Over an extent of a thousand leagues from north to south, and for four hundred leagues from east to west, in a land which rose from the deserts and torrid valleys of the Pacific coast through infinite gradations of climate to the eternal winter of mountain solitudes soaring far beyond the clouds into the realms of everlasting frost, and from the tropical valleys of the eastern and western slopes where Nature laughed in unrestrained luxuriance to the vast, treeless plains of grass which lay high above the limit of cultivation, walled in by the tremendous rock-ramparts which were crowned with the snowy diadems of the Andes, there was not a man who had need to take thought for the things of to-morrow, not one who did not know that if he fulfilled his duty to the State of which he was a unit, all that he could demand from it would be freely and ungrudgingly granted. There had never been such a society upon earth before, it might be that there would never be such again, and now the work of twenty generations was finished, and the jealous Fates, as though unwilling that too much felicity should be the lot of man on earth, were looking down with angry eyes upon its perfection and conspiring even in the very centre of its power and glory to work its destruction. Nay, they were even gathered, pitiless and vindictive, around the death-bed of the dying warrior and statesman whose hand in the fulness of its strength had placed the coping-stone on the stately and symmetrical structure of the Empire of the Incas. On the rich, many-coloured furs which carpeted the cedar-boarded floor of the golden-walled, silver-ceiled room lit with silver lamps hanging by chains of gold, stood by the bedside in an attitude of attendant deference a very old man clad in the splendid robes which distinguished the priesthood of the Sun. His arms were crossed over his breast and his bared head was bowed, though every now and then the lids of his downcast eyes were raised and he looked anxiously at the face of his sleeping lord as though he were waiting for him to wake--perhaps even wondering whether he would ever wake again. At last a deeper breath filled the breast of the sleeper and raised the embroidered coverings. A long sigh broke the silence of the death-chamber, and the eyes of the Inca opened. The priest took a soft step forward, and then he bent his head still lower and waited for his lord to speak. “Are you still waiting for the end, Ullomaya? It is a long time coming, is it not? Yet it may be still longer, for my sleep seems to have given me new strength, and it may be that I shall even now see another day.”