Nearly half an hour had passed in his sombre reverie when suddenly the vision of Atahuallpa, bound to the stake and surrounded by these pitiless Strangers, seemed to rise before his view as it had been told to him by many of those who had stood round the square of Cajamarca on that fatal night. Then he saw the morning light breaking over the circle of devoted women lying dead, slain by their own hands, round the stake, and among them the Princess Pillcu-Cica, his own half-sister. He remembered her in the old days at Quito as the friend and playmate of Nahua, and then suddenly again the picture before his half-dreaming eyes changed and he saw himself bound to such a stake with Nahua lying lifeless at his feet. It needed no more to stir the latent heroism in his soul to revolt. He sprang from his seat, nerved by a sudden impulse of almost despairing anger, and snatching the fringed diadem from his brow he dashed it to the ground, and at the very moment that he did so the heavy curtains that covered the doorway were drawn apart and his uncle Anda-Huillac entered with bowed head and slow steps, followed by Mama-Oello, his mother, the sister-wife and Coya of Huayna-Capac, and Nahua. When the high priest had given him the customary greetings, his eyes fell upon the borla lying on the floor, then he raised them and looked at the young Inca, and said-- “It is the first time, Lord, that the crown of the Four Regions has lain where it might be trampled underfoot, yet I call our Father the Sun to witness that I would rather see it there--ay, I would rather see it spurned by the foot of the merest slave in Cuzco--than on thy brow.” “Because that brow is not worthy to wear it? Is that so, brother of my father?” exclaimed Manco, turning half angrily and half reproachfully upon him. “Not so, Lord,” replied the old priest, “since I for one believe that if the true spirit of the great Huayna yet burns in the breast of any of the Children of the Sun it burns in thine. It is the crown that is not worthy of the brow since it was placed on it by the hand of the Stranger and the Unbeliever.” “And the conqueror. Forget not that Anda-Huillac,” the young Inca added, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down upon the discarded crown.