Yet there was something else in my heart, although at that time I did not dare even to let my inmost thoughts dwell upon it, which in some way dulled the pain of the blow that had fallen upon me, and reconciled me to the parting which in one sense must now be eternal. The longer I pondered the more deeply did that look of horror which I had seen in the eyes of Joyful Star burn into my soul, and the more clearly did the words that she had spoken ring in my ears. She had said that it was horrible and that it was impossible, and she was to me as one of those bright angels who, according to our ancient faith, awaited the heroes and sages of our race in the Mansions of the Sun—a being so far above me that I could look upon her only as a mortal might look from afar upon a daughter of the Celestials.

Thus, musing in silence and solitude on the wild mountain-side, now looking back into my distant past, and now hazarding a glance into the fast-approaching future, the hours slipped by quickly for me, and I heard the bells of the churches—bells which they had told me had been cast out of the copper and gold and silver that our conquerors had taken from our temples and palaces—chiming the half-hour before eleven.

So I turned back to the city, and made haste to the place where Djama and Ullullo would be waiting for me. I found them there talking together, and without discovering myself to Djama, I told Ullullo in Quichua to follow me with the Englishman. Then I went on swiftly along the rivulet of Tullamayo, past the terrace of Rocca Inca, and along the smooth, dark wall of what had once been the Yachahuasi, or College of the Youths, and so out of the city and the gorge of the little river Rodadero. Then, with the two still following me a few yards behind, I climbed the lower terraces of the Colcompata, or the Granaries, where the divine Manco built his first palace, and then on up the hillside to the Tiupunco, or Gate of Sand, which led through the fragments of what had once been the outer wall of the great fortress, and so on to the little level pampa of the Rodadero, which was my meeting-place with Tupac.

Now as I went I began to sing one of our ancient songs, which was the signal that I had agreed upon with Tupac, and presently, one after another, silent, stealthy forms crept out from the angles of the great zig-zag wall and came towards me. One of them, taller than the rest, threw an iron bar that he was carrying across his shoulders, and came and stood before me with bowed-down head, waiting for me to speak. I knew that it was Tupac, and I said to him,—

'Are the Children of the Sun ready to do the bidding of his Son?'

'They are, Lord!' he replied. 'Here are twenty who have sworn by the heart of the divine Manco to do all things lawful and unlawful, even to the death, at the bidding of him who shall prove himself to be the true heir of the royal Llautu.'

'It is good,' I said, 'and the proof shall soon be given. Now, take the stranger yonder; do him no harm, but bind his eyes so that he cannot see, and tie his hands behind him. Then follow me.'

Instantly the stealthy forms closed around Djama. Not a word was spoken save his startled, angry exclamation, which was soon stifled, and then they brought him along after me, I going first and Tupac following close behind me. Like a string of shadows we moved across the plain past the great carved rock which is still called the Inca's Seat, and over the ridge of the Sliding Stones and down into the valley beyond, which is thickly strewn with great rock-masses carved into seats, and altars, and baths, and chambers, of which no man knows the origin, and which were ancient when Manco-Capac and Mama-Occlu first came into the land.

The greatest of these is a high white rock carved all over into steps and seats and altars and basins, which are said to have been made to catch the blood of the living sacrifices that were offered up here by a race of men whose name has been forgotten. It is called in our language the Sayacusca, or Tired Stone, for an old tradition says that ages ago it was brought from the mountains by the toil of ten thousand men, and when it reached its present place it rolled over and killed three hundred of them, and could never be moved again upon its journey.

On the south side of this there is a great cleft from the top to the bottom, and up the sides of this cleft are the two halves of a stairway, which was carved there before some earthquake rent the stone in twain, and under this is a deep dark pool of water. At the entrance to the cleft I stopped and beckoned to the others to come round me. Then I told them that they were about to see that which no man then alive on earth had ever seen, and made all swear by the Glory of the Sun that each and every one of them would slay without pity him who revealed anything seen or heard that night, even though he were his own brother, or his own father, or his own son. As for Djama, they held him there bound and blindfolded amongst them, and when he tried to speak they stopped his mouth at my bidding, for I had told them that I would be answerable for him, since I had brought him here for my own purposes.

Then I made two of the men stretch a cord tightly across the mouth of the cleft close down to the ground, and to the middle of this I tied another cord, and stretched it out straight twelve foot-lengths from the centre, and here I bade them clear away the bushes, and dig. Then axe and hoe and spade went to work. In that clear air, and under that cloudless sky, the stars gave light enough to work by, and soon a space had been cleared, and a round hole about three feet across was being dug down through the loose, rocky soil.

When it was about half the depth of a man the spades struck on the solid rock below, and could go no farther. When Tupac told me of this, I, who had been standing by the cleft, looking—full of strange thoughts—down into the dark pool of water, called the man who had been digging out of the hole, and, taking an iron bar from Tupac, I dropped into it.

I sought about the bottom with my hands for a few moments till I found the outline of a squared stone that had been let into the rock. In the centre of this I found a hole, out of which I picked the dirt with my dagger. Then, putting the end of my iron bar into it, I pulled, and the stone turned over on a hinge, leaving an opening half its size. Down this I thrust my arm, and found a chain of copper which hung down into a deep well below. I pulled this with all my strength until something gave way at the bottom, then I drew the chain up, and cast my iron bar under it across the hole. As I did this, I heard the deep, smothered roar of waters rushing away far below me into the bowels of the earth.

Then I got out of the hole and went back to the cleft. I lit a candle and looked down at the pool. It was no longer stagnant now, but seething and eddying like a whirlpool. I beckoned to Tupac, who was standing a little way behind me, and as he came and looked over my shoulder I pointed down into the dark gulf, out of which the bottom was rapidly falling, and said,—

'See, the waters are opening the way by which the Son of the Sun shall go into his kingdom. Watch now, and listen!'

'Son of the Sun and Lord of the Four Regions, it is true!' he whispered as the waters eddied round faster and faster, and gurgled and rattled down into some unknown abyss. Soon they vanished altogether, leaving only a dark, black, and seemingly fathomless cavern in the place where they had been. I waited until the sound of the last gurgle had died away in the depths, and then I turned to Tupac and said,—

'The way is open. Tell Ullullo to bring the lantern and light it. There must be no other light. You and the rest follow me, and let two strong men bring the stranger.'

He did as I bade him, and when I had lit the lantern I cast its rays about the gulf beneath me till I found the continuation of the broken stairway above, and then picking my way carefully down the dank, slimy steps, I led the way into the heart of the rock, the rest following, guided by the spreading ray of light in front of me.'

I counted fifty steps, and then stopped and turned sharply to the right. The fiftieth step ended against a wall of rock, still dripping with the water that was running down from the arched roof of the chamber. I measured ten spans with my hand from the wall where the steps ended, and made a mark with my dagger on the rock. Then from the floor I measured eight spans in a line across the mark. Where the eighth span ended I made another mark, and with the help of my lantern I found a silver socket let into the rock. It was a plate with a hole in the centre large enough to admit the iron bar which I had brought for the purpose. I put it in, and whispering to Tupac to help me, we gripped the bar, and after two or three hard pulls felt it coming towards us.

