expression of his bitter
grief. For ourselves, we stood sad and silent, yet with our hearts
almost breaking within us, as we thought how small was the chance that
ever in this world should we see the face of Fray Antonio again.

XXIX.

THE ASSAULT IN THE NIGHT.

Neither the Council, in its irresolute parleyings, nor Fray Antonio, in
his resolute action, had at all considered certain factors which they
themselves had interjected into the problem that they then were dealing
with from such widely different stand-points and in such widely
different ways. The Council, at a stroke, had transformed the Tlahuicos
into soldiers, and had given the promise that in reward for their
faithfulness and valor these slaves thenceforward should be freemen.
Fray Antonio had preached to all those assembled at Huitzilan a creed
that had taken strong hold upon many hearts, and that especially had
won the hearts of those of the long-oppressed servile class--to whom its
doctrine of equality seemed to hold out an absolute assurance that their
life of slavery was at an end.

When, therefore, the terms which the Priest Captain offered were spread
abroad through the town, and through the camp close beside the town in
which the army lay--being there in readiness instantly to occupy the
Citadel should the enemy appear--a very lively anger was aroused because
such terms should even be listened to. For what the Priest Captain
demanded was that the apostle of the new religion should be relinquished
to him to be slain as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods, and that once more
the Tlahuicos should be thrust back into slavery; while what he
conceded--in that it affected only the higher classes--made the lot of
the Tlahuicos but the more unjustly cruel and hard to bear.

And those who resented the delay on the part of the Council in sending
back the Priest Captain's envoy with a sharp denial, presently went on
from hot words to violent deeds; being directly led from mutinous talk
to mutinous action by the knowledge that the Council had so far accepted
the offered terms as to send Fray Antonio to the great city to be
slain--for not one among them could be led for a moment to believe, so
impossible from their stand-point did such an act appear, that the monk
truly had gone thither of his own free-will.

Practically, the whole army was involved in the movement that then took
place; for even its officers, while not of the servile class, dreaded
the pun