this
would be sacrilege.

The ceremonies began. First Larico, the high-priest of the Sun, clothed
in his white sacerdotal robes, made sacrifice upon a little altar which
stood in front of the Inca's throne.

It was a very simple sacrifice of fruit and corn and flowers, with what
seemed to be strange-shaped pieces of gold. At least I saw nothing else,
and am sure that nothing that had life was laid upon that altar after
the fashion of the bloody offerings of the Jews, and indeed of those of
some of the other peoples of that great land.

Prayers, however, were spoken, very fine prayers and pure so far as I
could understand them, for their language was more ancient and somewhat
different to that which was used in common speech; also the priests
moved about, bowing and bending the knees much as our own do in
celebrating the mass, though whether these motions were in honour of the
god or of the Inca, I am not sure.

When the sacrifice was over, and the little fire that burned upon the
altar had sunk low, though I was told that for hundreds of years it had
never been extinguished, suddenly the Inca began to speak. With many
particulars that I had not heard before he told the tale of Kari and
of his estrangement from him in past years through the plottings of the
mother of Urco who now was dead, like the mother of Kari. This woman,
it would appear, had persuaded him, the Inca, that Kari was conspiring
against him, and therefore Urco was ordered to take him prisoner, but
returned only with Kari's wife, saying that Kari had killed himself.

Here Upanqui became overcome with emotion as the aged are apt to do,
and beat his breast, even shedding tears because most unjustly he had
allowed these things to happen and the wicked triumph over the good,
for which sin he said he felt sure his father the Sun would bring some
punishment on him, as indeed was to chance sooner than he thought. Then
he continued his story, setting out all Urco's iniquities and sacrileges
against the gods, also his murders of people of high and low degree and
his stealing of their wives and daughters. Lastly he told of the coming
of Kari who was supposed to be dead, and all that story which I have set
out.

Having finished his tale, with much solemn ceremonial he deposed Urco
from his heirship to the Empire which he gave back to Kari to whom it
belonged by right of birth and calling upon his dead forefathers, one by
one, to be witness to the act, with g