A great slab of rock, which fitted into the wall with all the perfection that our old Inca masons could give it, turned on a central hinge, leaving a space that two men could have walked through abreast.

'Go in,' I said to Tupac, 'and let all follow you.'

He obeyed, and standing by the opening with a ray of my lantern shooting across it, I watched them file past one by one until all had gone in. Then I followed, and as I crossed the threshold set my shoulder against the edge of the slab and pushed it back into its place.

Now I covered my lantern with my poncho and cried aloud in the darkness,—

'Let the torches be got ready, but let no light be struck till that which is to be revealed may be seen.'

A low murmur answered me, and then, still keeping my lantern hidden, I felt my way along the wall, treading softly as a mountain lion approaching its prey, until I had counted forty paces. The fortieth brought me to a doorway, through which I turned. Five paces more brought me to another turning, ten more to the end of the passage, and then I uncovered my light and found myself in a little square chamber hewn out of the rock and surrounded with stone chests covered with lids of copper.

In the centre of the chamber stood a smaller one, all of metal. I set my lantern down on one of the others so that the light fell across this one; then I raised the lid, and there before me lay, perfect as they had been on the day when Anda-Huillac, last High Priest of the Sun, had laid them there, the imperial robes and insignia that had last been worn by the ill-fated Huascar, son of the great Huayna-Capac.

Quickly throwing off the mean garments that I wore, I dressed myself in them. Then, binding the golden sandals on my feet, and clasping the long mantle emblazoned in gold and jewels with the symbols of the Sun and his sister-wife the Moon across my shoulders, I wound the scarlet Llautu around my head, with the crimson fringe of the Borla interlaced with gold falling upon my brow, and then, closing the chest, I took up my lantern and went back along the passages I had traversed.

In the middle of the last one I put my lantern down with the glass against the wall, and feeling my way into the doorway, which opened on to the chamber in which the others were awaiting me, I cried, in a voice that echoed strangely through the great chamber,—

'Let the torches be kindled, and let the Children of the Sun look upon their Lord!'

I heard a shuffling of feet and a whispering of many voices. Then lights were struck, and I stepped back quickly into the shadow of the doorway. I saw the glow of light grow into a glare that was flashed back in a thousand many-coloured rays from the walls of the chamber. I heard a deep, low cry of wonder, and then I strode out into the midst and said,—

'I am he who went into the shadows at the bidding of our Father the Sun, and by his will I have returned to bring deliverance to his children!'

For one moment of affrighted amazement they stared wide-eyed at me standing there before them, as though Huayna-Capac himself had returned from the Mansions of the Sun to resume his sceptre and his crown. Then, with one accord, they sank on their knees before me, holding their torches above their bent heads and murmuring,—

'Hail, Son of the Sun and deliverer of his children, who hast come to bring the daylight back to the long-darkened Land of the Four Regions!'

I looked at them and saw Djama standing erect, still bound and blindfold, in the midst of them. I went through the kneeling forms to him, and taking the bandage from his eyes stepped back, and while he was blinking at the light of the torches, said to him in English,—

'Look about you, Laurens Djama, and tell me if you believe now that I, the friend of the filthy Indians whom you despise, can do that which I have said?'

He was still half dazzled by the glare of the torches and the thousand rays of many colours that were flashing about him. Wherever his wondering glance fell it saw great golden plates covering the walls, thick-set with jewels, and in front of him, piled up against the end wall of the chamber, a shining heap of gold bars in the shape of a pyramid reaching to the roof of the chamber, and on either side of this, half way up, was a great image of the Sun, like to that which in the olden times stood above the altar in the sanctuary of the great temple of Cuzco, each with its centre fashioned as a human face, with great flashing diamonds for eyes, with lips of rubies, and long pendants of emeralds hanging from the ears, and all round a hundred curving rays of gold edged and lined with jewels.

He stared about him, open-eyed and open-mouthed with amazement. Then his eyes fell on me, and he started forward and stared me in the face for a moment. Then he gasped,—

'Vilcaroya, is it you, or am I dreaming? Where have you brought me to?'

'To one of the treasure-houses that you so longed to see,' I said, 'so that you might see and believe that I told you no idle tale, and that I can perform my promise if you can perform yours.'

Then I turned my back on him and went to the foot of the pyramid, and, taking my place in front of it, I said to those who still knelt before me in silence,—

'Let those of his children who are faithful to their Father the Sun rise and come without falsehood in their hearts, and say if they now believe that that which was foretold long ago, when the darkness fell over the land, has in very truth come to pass.'

They rose from their knees and came towards me in a half circle, carrying their torches. They stopped about five paces from me, looking at me through a little space with wondering eyes full of worship. Then they bowed their heads again, and Tupac came from the midst of them, and, casting himself prone at my feet, yet not daring even to touch my sandals, said in a broken voice,—

'Son of the Sun, heir of heaven and lord of earth, we have seen thy wisdom and thy majesty. None but one of thy royal line—nay, none but thee, oh, Vilcaroya, son of Huayna-Capac, and brother of Huascar, last of the Incas, could have known the secret that thou hast brought with thee from the past into the present. We are thy children and thy slaves, and all the men of the Blood that are left in the Land of the Four Regions shall hail thee lord as we do, and own no other master save thee, Vilcaroya Inca, from now until the hour when their father, the Lord of Life, shall call them back to the Mansions of the Sun. We are thine, and we will serve thee, ourselves and our wives and our children, as our fathers served thy father in the days when there was yet peace and happiness in the land.'

'And if ye are but faithful,' I said, 'and if the Lord, my father, who rules the day, and his sister, my mother, who rules the night, shall give me strength and wisdom to use the power that is mine, I will give you back peace and happiness, and the stranger and the oppressor shall be driven from the land, and the homes of the Children of the Sun shall again be full of light. Rise now, Tupac, and let ten of the men give their torches to the others and make ready to do my bidding.'

He rose, and it was done. Then I called Djama to me and said,—

'What you have seen here to-night is a dream. When your eyes open again on the outer world, remember what I have said. Your hand has brought me from the grave to the throne, and you must obey me as these do. Let me but know that you have spoken one word, even to Joyful Star herself, concerning what you have seen here to-night, and I will show you how an Inca deals with one who dares to disobey him. Keep silence and have patience, and perform that which you have promised, and you shall go back to your own land loaded with gold and jewels. Fail, and the fragments of your body shall be sent north and south and east and west throughout the Land of the Four Regions, and your name shall be one of shame in the ears of my people for ever.'

For a moment he looked me in the eyes, and I saw his lips moving as though he was striving to shape some answer to my words. Then his face grew grey, and his knees shook as he stood. Then I called to Tupac, and bade him bind his eyes again and lead him away, and as soon as his sight was taken from him I bade the ten men who had given up their torches take off their ponchos and fill them with as many of the golden bars as each one could carry, and when this was done, I ordered all the torches save one to be extinguished. This one I took, and went with it into the passage where I had left my lantern. Then I dashed it against the wall and vanished into the darkness.

I took my lantern, and hiding the light carefully, went back to the little chamber, where I took off my robes and sandals and the imperial Llautu, and put them back into the chest. Then I put on my mean attire again and went back into the Hall of Gold. Signing to the others to follow me, I turned the stone door on its pivot again, and watched them file past me as before. Then, going out last, I closed the portal after me and lighted them up the steps with my lantern.

