he mean by that, Pedro?"

Roger repeated the action.

"Perhaps he wants to know what you call your sword," Pedro
suggested.

"Perhaps it is that. I will try him, anyhow.

"'Spada.'"

Roger nodded, and repeated the word after him, and then touched his
own helmet.

"That is what he means," Juan said, with great satisfaction. "What
he has got to do is to touch things, and for us to tell him the
names."

"That is capital. I had no idea teaching a language was such easy
work."

However, after a few more words had been said, and a method
established, Roger asked no more questions; his companions being
now fully occupied in gazing at the houses, the temples, and the
crowd in the streets, while he himself was busy listening to the
remarks of the people.

It was curious to him, to hear everyone around freely discussing
them, assured that no word they said was understood. Had he been
vain, he would have felt gratified at the favorable comments passed
on his personal appearance by many of the women and girls; but he
put them down, entirely, to the fact that he differed more from
them than did the Spaniards, and it was simply the color of his
hair, and the fairness of his skin, that seemed wonderful to the
Mexicans.

"Ah!" he heard one woman say to another, "I marked that tall
soldier when they came into the town, this morning. They are all
grand men, and look wonderfully strong and brave with their arms
and armor. I know that such fighters as these were never heard of
before; for have they not, few as they are, beaten the Tlascalans?
Who, as we all know, are good fighters, though they are little
better than savages. But as to their faces, they were not what I
expected to see. They are lighter than ours, but they are not
white.

"But I noted this soldier. He is just like what I expected--just
like what they said the white man, who has been at Mexico for some
time, is like."

"I am sorry for them," the girl said. "They say that Montezuma will
offer them all up at the temples, when he gets them to Mexico."

"Perhaps they will never get there," a man standing next to her
said. "At least, unless they enter the town as captives.

"Perhaps some of them will stay here. Why should not our god have
his share of victims, as well as the war god of Mexico?"

The speaker was a priest, who was scowling angrily at the three
Spaniards; who, after stopping to look at the carving over the gate
of a temple, were now moving on