his man was a thief, a
dastard, and a traitor. As we know now, he strove twice to betray us to
the Teules. More, it was his plan to show this nest of wealth to them,
should they return again, and to share the spoil. All this we learned
from a woman whom he thought his love, but who was in truth a spy set to
worm herself into the secrets of his wicked heart. Now let him take his
fill of gold; look how he grips it even in death, a white man could not
hug the stuff more closely to his breast. Ah! Teule, would that the soil
of Anahuac bore naught but corn for bread and flint and copper for
the points of spears and arrows, then had her sons been free for ever.
Curses on yonder dross, for it is the bait that sets these sea sharks
tearing at our throats. Curses on it, I say; may it never glitter more
in the sunshine, may it be lost for ever!' And he fell fiercely to the
work of building up the wall.

Soon it was almost done; but before we set the last bricks, which were
shaped in squares like the clay lump that we use for the building of
farmeries and hinds' houses in Norfolk, I thrust a torch through the
opening and looked for the last time at the treasure chamber that was
also a dead-house. There lay the glittering gems; there, stood upon a
jar, gleamed the golden head of Montezuma, of which the emerald eyes
seemed to glare at me, and there, his back resting against this same
jar, and his arms encircling two others to the right and left, was the
dead man. But he was no longer dead, or so it seemed to me; at the
least his eyes that were shut had opened, and they stared at me like the
emerald eyes of the golden statue above him, only more fearfully.

Very hastily I withdrew the torch, and we finished in silence. When it
was done we withdrew to the end of the passage and looked up the shaft,
and I for one was glad to see the stars shining in heaven above me. Then
we made a double loop in the rope, and at a signal were hauled up
till we hung over the ledge where the black mass of marble rested, the
tombstone of Montezuma's treasure, and of him who sleeps among it.

This stone, that was nicely balanced, we pushed with our hands and feet
till presently it fell forward with a heavy sound, and catching on the
ridge of brick which had been prepared to receive it, shut the treasure
shaft in such a fashion that those who would enter it again must take
powder with them.

Then we were dragged up, and came to the surface of the earth i