When we all once more stood in the open air by the cleft I went to the hole and released the chain. Instantly the roar of waters broke out again, and I bade them fill the hole up and put turf over it, and trample it down and scatter the bushes over it; and that being done, we took our way back again across the plain towards the fortress, still leading Djama blindfold in our midst.

We took him by the gate of Viracocha into the fortress, across its upper part, where the three crosses stood, and down on to the zigzag road which leads into the eastern part of the city, and there we unbound his eyes, and I bade him go to the house and make ready to receive me early in the morning, telling our friends that I should arrive with some packages of Indian merchandise and metals from one of my mines, for, as I should have told you before, I had come to Cuzco in the character of an owner of mines who had lived long in Europe and had returned to supervise the working of my property.

I and Tupac and his companions then went back into the hills, and without entering the city made our way by twos and threes into the village of San Sebastian. We met at Tupac's house, and there I explained to them as much of my plans and purposes as I thought fit for them to know, and showed them that the time was not yet come for them to make use of the treasures that I would share with them. But to each man I gave two pounds' weight of gold to be left in Tupac's care till it could be taken into the cities of the south and there changed for silver coins. Then I had a list made of their names, and promised them, after reminding them of their oaths, that when I once more sat on the throne of the divine Manco, their fidelity should be well remembered.

The next morning we loaded the gold in bales of the coca-leaf, great quantities of which are taken every day into Cuzco, upon four mules, and these I sent to our house while I went back with Ullullo and put on my English clothing. Then I followed, and found that the bags of coca had already arrived. They were carried up to my own room, and there, in the presence of Djama and Joyful Star, the professor and Francis Hartness, I took out the gold ingots and built them up in a pyramid before them.

I could see from their amazement that, whether from fear or faith, Djama had obeyed me, and said nothing of what he had seen during the night. As for me, I said but little. I gave them the gold, and that day the professor and Djama, acting as my agents, sold it to some of the merchants of Cuzco as the product of my mines. The price was more than twice as much as was needed for the hacienda, so with the rest I discharged my debt and made myself once more a free man.

There is no need for me to dwell upon our dealings with the owner of the hacienda, and therefore it will suffice for me to say, before ten days more had passed the purchase-money had been paid, we had taken up our abode there, and installed Joyful Star as housewife, with faithful servants chosen by myself from among the Children of the Blood. Djama, who had been strangely silent and reserved with all of us since the lesson I had taught him in the Hall of Gold, had taken possession of the chamber which was devoted to his uses, and had put all his apparatus in order for the great work that was to be done there.

So on the fourteenth day, such was the power of my gold and of my longings, all things were ready, and at daybreak on the fifteenth day we rode at the head of our little mule train out of the courtyard of the hacienda on our way to the resting-place of Golden Star.



CHAPTER IV

THE SISTER STARS

For five long days we travelled slowly and toilfully on our way from the valley of Cuzco to that other where Golden Star lay sleeping beside the lake. Over high plains and pleasant valleys, through deep, dark gorges and ravines, to whose lowest depths the sun but seldom reaches, and then but for an hour or two, along narrow pathways cut into the living rock on the mountain side, with precipices on one hand falling thousands of feet into the dark abysses, where the torrents roared and foamed, and on the other the great rock-walls of the mountain soaring up into the sky yet more thousands of feet above us.

I saw the mighty crests of Saljantai and Umantai rising snow-crowned from earth to heaven, unchanged in their eternal grandeur since the long-distant day on which I had last beheld them. I rode with saddened heart past the ruins of Lima Tambo, remembering how fair and stately a city it had been in the days before the plunderer and the oppressor came. We toiled slowly over the great, sharp-ridged range which parts the waters of the Vilcamayo from those of the Apurimac—the 'Great Speaker'—then, descending again by the gorge of the river which is now called the Rio de la Banca, we came to the long bridge which swings in mid-air from rock to rock across the chasm through which the Great Speaker rolls his swift, roaring flood.

Its cables were loosened and its floorway broken, for, like all things else in the land, the Spaniards had suffered it to fall well nigh to ruin; and, as I led Joyful Star across it by the hand, I thought of what it had been in the olden times, when not a rope or a stick was suffered to be out of place, and when the Son of the Sun had been borne across it in his golden travelling litter, with long processions of his adoring people going before and behind him, strewing his way with flowers, and waking the echoes of these gloomy gorges with the melody of their songs and laughter.

From here we journeyed on, ever facing the setting sun, for two days more, still winding higher and higher up into the mountains, until at length, on the third evening, I, riding alone many yards in front of the others, found the sign that I was looking for—a rock with three seats carved on the top of it—and turned my mule from the track and rode over the rough, stony ground up the side of the mountain until what looked from the road a single rock-built peak opened into two. I beckoned to the others to follow me, and when they came up I said to the professor,—

'Do you know where you are now? Have you ever been here before?'

He looked about him and shook his head, saying,—

'This may have been the place where we got off the road when my mule gave out, but I don't recognise it. Do you mean that we are near the valley?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Do you not remember seeing yonder two peaks from the shore of the lake near where you found me?'

He looked at them for a moment, and then said,—

'Yes, I remember them; but they don't look the same, and I don't believe I could find my way back into the valley from here to save my life. It's very strange how I can have forgotten it so completely.'

I smiled as he said this, knowing that I had brought them purposely many miles out of the way by which he had found the valley by accident, for I had no desire that the way should be known to any but myself and those I had chosen from among the remnant of the Children of the Blood. Then I bade them follow me again, and once more rode on alone ahead, for, as you may well believe, I was too full of my own thoughts and hopes and fears to be in any mood for conversation, even with Joyful Star herself. They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloom amid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, their words became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place of speech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of the mules' feet and the rattle of stones under their iron-shod hoofs.

Hour after hour I led them on, turning from valley to valley on the road that was visible only to my own eyes, and ever rising higher and higher towards the twin peaks that now stood out dark and sharp against the starry sky. At last, when our watches were nearly marking ten o'clock, I stopped before a cliff covered with bushes and creeping grasses, and calling Tupac to me, I bade him seek for an opening under these.

He groped about among the bushes for a while, and then suddenly, with a short cry of surprise, he vanished, as it seemed, through the face of the rock itself. I dismounted and followed him, and found him standing behind the bushes, facing a square doorway cut in the rock and lined with masonry. Behind it, and closing it completely, was a great slab of dressed stone. Down the sides of the doorway were two square pillars of stone, and in the middle of one, to the left hand, three little lines had been cut about a finger's breadth apart, but so faintly that only one who knew they were there could find them.

I stretched a string across from the middle one of these to the right-hand pillar, and where the string ended in the centre of the pillar I felt with my finger-tips and found a little circle about as big round as an English two-shilling piece. Tupac had in his hand the iron rod that I had used on the Rodadero. I took it from him, and, pressing the end against the circle, told him to push with me, and, to his wonder, the rod sank, seemingly, into the solid stone, forcing out a bolt which had been fitted so cunningly into the pillar that the end of it looked no more than a circle traced on the face of it.

