"My days are done," he murmured; "my wanderings are at an end; my Father the Sun and my Mother the Moon call me, and I must depart for those Islands of the Blessed that our Father sometimes deigns to show us floating afar in the serene skies of eventide. My spirit is weary and longs for rest. Full forty years have I been an outcast and a wanderer in the land that once belonged to my people; and during those years no friendly face have I ever beheld, no friendly voice has ever reached mine ear until the day when the two white men saved me from the fire of the Pegwi Indians. And to me have they been since then as sons; nay, more than sons, for there was a time when I dreamed that he whom the fair young giant calls Phil might be our Father Manco Capac returned to earth to deliver his people from the thraldom of the Spaniard. But to-day have mine eyes been opened, and I know of a surety that Manco will never return to earth to deliver his people, whose doom it is to disappear gradually from off the face of the earth, and be known no more. Therefore, listen unto me, O ye who have been as sons to me in the days of my loneliness and old age: Ye crave for gold, and the stones that gleam in the light white and bright as stars, green as the young grass that springs to life after the rains of winter, and red as the heart's blood of a warrior; and in my blindness I dreamed that ye sought them as the means whereby ye might obtain the power to drive out the Spaniard from the fair land of the Incas and restore it to those from whom it was wrongfully taken. And in the days of our great calamity there arose one who prophesied that in the latter days our Father Manco should return to earth and do this thing; therefore was a great treasure of gold and stones secretly gathered together from mines known only to our own people, and securely hidden from the Spaniard, in order that when Manco came he might have an abundance of wealth wherewith to buy arms and food and clothing for his armies. But to-day I know that the prophet who foretold this thing was a false prophet, and that the hidden treasure will never be needed for the accomplishment of the purpose for which it was gathered; also I am the last of those who knew the secret of the hiding-place, and if I pass away, taking the secret with me, the treasure will be lost, wasted, useless, remaining for ever undiscovered.