The four men with the torches were now inside the square of soldiers around the scaffold, and he knew that in a few minutes more the flames would be roaring about them. But the Fates had ordained that a greater tragedy even than the sacrifice of the threescore victims of Atahuallpa’s fury was to avenge the outraged shade of his murdered father. The torchbearers stationed themselves one at each corner of the pyre and stood with their eyes on the Inca, waiting for the signal to fire it together. But the signal was never given, for, before Atahuallpa could make it, a long, shrill, piercing scream rang out over the square, and every eye was instantly turned upon a weird unearthly figure standing on the top of the wall of the House of the Virgins where it fronted on the square overlooking the terrace on which the throne was set. It was Mama-Lupa the Palla and prophetess. Her white clothing was rent and disordered, her grey hair was streaming wildly about her face and shoulders, and her arms were outstretched above her head, waving slowly to and fro. Again and yet again the scream rang out. The torchbearers dropped their torches and stood trembling beside them, and a thrill of terror shook every heart in the vast multitude saving only Atahuallpa’s. Then Mama-Lupa’s voice, high and shrill and clear, rose above the murmurs that were beginning to run from lip to lip, and her words reached every ear in the great throng as she half screamed and half chanted-- “There is woe coming to the great city and death to its people! Put out thy torches, Inca, for the Divine Ones have bidden the demons of the fire mountains light theirs and there shall be no need for thine. Thy Father is wrath with thee and shall hide his face from thee, and ye, O People of the Valley! fly while there is yet time, for ere long there shall be darkness in heaven and fire and desolation on the earth. “Fly lest the rocks open and swallow you and the mountains come together and crush you, for the City of the Sun is doomed and its streets shall be graves and its palaces and temples shall be sepulchres, and the Llapa shall smite the altars and rend them, and where there is life there shall be death, for the Son of the Sun has sinned, and his Father shall turn his face away from him!” No words more awful could have been uttered in the ears of the multitude, for to every man and woman in the city the Inca was as the visible incarnation of a God, and to say that he had sinned was to say that the Gods themselves had done wrong since they had permitted him to sin. It would have been blasphemy from any lips, but from those of Mama-Lupa, revered by the whole people as the wisest and holiest of the Pallas, they were more, and they smote the hearts of her hearers like words uttered by the very voice of Doom.