When we had pushed the rod in about six inches I bade Tupac help me to pull it round towards the door. The pillar turned on a central hinge as we did so, and the great stone slab swung back by its own weight, which we had thus released, opening the entrance to a tunnel high enough for a man to walk through erect. This tunnel sloped somewhat sharply upwards, and looking up it I could see, shining in the clear sky beyond the upper entrance, the stars that I knew were reflected in the still waters of the little lake by which Golden Star was sleeping the sleep out of which we had come to wake her.

As the passage was not large enough for the mules to go through with their burdens, I bade my men unload them and carry their loads through into the valley. Then we followed, leading our own animals by the bridle, and after us the cargo-mules were driven through. The load of one of them was a long, narrow case of wood like that in which the professor had taken my own dead body to London, but this was thickly and softly padded inside with wool, and lined with white linen, and at one end was a little pillow of the softest down, on which the head of Golden Star would soon be resting.

As soon as we were all standing outside the upper mouth of the tunnel I looked at Joyful Star and said,—

'Is not this a fitting resting-place even for the daughter of kings? Are not the stars bright in the heavens and on the bosom of the lake? Are not the mountains great, and strong, and silent? Do they not guard her couch well, and does not the snowy peak of Umantai yonder point the straight way to the Mansions of the Sun, where the soul of Golden Star is even now waiting for the arts of your brother to call it back to earth as he called mine?'

'Yes,' she said, looking about her, first at the stars and then at the vast shapes of the mountains which loomed huge and dim on every side. 'Yes, Vilcaroya, it is a good place for sleep, but—is not the world beyond a good place to wake in? Have you not found it so?'

I caught the gleam of her eyes in the starlight as she looked towards me saying this, and, by the glory of the Sun, had we stood alone where we were, I might have forgotten all save the knowledge that I was the lawful lord of all this land, and that she was there in the midst of it with me. For the instant I had gone back to my old life, with all its old-world thoughts and customs, and then, before I could answer her, my dreaming soul was called back to the present by the cold, quiet voice of her brother saying,—

'I don't think that very many would find the world an unpleasant place to wake in, either for the first or second time, if they could also wake up lord of illimitable treasures as Vilcaroya here has done. But come, Your Highness, and you, professor, it is getting late. Don't you think it is time to be thinking about camping?'

The matter-of-fact words scattered my dreams in an instant, and I woke from them into the present. I bade Tupac have the animals tethered and fed, and the tents we had brought with us pitched in the most sheltered place he could find; and while they were doing this, and Djama and the others were busy seeing that the work was done to their satisfaction, I went to Ruth and said—my words, which I strove so hard to keep steady, trembling with I know not how many mingled passions,—

'Will Joyful Star come with me and see the place where her sister and mine is lying, waiting to come forth and greet her?'

'Your sister, Vilcaroya?' she said, turning her face up to me so that the starlight shone upon its fairness and lost itself in the lustrous depths of her eyes. 'Do you mean your sister only—not—your—'

'No,' I said, 'not my wife, for I have thought upon your words and pondered them deeply; and though they wounded me sorely at first, yet now I see that they were wise and just, like all the other words that Joyful Star has spoken to me. I have learned that lesson, like many others which you have taught me. That bridal of ours is already to me a dream of the long-lost past, the vision of a time that is dead and a people that is no more. When Golden Star wakes, if she ever does, I will greet her as a sister and a friend, as one of my own people who has come back to me out of my own times, and she shall help me in the work that I swore with her to do—but that is all; and I will find others of the Blood who shall sit upon the restored throne of my ancestors, and be the parents of the generations of Incas that shall come after me.'

'What do you mean, Vilcaroya?' she said, in a voice that was half angry and half fearful. 'Do you mean—no, I cannot say it—for I am sure you do not mean that.'

'How could that be?' I answered, guessing her meaning. 'Is it not you who have taught me the ways and thoughts of the world into which I have come back? No, what I mean is that I am not the only one now alive in whose veins the old blood of the Incas flows. Tupac, yonder, is the son of the son of the son of that Tupac-Amaru who died torn asunder in the square of Cuzco, because he had dared to raise the Rainbow Banner in the Land of the Four Regions, and called the Children of the Sun to revolt against their oppressors. He, more blessed than I who am his lord, has both wife and child, and if the prophecy is to be fulfiled, and I am to reign in the City of the Sun, then I will take his firstborn and instruct him in all the lore of our people and the duties of their ruler, and if he proves worthy he shall wear the Llautu after me.'

She looked up at me again as I ceased speaking, just one swift, bright glance that seemed to pierce to the most secret depths of my soul, and read the unuttered thoughts that were hidden there, thoughts which I did not dare to speak even to myself in the loneliest hour of my musings. Then she looked down again, and side by side we walked in silence round the shore of the lake until I stopped in front of a great black cliff that jutted out from the mountain side and hung impending over the dark, still waters of the lake. I pointed into the black shadows in which its base was hidden, and said,—

'There lies Golden Star, and there I lay beside her through all the long years that were to pass from the night when I pledged my troth with her before the Altar of the Sun until this night when I stand with you, Joyful Star, a new being in a new world, before her resting-place.'

'Is it really true?' she said, stopping as she spoke, and staring straight before her into the darkness. 'Is it really true that you, who are standing alive and strong here beside me, lay there under that great rock for all those years, while ten generations of men and women were born, and lived and died, and the whole world changed again and again? And is the Golden Star lying in there now really the Golden Star you have told me so much of, and I have thought about until she seems to me more like some living friend that I have known and loved, than a dead body that has been in the grave for more than three hundred years? Is it really true, Vilcaroya, or have we all only been dreaming some wild dream, like that Frankenstein story that I was telling you the other day?'

As she spoke she laid her hand for a moment upon my arm, as though to satisfy herself that I was really made of human flesh and blood, and not a phantom standing beside her in the starlit darkness.

Scarce knowing what I did, I laid my own hand, warm and strong and firm, upon hers. For an instant I felt it tremble beneath mine. I would have given all the boundless wealth that I knew was mine for the courage to close upon it a grasp that it could not have escaped if it would. My heart seemed to swell as though it would burst in my breast, my tingling blood ran fire, and wild words rose choking to my lips. Then her hand slipped away from under mine. Once more I saw her eyes shine in the starlight, and then I knew that I had learned the last and greatest lesson that Joyful Star could teach me.

I knew now why to think of Golden Star as my wife and my queen, filled me with the same untold horror which I had heard that night thrill in the tones of her who stood beside me, for now I—the son of a lost race and a long-past age—loved this daughter of the new time. For good or evil, for hope or despair, I was hers until I went again, and for the last time, into the shadows through which I had already passed, and then—yes, there he was, this tall, stalwart, golden-haired son of her own race and her own time, whose eyes I had seen looking love into hers!

He was coming towards us round the lake with his long, easy, swinging strides, this man who was already my friend, and who would one day be the captain of my armies. For one blind moment of madness I thought how completely I had him and the others in my power; of the lonely, unknown valley where we stood; of the men who were already my slaves, and who looked upon me as a god. I thought, too, of the dark, deep waters of the lake, and the secrets that they held for me alone. How well they could hide others for me, too! What if Golden Star never awoke? Would she not be as well lying there in the peace of her endless sleep as coming back into the world, perhaps to love in vain and to suffer as I was doomed to suffer?

