ming down the stair from the temple; and all
of these men had a look of eager alertness, as though some decisive
event were imminent in which they expected to have a part. But we had
only a moment in which to observe all this, for we were hurried away
towards the corner of the building that was most remote from the street,
and here, before I well could understand what was being done with me, I
was thrust so suddenly and so violently through a narrow door-way that I
fell heavily upon the floor. Before I could regain my feet Young had
tumbled down on top of me, and then the others tumbled on top of us
both--they having been in the same rude fashion injected into the
apartment; and while we thus were lying in a heap together--my own body,
being undermost, having the breath wellnigh squeezed out of it--we heard
the rattle of metal upon stone as the door-way was quickly closed with
heavy bars.

We struggled to our feet in wellnigh total darkness--for outside the
bars a curtain had been dropped that shut off almost wholly the light of
day--and I am confident that no one room ever contained two angrier
people than Rayburn and Young were then; for their very strength and
hardihood made them the more ragingly resent being thus tumbled about as
though they were bales or boxes rather than men. Rayburn's language was
not open to the charge of weakness; but the words in which Young gave
vent to his feelings were so startlingly vigorous that even a Wyoming
cow-boy would have been surprised by them; yet I must confess that at
the moment--so greatly was my own anger aroused--I thought his
observations exceedingly appropriate to the occasion that called them
forth, and I even was disposed to envy him the command of a technical
vocabulary that enabled him to express so adequately his righteous
wrath. However, I was for once well pleased that Fray Antonio did not
understand English.

But our anger quickly was swallowed up in anxious grief as we
discovered, when our eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the very
faint light, that only we four were in the room together; and a great
dread fell upon us because of the imminent peril to Pablo which this
separation of him from the rest of us implied. Assuredly there was
strong reason why he should be an especial object of Itzacoatl's fear
and hatred. He and El Sabio together were the visible sign which told
that the prophecy touching the Priest Captain's downfall was about to be
fulfilled; an