which swirled down golden in the moonlight: but they could see nothing
beyond save the black wall of trees. After a while the voice ceased, and
the two returned to dream of Incas and nightingales.

They visited the village again next day; and every day for a week or
more: but the maiden appeared but rarely, and when she did, kept her
distance as haughtily as a queen.

Amyas, of course, as soon as he could converse somewhat better with his
new friends, was not long before he questioned the cacique about
her. But the old man made an owl's face at her name, and intimated by
mysterious shakes of the head, that she was a very strange personage,
and the less said about her the better. She was "a child of the Sun,"
and that was enough.

"Tell him, boy," quoth Cary, "that we are the children of the Sun by
his first wife; and have orders from him to inquire how the Indians
have behaved to our step-sister, for he cannot see all their tricks down
here, the trees are so thick. So let him tell us, or all the cassava
plants shall be blighted."

"Will, Will, don't play with lying!" said Amyas: but the threat was
enough for the cacique, and taking them in his canoe a full mile down
the stream, as if in fear that the wonderful maiden should overhear him,
he told them, in a sort of rhythmic chant, how, many moons ago (he
could not tell how many), his tribe was a mighty nation, and dwelt in
Papamene, till the Spaniards drove them forth. And how, as they wandered
northward, far away upon the mountain spurs beneath the flaming cone
of Cotopaxi, they had found this fair creature wandering in the forest,
about the bigness of a seven years' child. Wondering at her white skin
and her delicate beauty, the simple Indians worshipped her as a god,
and led her home with them. And when they found that she was human like
themselves, their wonder scarcely lessened. How could so tender a being
have sustained life in those forests, and escaped the jaguar and the
snake? She must be under some Divine protection: she must be a daughter
of the Sun, one of that mighty Inca race, the news of whose fearful
fall had reached even those lonely wildernesses; who had, many of them,
haunted for years as exiles the eastern slopes of the Andes, about the
Ucalayi and the Maranon; who would, as all Indians knew, rise again
some day to power, when bearded white men should come across the seas to
restore them to their ancient throne.

So, as the girl grew up among th