When the royal commissioner arrived at Panama early in 1541, the latest news from Peru was tranquillising. Pizarro was busily engaged in enlarging and beautifying Lima, in regulating the revenue and the administration, in distributing "encomiendas," and in restraining the rapacity of his Spaniards. However, Lima was full of the "men of Chile"--as Almagro's adherents were called--all bitter enemies of the governor. They passed him in the street without saluting, and their attitude was so menacing that Pizarro received repeated warnings and was urged to banish them. Absolutely incapable of personal fear, magnanimous when his passions had not been aroused, he only replied, "Poor fellows; they have had trouble enough. We will not molest them." He even sent for Juan de la Rada, the guide, counsellor, and guardian of the young half-breed who was Almagro's heir, and condescended to try to argue him into a better frame of mind, saying at parting, "Ask me frankly what you desire." But the iron had entered too deeply into Rada's soul; he had already organised a conspiracy to assassinate Pizarro. At noon on Sunday, the 26th of June, 1541, Pizarro was sitting at dinner in his house with twenty gentlemen, among them his half-brother, Francisco Alcantara, and several of the most illustrious knights who had taken part in the conquest. The great door into the public square was lying wide open. The conspirators, to the number of a score, had assembled in a house opposite. All of a sudden they rushed into the square fully armed and carrying their swords naked in their hands. A young page standing in front of the governor's house saw them and ran back shouting: "To arms! all the men of Chile are coming to kill the Marquis, our lord." The guests rose in alarm from the table and all but half a dozen fled to the windows and dropped into the garden. Pizarro threw off his gown and snatched up a sword, while the valiant Francisco Chaves stepped forward through the ante-room to dispute the passage at the staircase. The ferocious crowd of murderers rushed up and laid him dead on the stairs. Alcantara checked them for a few moments with his single sword, but was soon forced back into the dining-room and fell pierced with many thrusts. The old lion shouted from the inside, "What shameful thing is this! why do you wish to kill me?" and with a cloak wrapped round one arm and his sword grasped in the other hand, he rushed forward to meet his assassins and strike a blow to avenge his brother before he himself should fall. Only two faithful young pages remained at his side. Though over seventy years of age, his practised sword laid two of the crowd dead before he was surrounded. The two boys were butchered and in the melee Pizarro received a mortal wound in the throat, and falling to the floor, made the sign of the cross on the boards and kissed it. One of the ruffians had snatched up an earthen water jar and with this pounded out the old man's brains as he lay prostrate,