e sight was so solemn that it
awed me, as it did all that congregation, for I noted that here men
walked with unsandalled feet and that in speaking none raised their
voices high.

The old Inca, Upanqui, entered, gloriously apparelled and accompanied by
lords and priests, while after him came Kari with his retinue of great
men. The Inca bowed to the company whereon everyone in the great temple,
save myself alone whose British pride kept me on my feet, standing like
one left living on a battlefield among a multitude of slain, prostrated
himself before his divine majesty. At a sign they rose again and the
Inca seated himself upon his jewelled golden throne beneath the effigy
of the Sun, while Kari took his place upon a lesser throne to the Inca's
right.

Looking at him there in his splendour on this day when he came into his
own again, I bethought me of the wretched, starving Indian marked with
blows and foul with filth whom I had rescued from the cruel mob upon the
Thames-side wharf, and wondered at this enormous change of fortune and
the chain of wonderful events by which it had been brought about.

My fortune also had changed, for then I was great in my own fashion, who
now had become but a wanderer, welcomed indeed in this glittering
new world of which yonder we knew nothing, because I was strange and
different, also full of unheard-of learning and skilled in war, but
still nothing but an outcast wanderer, and so doomed to live and die.
And as I thought, so thought Kari, for our glances met, and I read it in
his eyes.

Yonder sat my servant who had become my lord, and though he was still my
friend, soon I felt he would be lost in the state matters of that great
empire, leaving me more lonely than before. Also his mind was not as
my mind, as his blood was not my blood, and he was the slave of a faith
that to me was a hateful superstition doubtless begotten by the Devil,
who under the name of _Cupay_, some worshipped in that land, though
others declared that this _Cupay_ was the God of the Dead.

Oh! that I could flee away with Quilla and at her side live out what was
left to me of life, since of all these multitudes she alone understood
and was akin to me, because the sacred fire of love had burned away our
differences and opened her eyes. But Quilla was snatched from me by the
law of their accursed faith, and whatever else Kari might give, he would
never give me this lady of the Moon, since, as he had said, to him