'Well,' said Hartness, with a dry sort of laugh, 'you see he was the victim of the two passions that have done most to drive men mad or make scoundrels of them since the world began--the love of woman and the lust for gold. I don't pretend to understand it myself, because he had gold enough promised to him, and there is no telling but that he might have won the woman; but there, you never can tell how far any man is mad or sane until he's tried.' 'But there was something else, my friend,' I said. 'There was, as you say, lust of gold and love of woman; but there was also hate. Why, I know not; but though I owe my new life to that man, I have hated him and he has hated me since we learnt to know each other as living men. You know, too, how, as I told you, Golden Star shrank from him as though he had been a poisonous reptile, and yet why should I hate him and yet love her who is of the same flesh and blood as he is?' 'I would rather discuss the problem in the open air or at the hacienda than here,' said the professor, 'and even then I don't suppose we should get much nearer to a solution, for these things are mysteries and mostly past finding out. Yet it may be that you and he, the sons of different centuries, may actually have embodied in you the differences and the antipathies of the two ages and the two races to which you belong. There is no telling. But come, let us get out of here, please. I really can't stand this any longer.' 'Nor I,' said Hartness. 'For goodness' sake let us go! This is a good deal more trying to the nerves than a cavalry charge or a smart skirmish.' 'Very well,' I said, 'we will go.' Then I called to Tupac and bade him tell the soldiers and the rest that the night's work was over and it was time to go. We gave each of the soldiers his wedge of gold, as I had promised them; and once more I made them swear that each would kill any of the others who thought to betray us. Then Tupac and Anahuac went and opened the stone door, and we returned from the Hall of Gold to the upper earth, leaving Djama and his fellow traitor still raving and crying within the walls of their golden prison. FOOTNOTES: [D] The Inca naturally does not distinguish between the modern Peruvians and their Spanish ancestors. [E] This is quite a common thing in Peru, and the Indian women make exceedingly clever spies. CHAPTER X ON THE RODADERO Francis Hartness and I came last out of the passage, and I asked him to lead the soldiers out of the hollow and across the plain to the wall of the Sacsahuaman, where I would join them, and as soon as they had gone out of the hollow and were lost to sight I went to the hole among the bushes where the hidden stone was and released the chain and let the water flow back into its old place, till the entrance to the Hall of Gold was only the same dark, stagnant pool that any wanderer might find at the bottom of the cloven stairway.