Atahuallpa had sprung erect from the place where he had been cowering by the bedside. The horror that had shaken his soul had passed. At the sight of his mother’s imperial gestures, and the sound of her fierce and pregnant words, the warrior spirit and the fierce pride of the despot had awakened within him. He had accepted his destiny, and so sanctioned the crime which had given it to him. Thousands of lives were to be sacrificed, rivers of blood were to be poured out, and the empire of the Children of the Sun was to pass away for ever like a golden dream ending in an awakening of horror because of that swift and irrevocable resolution of his. But all this was in the future. In the present were the glories of empire and the delights of Divine honours and unquestioned rule, and other than these he saw nothing. The priest looked up as he felt his grip and saw his eyes, bloodshot and fierce, looking into his. “Thou who wouldst have changed the course of Destiny appointed by the Divine Ones, who wouldst have robbed me of my rights, and made my Lord and thine a liar with his last breath--is there any need for me to tell thee the doom of the traitor and the worker of sacrilege? Thou and thy wife and thy children and thy children’s children shall share it, according to the justice of the Ancient Law. The fire shall consume thee and them, and the winds shall scatter thine ashes and theirs from the sight of men. The places where ye have dwelt, the works ye have done, and the fields ye have tilled shall be destroyed utterly and laid waste for ever, so that when men see the wilderness that was once thine home, they shall remember the law which says that the doer of evil and all that are his shall be taken away from among the Children of the Sun and no vestige of them suffered to remain.”[3] The yet uncrowned Inca spoke these fearful words in a tone so coldly fierce that none who heard them doubted for an instant that he would use the power and the right that was his, and carry out the terrific penalty of the inexorable law to the last extremity, and none knew better how dire and all-embracing was the doom that impended over him and all that were his better than he who but an hour ago had held the highest and holiest dignity in the land, saving only that of the Inca-Royal himself. Yet awful as it was, the old man gave no outward sign that it had any terrors for him. His eyes met the fierce gaze of Atahuallpa’s without flinching, and his voice, as he replied to his hideous words, was mild and yet unwavering--