oor old fellow as
comfortable as he could he enquired solicitously how he felt; but
Vilcamapata only looked at him blankly, and murmured a few words in a
tongue that was quite unintelligible to his listener. Then, with gentle
touch, Phil began to pass his hand cautiously over his patient's body,
searching for possible fractured ribs or some similar injury; but the
old man waved him impatiently away, and presently broke forth in a low,
crooning sort of chant.

"My days are done," he murmured; "my wanderings are at an end; my Father
the Sun and my Mother the Moon call me, and I must depart for those
Islands of the Blessed that our Father sometimes deigns to show us
floating afar in the serene skies of eventide. My spirit is weary and
longs for rest. Full forty years have I been an outcast and a wanderer
in the land that once belonged to my people; and during those years no
friendly face have I ever beheld, no friendly voice has ever reached
mine ear until the day when the two white men saved me from the fire of
the Pegwi Indians. And to me have they been since then as sons; nay,
more than sons, for there was a time when I dreamed that he whom the
fair young giant calls Phil might be our Father Manco Capac returned to
earth to deliver his people from the thraldom of the Spaniard. But
to-day have mine eyes been opened, and I know of a surety that Manco
will never return to earth to deliver his people, whose doom it is to
disappear gradually from off the face of the earth, and be known no
more. Therefore, listen unto me, O ye who have been as sons to me in
the days of my loneliness and old age: Ye crave for gold, and the stones
that gleam in the light white and bright as stars, green as the young
grass that springs to life after the rains of winter, and red as the
heart's blood of a warrior; and in my blindness I dreamed that ye sought
them as the means whereby ye might obtain the power to drive out the
Spaniard from the fair land of the Incas and restore it to those from
whom it was wrongfully taken. And in the days of our great calamity
there arose one who prophesied that in the latter days our Father Manco
should return to earth and do this thing; therefore was a great treasure
of gold and stones secretly gathered together from mines known only to
our own people, and securely hidden from the Spaniard, in order that
when Manco came he might have an abundance of wealth wherewith to buy
arms and food and clothing for