hands behind his back and hold him faster this time. Give me his pistol.' Before I had done speaking they had seized him again in spite of his struggles, and paying no heed to his cries and imprecations--for by this time his long-pent-up passion had broken loose and made him almost mad, and when they had given me his pistol I said to him,-- 'I told you that Golden Star should be yours if you could win her as an honest man. But you sought to steal her as you would have stolen my gold. That is enough; keep silence now, or you shall be gagged.' Then I held out my hand to the professor and said,-- 'I will accept your promise, for you are an honest man. There is my hand. Now we will be friends as before, and I will answer for your safety. Will you go or stay with us?' 'I will stay,' he said, 'for my studies are not completed yet, and besides, I am anxious to see what the Inca empire will be like when it is restored.' 'I am glad that you say so,' I replied, 'for you are welcome, and you shall make your home here always if you will.' Then I bade them stand the Spanish officer in the professor's place beside Djama, and, turning to Francis Hartness, said,-- 'These men are worthy of death, for they would have delivered us to death, but I cannot kill Djama since Joyful Star might hate me for it, and if I do not kill him it would not be justice to kill the Spaniard. What shall I do?' 'I see nothing for it,' he said, after thinking awhile, 'but shutting them up safely until we have got this business over, and then sending them out of the country and forbidding them to come back under pain of death. There are plenty of places that they would be perfectly safe in.' 'That is well thought of, my friend,' I said, 'and it shall be done. They came for gold and they shall have it. They shall live in it, and see gold, and nothing but gold, till the sight of it is hateful to them. They shall have a prison of gold, and eat and drink from gold, and sleep and walk and sit on gold. Yes, truly, they shall have enough of gold before they see the light of day again. Now tell the Spaniard what I have said.'