us among the gods, and they suffered not his message to be
delivered, and he himself was slain. Yet was the token preserved to
us, and yet again the sign from heaven will come. And then--thou
knowest--" But here a shiver of pain went through him, and his speech
gave place to agonizing moans. When he spoke again his words were but a
whisper. "Lay me--in front of--the altar," he said. "Now is the end."

"But the sign? What is it? And where is the stronghold?" I cried
eagerly; forgetting in the intense excitement of this strange disclosure
my need for reticence, and forgetting even to disguise my voice. But my
imprudence cost me nothing. Even as I spoke another shiver went through
the Cacique's body; and as there came from his lips, thereafter forever
to be silent, a sound, half moan, half gasp, his soul went out from him,
and he was at rest.

When a little calmness had returned to me, I took from his breast the
bag of skin--stained darkly where his blood had flowed upon it--and then
tenderly and reverently lifted his poor mangled body and laid it before
the altar. And so I came back along the hidden path, safely and
unperceived, to the village: leaving the dead Cacique there in the
solemn solitude of that great mountain-top, whereon the dusk of night
was gathering, alone in death before the altar of his gods.

III.

THE MONK'S MANUSCRIPT.

When Pablo and I started, the day following, upon our return to Morelia,
the village of Santa Maria was overcast with mourning. The Cacique was
dead, they told us; had fallen among the rocks on the mountain-side,
being an old man and feeble, and so was killed. And I was expressly
charged with a message to the good Padre, begging him to hasten to Santa
Maria that the dead man might have Christian burial. I confess that I
found this request, though I promised faithfully to comply with it,
highly amusing; for I knew beyond the possibility of a doubt that if
ever a man died a most earnest and devout heathen it was this same
Cacique for whom Christian burial was sought; and I felt an assured
conviction that when the services of the Church over him were ended--and
whatever good was to be had for him from them secured--he would be
buried fittingly with all the fulness of his own heathen rites. But this
matter, lying in what I already perceived to be the very wide region
between the avowed faith and the hidden faith of the Indians, was no
concern of mine; yet I longed, as only a th