He told them of the conquest of their ancient kings by his father, and reminded them how, from being their conqueror, he became their king and father and protector. How he had taken their own princess to wife, and how, sprung from that union, he united in his own veins the purest blood of the South and the North. Then he spoke of the decree by which his father had given him, the son of a Quitan mother, the lordship of the land of the North, independent and absolute, and he took the new-risen Sun to witness that, with their help, he would preserve it as he had received it to the last day of his life. After that, with a fiercer ring in his voice, he spoke of the crime of Ullomaya, and told how he was self-convicted of seeking to rob him, their lawful Inca, prince of their own blood, of his rightful inheritance, and to make him the vassal of his brother and them the slaves of the people of the South. Then, pointing to the scaffold now surrounded with great banks of fagots, he pronounced the formal sentence ordained by the ancient law. And now he paused for a little, and when he began to speak again his voice, though still loud and clear, was mild and gracious, and he told them how, being unwilling that the first act of his new reign should be one of severity, however just, he would delay the execution until midday in order that the interval might be passed in hearing petitions according to the ancient custom, in righting the wrongs of those who had suffered injustice, and in rewarding those whose services to the State had given them a claim upon his bounty. This was the moment for which Manco had been waiting in breathless anxiety. Yet, so deathless is hope in the heart of a youth, that when he had heard the Inca give the respite of even a few hours it rose again and his pulses throbbed with new life. Then a sense of awe, almost of fear, came over him as he remembered again what he had seen and heard and felt the night before--the fire-sign in the sky, the warning roll of the thunder that came, not from above, but from below, the terrible words of Mama-Lupa, and the shuddering of the solid earth beneath his feet as he stood with her on the altar on Yavirá. What if the anger of the Gods should smite judge and victims alike before the hand of human vengeance closed upon its prey! CHAPTER V. THE CHOICE OF MANCO