The shadowy forms of the mountains began to waver and reel around me; the stars danced up and down in the sky, and a red mist seemed to swim before my eyes. Then, through the hoarse, dull murmur that was sounding in my ears, I heard the sweet, low voice of Joyful Star saying,—

'Ah, Captain Hartness, I suppose you have been wondering what had become of us! I am afraid I have been neglecting my household duties, and you have been attending to them for me, but really I could not resist coming here with Vilcaroya. Look, that is where Golden Star is lying, in a cave under that great rock down there where those dark shadows are. Doesn't it look cold and lonely and eerie?'

'Yes,' he answered, with a laugh that did not sound to me like his own. 'But I don't suppose that matters very much now to Her Highness any more than it did to Vilcaroya. But, to descend to less romantic matters, I have come to tell you that the affairs of our temporary household are already in order, supper is ready, and we are all ravenously hungry, and I suppose you are about the same. This mountain air puts an edge on one's appetite like a razor's.'

'Supper—yes, I had forgotten all about it, thinking of poor Golden Star lying there all alone in the darkness. Of course, I am desperately hungry, now that you remind me of it. Come, Vilcaroya, I am sure you are hungry too. Another night alone won't matter much to poor Golden Star after all these years. You can dream of her to-night, as I suppose we all shall, and to-morrow we shall see her. Oh, how I wonder what she will be really like!'

As Joyful Star said this in a voice that was half sad and half merry, she turned away towards Francis Hartness, and I followed her with some light words on my lips and many heavy thoughts in my heart, and we walked together to the tents, talking of the things that were to be done on the morrow.

The next morning I was afoot before the stars had begun to pale in the coming dawn. I had not slept for two hours together through the night, yet, waking and sleeping, many dreams had come to me. I had been back to the past among my people, living again that strange old life, with all its light and colour and gaiety, which was now every day becoming more and more like a vision that had been told to me by some other dreamer.

I had talked with Golden Star, seeking to teach her the lesson that my dear instructress of the new time had taught me, and had awakened half mad with the perplexities of my divided love—the love of the past that was dead and of the present that was alive. I had seen my sister-bride come forth out of her tomb to greet me, clothed in her bridal robes, with the dust of the grave in her hair and on her face. I had clasped her in my longing arms and kissed the dust from her lips, and while I yet held her in my embrace her form had grown cold and stiff again. Then, in the agony of my sorrow, I had strained her to my breast, and, under the pressure of my arms, she had crumbled in my grasp and fallen, a little heap of grey bones and dusty garments, at my feet.

Once more I had awakened with my gasping cry of horror still sounding in my ears, and then, not daring to seek sleep again, I had risen and gone out to watch for the rest of the night before her grave under the rock. There they found me when they came from the camp at daybreak. I went back with them, and our hasty morning meal was eaten and drunk almost in silence, for we were all too busy with our thoughts to have leisure for conversation, and my friends, knowing how much that day's work must mean to me, respected my unspoken feelings, and left me to the silent company of my own hopes and fears.

Breakfast over, we took our lanterns and tools and went to the rock, followed by Tupac and two of my men carrying the coffin-like case in which Golden Star's body was to be laid. Under the rock was a long heap of loose stones which the professor had wisely piled up in front of the upright courses of masonry through which he had broken into my resting-place. He scanned them eagerly to see if they had been disturbed since his visit, and told us that they had not. Then I bade Tupac and the men clear them away, which they speedily did, laying bare the courses of stone behind them, still standing as the professor had re-built them after taking out my body.

A few minutes' more work opened a passage large enough for a man to walk in, stooping. As if by a common instinct they all stepped aside and looked at me. I saw what they meant, and, turning the light of my lantern into the entrance, I walked back, a living man, into the grave where I had lain dead while ten generations of men had lived and died. I saw the place where I had lain, for a few mouldering scraps and shreds of cloth and furs still lay where my bed had been. Then I flashed my lantern round the walls of the cavern, and on the side along which my own couch had been spread by Anda-Huillac and his brother priests I found what they had told me to seek while I was preparing to fulfil the oath that I had sworn with Golden Star.

It was a wedge of stone fitted in to a crevice in the wall and left rough and jagged at its outer end, so that one who did not know its true purpose would have taken it to be nothing more than a natural projection in the rough side of the cavern.

With a mallet that I had brought with me I struck the end of the wedge softly above and below until it was loosened in its socket. Then, standing to one side, I struck it harder. It dropped from its place, and the same instant a part of the cavern wall swayed outwards and fell with a rumbling crash across the floor.

For a moment I stood breathless and motionless on the threshold of Golden Star's grave. Then, with trembling hands, I turned the light of my lantern into the inner chamber, and as the dust that the falling stone had raised fell slowly back to the ground I saw through the particles dancing in the lantern rays the dim outline of a human form lying on a couch of skins.

Still, not daring to set a foot within that sacred place, I stood in the doorway and let the light fall full upon the figure. A glance showed me that so far all was well. No profaning hand had disturbed the peace and sanctity of her long slumber. She lay there as perfect in form and feature as she had lain beside me that night in the little chamber in the Sanctuary of the Sun.

Then I thought of Joyful Star. Hers should be the first eyes after mine to look upon that dead loveliness. So I turned and went out to where they were all standing round the outer entrance, and, taking no notice of the others, replying nothing to their half-whispered questions, I went to Ruth and, holding out my hand for her, said,—

'Come, Joyful Star, and see the sister that the Lord of Life made long ago in the image that you now wear.'

She said nothing, but, with a look of wondering question, put her hand into mine and I turned to lead her to the entrance.

Djama, with a sudden exclamation, took a step forward as though he would stop her, but Francis Hartness put his hand on his shoulder, saying,—

'I think you had better let them go alone. There is no fear for your sister with all of us here so near; and if what Vilcaroya says is true, why should she not see her first?'

Djama drew back, though with no very good grace, and I went into the inner chamber, helping Ruth over the fallen stones. Then I flashed my light on Golden Star's face and said,—

'Did I not tell you truly that the Lord of Life made her in the same image as yours?'

I heard her utter a little gasping cry of wonder, and then I saw her slip forward on to her knees beside Golden Star's pillow, and as the light fell upon the two faces—the living and the dead—the likeness between them was so perfect, save for the golden gleam of Joyful Star's hair and the lustrous blackness of the tresses that framed my dead love's face, that they seemed to me as sisters, one watching over the slumbers of the other.

'It is more than wonderful, and it is surely more than chance!' said Joyful Star, in a tone that was almost a whisper, and turning towards me her white face and the eyes into which the loving tears of pity were already springing. 'Why did you not tell me of this before, Vilcaroya?'

'Because,' I said, 'the arts of the priests might not have done for her what they did for me, and I might have found here that which your eyes should never have looked upon. But now—is she not beautiful, even as you are?'

The bright blood came swiftly back into her cheeks as I said this, and, without answering me she stooped, and with gentle hands put back the tresses from Golden Star's forehead, and, bending over her, laid her warm, sweet lips on the cold, smooth brow that I had last seen crowned with the marriage-garland in our bridal chamber in the Sanctuary.



