“_Chachau!_” said José. The exclamation meant, “I am heartily willing, and very glad.” Then the monk began to put together the few articles he thought necessary for the journey. “We need not be troubled with baggage,” said José coolly. “The men will give us all we want by the way.” “And what of the way, José? How shall we find that? You know no more of it than I. You have only travelled along the coast, never towards Cuzco.” “The way, patre! How could we miss it? We have only to go by the road.” For if in the days of Roman ascendancy the proverb, “All roads lead to Rome” expressed an almost literal truth, it was yet more strictly true that in the empire of the Incas all roads led to Cuzco. Their policy was, in the highest degree, one of centralization. “Will you take the books, patre?” José inquired. He regarded his patron’s books with almost superstitious reverence. Indeed, it is quite possible that he thought each of them possessed what his race styled a “Mother,” or spiritual essence of its own. “I will take this,” said the monk, laying his hand on a Breviary. “Not the others.” Two bundles comprised all that the travellers cared to take; more indeed than José, who thought he had a child’s right to everything he needed in Tahuantin Suyu, would willingly have encumbered himself with. When his other preparations were completed, the monk took a key from the bosom of his frock, and unlocked a small strong coffer, placed for security in a kind of rude press which he had contrived in the wall of his hut. He took out some pieces of money; then paused for a moment in evident doubt. Something else was there, which he scarcely liked either to take or to leave behind; something which belonged of right to José, and which indeed his conscience told him he ought to have given him long ago. He had withheld it, fearing the memories it might awaken. But now all his precautions had been proved useless, if not worse. Better to do the thing that was right, without too much regard to consequences. “José,” he said, showing him the curiously wrought pin he had received from Don Ramon, “do you remember this?” “My mother’s topu!” José exclaimed, eagerly taking it from his hand. For some moments he looked at it in silence, then he pressed it to his lips, while a tear glistened in his eye. “Keep it,” said the monk. “But we must not loiter now, for the hours of darkness are waning. Are you ready?” “Let the patre wait but for a moment,” said José. He fastened his treasure securely into his tunic; then, with some difficulty, caused by his only possessing the use of one hand, he took the crucifix from the coca-bag by his side. “This belongs to the patre,” he said, with the air of a person a little ashamed of himself. Fray Fernando wisely accepted the unspoken apology. He restored the crucifix to its place at his girdle, merely saying, “It is a precious symbol of a still more precious Thing.”