“Conqueror until now only, my son and my Lord,” said Mama-Oello, coming forward and laying her hand lightly upon his arm, “and conquerors only because the Usurper had split the power of the land in twain and set one half of it against the other. Had there been but one Lord over the Four Regions, and had all our armies been united under such a rule as his whose love was my joy and my honour, then these few Strangers, despite their strange weapons and terrible war-beasts, would have been but as feeble reeds in a rushing torrent, to have stood perchance for a while and then fall overwhelmed. My son, is there no hand in all the Four Regions that can draw together what the hands of Atahuallpa parted? Is there no heart whose valour can fire the thousands who yet remain faithful to us with the high resolve to win back what is lost, and to overwhelm these cruel Strangers in the midst of the ruin that they have brought upon us? If there is such a hand and such a heart left in all the Four Regions, surely they shall be thine, my son.” “Why have you come to tell me this now?” said Manco, turning almost roughly upon her. “Have you waited till I am something worse than a slave, powerless and a captive, degraded before the eyes of my people and accursed in my own? See, there lies the borla which I may never wear again. I am sick of pretence. Henceforth I will be and seem what I am. Oh, Nahua, Nahua, wisest and dearest of my counsellors, what evil spirit stopped my ears to the wisdom of your counsels and opened them to the smooth-spoken lies of these accursed strangers? But why do you three come to me now, now when it is too late?” “Because it is not yet too late, Lord,” replied Anda-Huillac, motioning to Nahua to be silent till he had spoken, “and because while thou hast been brooding here in thy captivity, since it is nothing else, over the misfortunes of thy people two of the vilest outrages that could have befallen them and thee have this day come to pass.” “What are they?” said Manco, looking gloomily at him. “What worse can befall the Children of the Sun or him who should be their lawful Lord?” “My Lord knows,” replied Anda-Huillac solemnly, “that these impious Strangers have already despoiled the House of the Sun of its most sacred treasures. At noon to-day they robbed it even of its holiness, and dedicated it to the worship of their own gods. To-day, too, the common soldiers of the Strangers forced their way for the third time into the House of the Virgins, penetrating this time into its most secret and holiest place, and by order of the same four who came to thee many moons ago as friendly envoys, rifled it of its last priceless treasure, and at this moment the Princess Lalla-Cica and her sisters, fairest save one of the Virgins of the Sun, are the slaves and playthings of these false-tongued and black-hearted Strangers whom we have welcomed as friends only to know them as enemies and oppressors.”