d when he did so his countenance was heavy
with concern.

"Pardon me for having kept you so long waiting, my Lord," he said in a
loud voice, "but this terrible occurrence, of which I presume you have
heard, has thrown us all into a shocking state of confusion, and when
your message reached me I was, in my capacity of senior priest, with the
physicians whom we summoned, and who have been endeavouring to discover
the cause of the death of our lamented friends the Villac Vmu and
Motahuana." And, as he spoke, he closed the door carefully behind him.

"And have they succeeded?" demanded Huanacocha.

"Oh yes!" answered Xaxaguana. "They are in complete agreement that the
cause of death in each case was senile decay. They were both very old
men, you know."

"Senile decay!" exclaimed Huanacocha, in astonishment. "Surely you are
not serious, Xaxaguana. Why, they were at my house last night, as you
know, and nobody who then saw them will ever believe that they died of
old age. They were almost as active and vigorous as the youngest of us,
and neither of them exhibited the slightest symptoms of senile decay."

"Possibly not," assented Xaxaguana; "nevertheless that is the verdict of
the physicians. And, after all, you know, these exceedingly old men
often pass away with the suddenness of a burnt-out lamp; a single
flicker and they are gone. I must confess that, personally, I am not
altogether surprised; for when they returned from your house last night
it occurred to me that they seemed to have suddenly grown very old and
feeble; indeed I said as much when the news of their death was brought
to me."

"You did, did you?" retorted Huanacocha. "By our Lord the Sun, you are
a wonder, Xaxaguana; nothing less! How did you manage it, man, and so
promptly too? Why it must all have happened within half an hour of your
return home this morning."

"It did," said Xaxaguana. "I was still in my bath--for you must know
that, being somewhat fatigued with my protracted labours of yesterday, I
overslept myself this morning--when the intelligence was brought to me
that our two friends had been discovered lying dead in their beds. And
they could only have died very recently, for they were neither stiff nor
cold."

"And--I suppose there were no signs--no marks of violence on the bodies;
nothing to suggest the possibility of--of--foul play?" stammered
Huanacocha.

"No," answered Xaxaguana; "the physicians found nothing whatever of