most royal and beautiful woman, who for so
many years was my faithful wife. So I thought in that hour and so I
think to this day. She said that we parted for ever, but I trust and I
believe that this is not so. Surely there is forgiveness for us all, and
a place where those who were near and dear to each other on the earth
may once more renew their fellowship.

At last I rose with a sigh to seek help, and as I rose I felt that there
was something set about my neck. It was the collar of great emeralds
which Guatemoc had given to me, and that I had given to Otomie. She had
set it there while I slept, and with it a lock of her long hair. Both
shall be buried with me.

I laid her in the ancient sepulchre amid the bones of her forefathers
and by the bodies of her children, and two days later I rode to Mexico
in the train of Bernal Diaz. At the mouth of the pass I turned and
looked back upon the ruins of the City of Pines, where I had lived
so many years and where all I loved were buried. Long and earnestly I
gazed, as in his hour of death a man looks back upon his past life, till
at length Diaz laid his hand upon my shoulder:

'You are a lonely man now, comrade,' he said; 'what plans have you for
the future?'

'None,' I answered, 'except to die.'

'Never talk so,' he said; 'why, you are scarcely forty, and I who am
fifty and more do not speak of dying. Listen; you have friends in your
own country, England?'

'I had.'

'Folk live long in those quiet lands. Go seek them, I will find you a
passage to Spain.'

'I will think of it,' I answered.

In time we came to Mexico, a new and a strange city to me, for Cortes
had rebuilt it, and where the teocalli had stood, up which I was led to
sacrifice, a cathedral was building, whereof the foundations were fitly
laid with the hideous idols of the Aztecs. The place was well enough,
but it is not so beautiful as the Tenoctitlan of Montezuma, nor ever
will be. The people too were changed; then they were warriors and free,
now they are slaves.

In Mexico Diaz found me a lodging. None molested me there, for the
pardon that I had received was respected. Also I was a ruined man, no
longer to be feared, the part that I had played in the noche triste and
in the defence of the city was forgotten, and the tale of my sorrows won
me pity even from the Spaniards. I abode in Mexico ten days, wandering
sadly about the city and up to the hill of Chapoltepec, where
Montezuma's pleasure-ho