CHAPTER V

HOW DJAMA DID HIS WORK

I can tell you but little of what followed the taking of the body of Golden Star back to the hacienda, for neither I nor any of the others, save only Djama himself, witnessed the secret mysteries of his strange and fearful art. I could tell you of their wonder when, after I had bidden Tupac bring the case into the cavern and he and I and Joyful Star had gently and reverently raised her from her couch and laid her in it, we carried her out into the daylight. How they stood around the open case and looked, half in wonder and half in fear, from her dead, cold face to the living likeness that was bending over it. How they praised her beauty and marvelled at the forgotten arts that had preserved so perfect a likeness of life in one who for more than three centuries and a half had neither drawn breath nor known a thrill of feeling.

I could tell you, too, with what loving and anxious care that precious burden was borne over plain and valley and mountain in a litter that we had brought with us for the purpose, and how at last we laid her in all her calm, unconscious loveliness on the great table which stood in the middle of the chamber in which Djama was to do his work. But here my story must cease for the time, for Djama made it an unalterable condition that he should do the work that only he could do in absolute solitude. Only thus, he said, would he, or could he, perform the task upon whose issue the completion of Golden Star's life on earth, if it was ever to be completed, depended.

He told us plainly that a single interruption should be fatal to her and all our hopes. He would not even permit his sister to enter the room until he should call for her. I was bitterly loath to yield—to leave her who had been so dear to me powerless and unconscious in the hands of a man whom I had already learned to hate, although not only did I owe my own new life to him, but on him alone rested all my hopes of seeing Golden Star once more restored to life and health, and the beauty that had been peerless ages before Joyful Star had reached the perfection of her young womanhood.

How did I know what unholy arts he might use to rekindle the long-quenched life-flame in that fair shape of hers? How could I do more than guess vaguely and fearfully at the awful mysteries that might be enacted in the silence and solitude of that fast-closed chamber in which, day and night, he would remain alone with her, the living with the dead, like the potter with his clay, until it should please him to use the dreadful power that was his, and call her back from death to life, perhaps—and oh! how horrible the thought was to me!—to be the slave of the man who, by his unearthly art, had made himself the master of her new life.

Yet, think of it, brood over it as I would, there was no help for it. He, and he alone, could exert the power that would loose the bonds of death in which she lay enchained. Unless he had his will she would remain as she was, perhaps until the Last Day came, and the Lord of Life called all his children, living and dead, back to the Mansions of the Sun; and so we yielded, since there was nothing else to be done.

On the evening of the day that we returned to the hacienda, he busied himself making the last preparations for his work. Then he came out of the room and locked the door, and, after eating his dinner almost in silence, went to bed, taking the key with him, and telling us that on no account must he be awakened. All that night and the next day and the next night we neither saw nor heard anything of him; but on the morning of the second day, the door of his bedroom was open and his bed was empty, but the door of the room in which Golden Star lay was still fast shut and locked.

How the time passed I cannot tell you. Joyful Star, seemingly more self-possessed than any of us, took up her household duties, and went about them with a quick, quiet industry that surprised and shamed us. But we three men wandered about aimlessly, now alone and now together, communing with our own thoughts or talking with each other always of the same thing—of what was going on in that chamber, where, as we knew from the faint sounds that every now and then came through the closed door, the master of the arts of life and death was performing his awful task.

The first day and night came and went, then the second, and still the door remained closed, and Djama gave no sign. But the professor sought to comfort me and soothe our impatience by telling me how long the same work had lasted before I was recalled to life. I had sought also to distract my thoughts by talking with him and Francis Hartness of all that was to be done for the deliverance of my people, and the realisation of my dreams of empire when Djama's task should be over.

But it was useless, for fear and suspense kept my mind bound as though with invisible chains, and, do what I would, my thoughts went back and back again to dwell upon the unknown secrets of that closed and silent room. Then I tried to draw Joyful Star into conversation about the thoughts which I knew were filling both our hearts; but though she listened to me she would say nothing herself, and I soon saw that with her the subject was forbidden, and the work not to be talked of till, in success or failure, it was ended.

For the first two nights no sleep came to my eyes, but the third night my weariness was too much for me, and scarcely had my aching head fallen on the pillow than slumber, filled with broken dreams and visions of things unutterably horrible, came upon me. In the midst of one of them—I know not what it was, save that no human words could paint the horror of it—I woke up with a cold, damp hand upon my shoulder, and heard Djama's voice, hoarse and trembling, saying to me,—

'Get up and dress, Vilcaroya; I have something for you to see and to hear. Make haste, for there is not much time to be lost.'

I looked up, and saw him standing by my bed with a light in his hand, ghastly pale, and staring at me with black, burning eyes, which seemed, as they looked into mine, to take my will a prisoner, and draw my very soul towards him.

'What is it?' I said, in the broken words of one just roused from sleep. 'Is it over—have you succeeded? Is she alive? Have you come to take me to her?'

'The work is not done yet,' he said. 'I have come for you to see it finished. Make haste, I tell you, if you want to see what you have been waiting so long for.'

I needed no second bidding. I sprang out of bed, and dressed myself with swift, though trembling, hands. Then I thrust my feet into a pair of soft slippers, such as Djama himself wore, and then I followed him from the room out on to the balcony that was built round the house over the inner courtyard. We went down into the court and into the dining-room, and through that down a long, narrow passage out of which opened the room that had held all our hope and fear and wonder for so long.

He unlocked the door, and motioned to me to go in. He followed me, and locked the door behind us. I looked about the room, which was dimly lit by two shaded lamps. The table on which we had laid Golden Star was empty. Many strangely-shaped things, that I knew not the use of were scattered about. The air was hot and moist, and filled with a faint, sweet odour. At the opposite end from the door, which was covered by a screen, I saw in one corner a bath—from which white, steamy fumes were rising—and in the other stood a little, narrow, curtained bed, such as I had first awakened in.

Djama caught me by the arm, and half led, half dragged me to the bedside. Then with his other hand he parted the curtains and pointed to the pillow. I felt his burning eyes fixed upon me as I looked and saw the sweet fair face of Golden Star lying in the midst of her dusky tresses, which lay spread out on the pillow, cleansed from the dust of the grave, and soft and shimmering as silk.

I started forward, and, with my face close to hers, scanned every feature, and listened, but in vain, for the soft sound of her breathing. Her skin was clear and moist; I could see the thin, blue veins in her eyelids, and the moisture on her lips. I laid my hand gently on her cheek. It was soft and smooth, but still cold as death.

Then a fierce, unreasoning anger came into my heart. I sprang back and seized Djama by the shoulders, and, looking with fierce, hot eyes into his, I whispered hoarsely,—

'Have you brought me here to mock me? She is not alive—she is but a fair image of death. Tell me that you have failed and I will strangle you, liar and cheat that you are!'

He looked back steadily into my eyes and smiled, and said, in a voice that had not the slightest tremor of fear,—

'If I fail you may strangle me, and welcome; but I have not failed yet, Vilcaroya. It is for you to say now whether Golden Star is to awake or not.'

'What do you mean?' I said, letting go my grip on his shoulders, and recoiling a pace from him.

'You shall hear what I mean,' he said. 'But you must hear patiently and quietly, and think well on what I say, for in your answer to what I ask you will also answer the question whether Golden Star is to awake to life and health, or to be put back in that case yonder and buried, to rot away into corruption like any other corpse.'

