they laboured in silence and the
children laboured at their sides.

Looking at them it came into my mind that these silent patient women
were inspired by some common and desperate purpose, that all knew of,
but which none of them chose to tell.

'Will you work so hard for your masters the Teules?' cried a man in
bitter mockery, as a file of them toiled past beneath their loads of
stone.

'Fool!' answered their leader, a young and lovely lady of rank; 'do the
dead labour?'

'Nay,' said this ill jester, 'but such as you are too fair for the
Teules to kill, and your years of slavery will be many. Say, how shall
you escape them?'

'Fool!' answered the lady again, 'does fire die from lack of fuel only,
and must every man live till age takes him? We shall escape them thus,'
and casting down the torch she carried, she trod it into the earth with
her sandal, and went on with her load. Then I was sure that they had
some purpose, though I did not guess how desperate it was, and Otomie
would tell me nothing of this woman's secret.

'Otomie,' I said to her that night, when we met by chance, 'I have ill
news for you.'

'It must be bad indeed, husband, to be so named in such an hour,' she
answered.

'De Garcia is among our foes.'

'I knew it, husband.'

'How did you know it?'

'By the hate written in your eyes,' she answered.

'It seems that his hour of triumph is at hand,' I said.

'Nay, beloved, not HIS but YOURS. You shall triumph over de Garcia, but
victory will cost you dear. I know it in my heart; ask me not how or
why. See, the Queen puts on her crown,' and she pointed to the volcan
Xaca, whose snows grew rosy with the dawn, 'and you must go to the gate,
for the Spaniards will soon be stirring.'

As Otomie spoke I heard a trumpet blare without the walls. Hurrying to
the gates by the first light of day, I could see that the Spaniards were
mustering their forces for attack. They did not come at once, however,
but delayed till the sun was well up. Then they began to pour a furious
fire upon our defences, that reduced the shattered beams of the gates
to powder, and even shook down the crest of the earthwork beyond them.
Suddenly the firing ceased and again a trumpet called. Now they charged
us in column, a thousand or more Tlascalans leading the van, followed by
the Spanish force. In two minutes I, who awaited them beyond it together
with some three hundred warriors of the Otomie, saw their heads appear
over t