The Inca and the high priest had seen their childish love without displeasure, and it might well have been that some day he would have taken her to his palace in the South on a green hill-slope that overlooked the splendours of Cuzco, and to his pleasure-house in the lovely paradise of Yucay--but now, how was he to think of such delight as this? Could it really be possible that Atahuallpa, the son of his own father, had spoken those dreadful words, and that the light of to-morrow morning would show her to him being led out with her father and mother, her sisters and brothers, all that were near and dear to her, from the baby brother she was wont to fondle to the grandsire who was held to be the wisest man in the land, to be flung into the fierce flames that would consume them all till only their ashes were left, in obedience to the savage law which had been broken only in the vengeful imagination of the Inca--he had almost called him the Usurper! As his eyes wandered over the long lines of mighty masonry which now formed, not her home but her prison, sorrow and anger seemed fighting for the possession of his soul, and dreams of rescue and vengeance, each one wilder than the other, crowded through his brain until he could bear the stress of them no longer. He felt that he must do something or go mad--and yet what could he do? He was powerless to alter ever so slightly the pitiless march of the inexorable law, even as he was to turn the vengeful Inca a hair’s-breadth from his course. Even to intercede for the doomed ones who were now accursed would be sacrilege, and a word from Atahuallpa would send him to share their doom. As well might he seek to put forth his hand and take the brilliant Chasca[6] from her place in the sky above the vanished sun as to save his child-love from her fate. Yet he must do something, something that at least might set flowing through his veins the blood that seemed stagnating in his brain. The huge dark walls of the temples and palaces and store-houses and fortresses which filled this quarter of the city seemed to be coming together upon him, and the air of the streets seemed hot and stifling, but outside the gates was the free, open country, and above it the cool, wind-swept hillsides. So, wrapping his cloak more closely about him and throwing one corner of it over his left shoulder, he set out to walk rapidly out of the square and along the street which skirted the wall of the House of the Virgins, and by this he reached one of the city gates. The guard turned out as he approached, but at the sight of the yellow fringe on his brow[7] and the familiar features of the great Inca’s youngest born they fell back in an orderly rank and saluted him as he passed out.