almost as
much time as Brasseur de Bourbourg to Mexican hieroglyphics, and
naturally had made nothing out of them. His chief desire was to discover
the Secret of the Pyramid--not the pyramids of Egypt, as you fancied, but
the Pyramid of the Sun, Tonatiuh, at Teohuacan. To the problem connected
with this mysterious structure, infinitely older than the empire of
Montezuma, which Cortes destroyed, he fancied he had a clue in this
scroll."

Moore handed me a prepared sheet of birch bark, like those which the red
men use for their rude picture writings. It was very old, but the
painted characters were still brilliant, and even a tyro could see that
they were not Indian, but of the ancient Mexican description. In the
upper left-hand corner was painted a pyramidal structure, above which the
sun beamed. Eight men, over whose heads the moon was drawn, were issuing
from the pyramid; the two foremost bore in their hands effigies of the
sun and moon; each of the others seemed to carry smaller objects with a
certain religious awe. Then came a singular chart, which one might
conjecture represented the wanderings of these men, bearing the sacred
things of their gods. In the lowest corner of the scroll they were being
received by human beings dressed unlike themselves, with head coverings
of feathers and carrying bows in their hands.

"This scroll," Moore went on, "my father bought from one of the last of
the red men who lingered on here, a prey to debt and whisky. My father
always associated the drawings with the treasures of Teohuacan, which,
according to him, must have been withdrawn from the pyramid, and conveyed
secretly to the north, the direction from which the old Toltec pyramid
builders originally came. In the north they would find no civilized
people like themselves, he said, but only the Indians. Probably,
however, the Indians would receive with respect the bearers of mysterious
images and rites, and my father concluded that the sacred treasures of
the Sun might still be concealed among some wandering tribe of red men.
He had come to this conclusion for some time, when I and my brother
returned from school, hastily summoned back, to find him extremely ill.
He had suffered from a paralytic stroke, and he scarcely recognized us.
But we made out, partly from his broken and wandering words, partly from
old Tom (Peter's father, now dead), that my father's illness had followed
on a violent fit of passion. He had picke