'Say on, I am listening,' I said. My lips were dry, and the grip of a deadly fear seemed to be clutching at my heart and draining the last drop of blood from it.

'Listen well, then,' he said. He paused for a moment as though to collect his thoughts, and make words ready to express them. Then he went on. 'You see, I have undone the work that your priests did three hundred and sixty years ago. Your Golden Star is now neither dead nor alive. She is lying on the narrow borderland that divides life from death, and for an hour from the time I left this room she will remain there—if I choose. At the end of that time she will pass beyond the border, and no earthly power, not even mine, could call her back. But at any time before the hour has expired I can complete the work that I have begun. I can bring the breath back to her body; I can set the blood flowing through her veins. You shall see her eyes open and her lips smile, and you shall hear her speak to you as though she had only awakened out of sleep. This I can do, and I will, if you will do what I am going to ask you.'

'What is it?' I whispered. 'Tell me quickly that I may know. You are master here. I can only listen and obey.'

He smiled as I said this, a smile that it was not good for an honest man to look upon, and went on, speaking now rapidly and earnestly,—

'When I did this work for you, I did it as a student and a man of science, who was making the greatest experiment of his life. I believed that I had solved one, at least, of the secrets of life and death. I watched and noted every change that came over you. I marked every symptom and measured every step of your return from death into life, but I did all this as a student inquiring into the mysteries of Nature, as an observer watching the working out of a great problem, and with no more feeling than if I had been dissecting a corpse. But this time it has been different. I began this work with the cold and passionless deliberation of one who toils only to learn and to succeed. But afterwards—come here and look at her, and you will understand me better. She is a woman, and she is beautiful, and here, for two days and two nights, she has lain under my hands and my eyes. I have given her beauty back to her, and if that beauty is to live it must be mine. Do you understand me, Vilcaroya?'

What could I say, what could I do to answer this man whom I hated, and yet who held the power of life and death for Golden Star in his hands? The vague fear that had smitten me when he began to speak had taken its worst shape now. I looked at him with hate and horror staring out of my eyes. Again and again I tried to speak, but my lips only moved and trembled without making any word. But he read my thoughts, and smiled that evil smile of his again and said, in a low voice which seemed to have the echo of a laugh in it,—

'I see you hate me, as I have often thought you did, and that is why I have brought you here to tell you this. That is why I would not complete my work till you had sworn, as you yet shall do if you would see Golden Star alive again, that what I have brought back out of the grave shall be mine and mine only.'

These last words of his let loose my anger and unchained my tongue. I gripped him by the arm, and in a whisper that had a strange hissing sound, I said,—

'But that is not all! What do you think your life would be worth if you left her to die? Have you forgotten what I said to you in the cave beneath the Rodadero? Do you not know that this very night I could have you carried, gagged and bound, over the mountains and back to the grave that we took Golden Star out of? Do you not know that I could lay you there with food and drink beside you that you could not touch, and a lamp whose light would show them to you, and then wall up the entrance again, and leave you there to think of your fate till you went mad and died of hunger and thirst? Do you not know that I could chain you to a rock and light a fire about you, and watch you burn limb by limb till you shrieked your life out in lingering agony? Would this be better than going back to your own land loaded with treasure that would make you richer than you have ever dreamed of being? Now, I have spoken, and it is for you to answer me.'

Before I had done speaking he had taken a chair and seated himself astride it, with his arms resting on the back and his chin on his arms, and was looking at me with white, set face, and steady, dark, shining eyes. When I had finished there was a little silence between us, and then he spoke, and the first time I ever felt fear in either of my lives was when I heard those cold, cruel, carefully-measured words of his,—

'That is well said, Vilcaroya. I am glad you have spoken plainly, for now we understand each other; but I don't think you quite realise the difference between your power and mine. You have, or think you have, the brute force, the strength of numbers, and the slavish devotion of your people on your side, and you threaten to use that power to put me to a lingering and torturing death unless I withdraw my demands and do as you wish me. In that, however, you are quite wrong. I am as much the master of my own life as I was once of yours, and still am of Golden Star's. Without moving hand or foot I could kill myself as I sit here before you, so your threats of torture are nothing more than empty words. It is only a matter of simple life or death. If I live, Golden Star will live. If I die, she will never draw the breath of life—but what I have said, I have said. She shall only live as my promised wife, bound to me by the most sacred oath that you can swear. You cannot consummate your own marriage with her, because in the modern world that is impossible. You are refusing simply because, for some reason or other, you dislike me personally, but I don't propose that that shall stand in my way. As for your treasures, their value has utterly changed for me. A week ago, I frankly confess that I would have sold my soul, if I thought I had one, for them. Now, without her, they would only make the world a golden mockery to me, for I tell you, Vilcaroya, that I, who have never loved living woman yet, love that beautiful shape of inanimate flesh as that old sculptor we have told you of loved his statue. Every hour that I have been alone in this room with her this strange love of mine has grown. First it was only scientific curiosity, then physical admiration, then something else. I don't know what it is, for it is beyond the reach of my analysis, but I know enough of it to call it love, and I tell you it is such love as only a man of my nature and pursuits is capable of. Unsatisfied, it would consume me and kill me, and I would rather die quickly than slowly. Now—once more—shall Golden Star and I live or die?'

How was I to answer such a speech as this? I heard him in silence to the end, my eyes held fast by his, and my spirit sinking as though beaten down by the pitiless force of those cold words of his. And in the meantime a great truth had been dawning in my mind. Force had ceased to rule in this new world, and intellect had taken its throne. I was the inferior of this man, whose trained mind was the heir of the generations that had toiled and fought while I had slept. I was little better than a savage before him, and I knew it, and he knew it, and, bitter as the thought was to me, yet it was only the truth. I was conquered, and a new gleam in his eyes told me that he had read my thoughts before I had spoken them.

Then, while I stood hesitating before him, his white, hard-set face softened, and his lips melted into a smile that was almost as sweet as a woman's. It was that that saved me, for it reminded me of Ruth, and the recollection of her told me that I loved even as Djama did. The very thought of her put new blood into my heart. The words of yielding and submission died unuttered on my lips. I raised my head, which I had bowed down in dejection, and looked at him steadily again. Then I said slowly, and in the voice of a man who does not speak twice,—

'I have thought, and I will speak for the last time. I will swear by the sacred glory of the Lord of Light that Golden Star shall be yours, upon two conditions.'

'Conditions!' said he, bringing his dark brows down till they made a straight black line over his eyes. 'What are they?'



'These,' I said. 'You love and I love. First, then, you must win the love of Golden Star, and, secondly, you must give me your sister, Joyful Star, if I can win her love.'

'My sister Ruth to you! Is that your earnest, Vilcaroya, or are you only trying my patience?'

The bitter, coldly-spoken words cut into my soul as the lash of a whip cuts into the flesh. I could have slain him as he sat there sneering at me, but it was a time for words, not deeds; and so, mastering my anger as best I could, I took two swift strides to Golden Star's bedside, and, snatching my dagger out of the sheath of the belt which I had put on when I had dressed, I turned and faced him, and said,—

'I am not jesting. As you love I love, and by the glory and majesty of my Father the Sun I tell you if you do not say yes I will do with this dagger what all your art will never repair, and then, if I must do that, I will kill you too; and before to-morrow night has passed Joyful Star shall be with me where none can find her. Now, what is your answer—yes, or no?'

