José made no answer, and almost immediately went out to gather sticks for a fire. Yet never had Fray Fernando been so dear to him as at that moment. Nor had any single act or speech ever done so much to bring their hearts together as that one free and generous acknowledgment. So great is the power of truth between man and man. X. The Dead Men who Fought against Spain. “If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.” ECCLES. v. 8. Three hundred years have passed away since the men of the Old World spoiled and conquered Tahuantin Suyu. Those who did and those who suffered wrong have slept side by side for ages. The ancient Incas lie in glory “with kings and counsellors of the earth, who have built desolate places for themselves, or with princes that had gold, and filled their houses with silver;” while their once happy subjects, doomed to toil in the service of the cruel stranger, have found repose at last, where “the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master.” And the men who robbed and tortured them, who made their fair land a desolation, until the cry of it reached unto heaven, and those who were left alive envied those whom the sword had devoured,—they also have gone to render account of their deeds before Him who is the Judge of quick and dead. Do we still say with the Inca’s son, “Why God allowed these things to be, we know not”? Not altogether. First, let it be said, once for all, that beautiful—wonderfully beautiful—as the social polity of the Incas undoubtedly was, it was no more perfect than any other scheme which man has devised for making this earth the paradise it would have been if sin had never entered. Two defects may be specially mentioned; since these probably contained the seeds of dissolution for the whole magnificent and extensive fabric. The royal and privileged race—the Children of the Sun—stood too far above the people, and looked down on them from too lofty an eminence, as beings of quite another and a lower order. Not only had the Incas different ideas and traditions—it is said even a different language—but they had actually _a different code of morality_ for themselves to that which they imposed on their subjects. Great liberties were allowed them: it is true that, in accordance with the beneficence which formed their distinguishing characteristic, they seem to have used them most mercifully,—yet still they used them. What were accounted vices in the people, were none in them; and here, perhaps, may really be found “the little speck within the garnered fruit” that, “rotting inwards,” would by-and-by have slowly mouldered all.