José at first gave way with the rest. But he had seen horses in Nasca, and being naturally courageous, had successfully endeavoured to overcome his fear of them. Recovering self-possession, he looked about him, and observed that a poor little Indian child, who had been thrown down in the confusion, was lying almost beneath the horse’s hoofs. To snatch it from its perilous position, and deposit it safely in the nearest of a dozen pair of arms, stretched out simultaneously to receive it, was a minute’s work. In the next, José’s hand was laid boldly upon the rein of the reckless rider. “Have a care how you ride, señor caballero,” he said in Spanish; “we have all lives and limbs to lose, worth as much in God’s sight as your own.” The youth, for he was no more—a very handsome young Spaniard, with fine, haughty, aristocratic features, dark, curled hair, and the first down on his blooming cheek—cast a look of amazement upon “El Indio,” who dared to remonstrate with him, and in such good Castilian. Then, flushing with anger, he raised his riding-whip. “Curse your insolence!” he cried. “Let go my rein, you Indian dog.” Don José Viracocha Inca had not come to the city of his fathers to be treated as a slave. He instantly snatched the whip from the hand of the Spaniard, whose keenly-tempered blade leaped the next moment from its scabbard and flashed in the sunlight. Fatal consequences might have followed, had not one from the crowd laid a strong hand on José’s shoulder, and, partly by force, partly by a few words—brief, but of momentous import—whispered in his ear, drawn him away from the scene of conflict. The whip fell to the ground, and one of the bystanders picked it up and gave it to its owner; who spurred on to the great square, lest he should incur a severe rebuke from his senior officer, and still more, lest he should miss the tragedy about to be enacted there. Meanwhile José turned a blank, terrified face to the old Indian with the fillet of vicuña wool—for he it was whose friendly violence had extricated him from his perilous position.—“_The Inca?_” he repeated; “what is it you say of the Inca?” “I say of you, that you are a brave youth, but that this is no time to show it, when the eye of every man in Cuzco is dim with tears for the Inca.” “The Inca?—Do I hear aright? Speak once again, my father.” “While I speak, they are leading the Inca to his death in yonder square.” “Alalau! Dare they do such a deed?—even the Spaniards?—What is his crime?” “He has refused to touch Spanish gold,” said the old man bitterly. “From hands red with his people’s blood he would accept nothing. So at last they give him the one gift he cannot refuse—the stroke that sends him to the mansions of his Father the Sun.”