He looked at me and then at the dagger hanging in my hand, point downwards, over the breast of Golden Star. Then his eyes fell upon the still loveliness of her face. He knew that if he moved the dagger would fall. His face, flushed a moment before, grew grey and pale again at the sound of my words, and then I saw that he had not lied to me when he said that his life would be worthless without her. Twice, thrice, his lips moved without shaping a word. Then the words came. They were dry and broken and trembling, for in the strength of my own love I had now conquered my conqueror, and he said,—

'Yes, since it must be so. My sister for your sister. Well, I suppose it's a fair exchange. We hate each other, you and I, but that's an accident of fate. Take away your dagger. I know when I am beaten, and I am beaten now. Will you swear that oath of yours again?'

'Yes,' I said, 'and you?'

I still kept the dagger within a span of Golden Star's heart, for I still had but little trust in his faith. He rose from his chair, throwing it over as he did so, and stood up and faced me, saying,—

'There is no need for oaths either from you or me. We have both too much to lose to break faith. Put up your dagger and come away, and in ten minutes from now you shall hear Golden Star draw the first breath of her new life, and see her eyes open and look at you. That would be worth more than any oath I could swear, wouldn't it?'

'Yes,' I said, 'but that is not all or enough. If you broke faith with me after that, I should have to shed blood—my sister's and yours. Now I need only make her life impossible. I will stop here. Go you and wake your sister and bring her here. Then we will say more.'

'Bring Ruth here!' he cried, staring at me as though he wished, as no doubt he did, that the fierce light in his eyes could blast and wither me where I stood. 'Bring her here to see what no human eyes but mine have ever seen. Bring her here to listen to what you have said—and if her, why not Lamson and Hartness as well?'

'You may bring all, if you please,' I said, 'but Joyful Star must come, no matter what she hears or sees. I have spoken—now go, or Golden Star shall never wake again.'

He took a half pace towards me, with clenched hands and set teeth, crouching like a mountain lion about to spring on its prey. The dagger point dropped till it was only an inch from Golden Star's breast. If he had made another step I would have driven it home. He read in my eyes that I would do so, and he stopped. Then he hissed a curse at me through his clenched teeth, and turned and walked away towards the door. As he reached it he looked back, and saw me still standing there with the dagger ready to do the work that could never be undone. I saw his lips move, but heard no sound.

Then he unlocked the door, went out, and locked it after him, leaving me there alone with my dead sister-love, whose new life, with all its possibilities of love and happiness, or hate and misery, I had thrown into the balance of Fate in the game that I was playing against him to win that other love which had now become tenfold more dear to me.

When he had gone I took his chair and put it by the side of the bed and sat down, still holding my bare dagger in my hand and looking on Golden Star's dead loveliness, wondering what it would be like when the sunshine of her new life should shine upon it, and on whom her first glance would fall, or whose name be the first that her lips would speak, and as I sat and watched and waited it seemed to me as though the ghosts of those long dead were taking shape and ranging themselves about the bed of her re-awakening as they had done about the bed of her falling asleep and mine.

I saw Anda-Huillac and his brother priests of the Sun standing about me, gazing at me and at her with sad and dreamy eyes, like phantoms of the past looking upon the realities of the present. Then the shape of Anda-Huillac seemed to glide towards me. His ghostly eyes looked into mine, and a smile of pity and reproach moved his pale lips. I felt a cold, soft hand laid upon mine, my grasp relaxed and the dagger fell ringing to the floor.

The sound awoke me, and my vision vanished. How long it had lasted, or whether it was a vision of sleep or waking, I know not, but I was awake now for I heard the door creek on its hinges. I picked the dagger up again and started to my feet, and, still guarding Golden Star's bed, I turned and faced Djama as he came in, followed by the professor and Francis Hartness, with Joyful Star between them.



CHAPTER VI

THE WAKING OF GOLDEN STAR

'There is your royal, would-be lover, Ruth! Come, if you don't believe me, you can hear from his own lips that upon you, and you alone, depends Golden Star's return to life. Is not that so, Your Highness?'

It was Djama who said this, and as he said it, he caught Joyful Star by the hand and half led, half dragged her towards me from between the other two. But before he had come half the length of the room, Francis Hartness had overtaken him in a few swift strides. I saw his hand fall heavily on his shoulder, and with his other hand he took Ruth's out of his. His blue eyes were nearly black with anger, and his bronzed face was grey and set and pale with the passion that his strong will was holding back, and his voice was low and clear, and vibrating like the sound of a distant bell when he spoke and said,—

'I can't stand that, Djama. Are you forgetting that your sister is a woman, and that you have brought her into the presence of the dead?'

'You must be mad, Laurens!' said Joyful Star, before her brother could reply. 'Surely this dreadful work of yours has turned your brain. Vilcaroya, what does all this mean? Is Golden Star dead or alive? Ah, how beautiful she is now! No, surely she cannot be dead!'

She had broken away from both her brother and Francis Hartness, and as she said the last words she was leaning over Golden Star's pillow, softly stroking her hair; and then she stooped lower and kissed her forehead. Then the others came up to the bedside, Francis Hartness and Djama in front, and the professor standing silent and wondering behind them.

'If Djama won't speak, will you, Vilcaroya?' said Hartness, looking at me with eyes that were still angry. 'What is that dagger in your hand for, and what is the meaning of this story that he has been telling me?'

'The meaning is of life or death,' I said. 'Laurens Djama will not give Golden Star's life back to her if I will not swear to give her to him when she lives again, and I have sworn that he shall not restore her to life unless he swears to give Joyful Star to me, for I love her, and will have neither life nor empire without her.'

As I listened to my own voice saying these bold words, it seemed to me as though another were speaking, for, even in that hot moment of passion and desperate resolve, I could scarce believe them mine. For the instant, I thought Hartness would have struck me down where I stood, nor could I have used my dagger against him, for he was a man and I loved him, though I saw now that we both loved the same woman. But before either of us could move, Ruth had risen erect and come between us, her cheeks burning with shame and her eyes aglow with anger.

'What!' she said, 'Laurens give me to you, Vilcaroya! Don't you know yet that no one can give an English girl away except herself, and that she only gives herself to the man she chooses of her own free will? Do you think I am a slave or a human chattel to be bartered away like that? Nonsense! And you, Captain Hartness, don't look so fiercely at Vilcaroya. Remember that he is your friend and mine, or has been, and has not the same ideas as we have. If he had—'

'He has,' I said, breaking in upon her speech, 'since Joyful Star has spoken. He is not her lover but her slave, and she has shamed him. I will eat the words that should never have been spoken. Let Golden Star live! I will keep my oath and ask nothing in return.'

So the savage within me was tamed, and I, who but a few minutes before had been ready to take two lives at the prompting of a single word, dropped my dagger and stood with bowed head, humble as a chidden child before her whose lightest word was then my most sacred law. I raised my eyes and looked at her to see if my words had pleased her. As our eyes met she gave me a glance that I would have died to win from her, and then, pushing me and Francis Hartness gently aside, yet with a force that neither of us could have resisted, she took her brother by the arm and, leading him to the bedside with one hand, she laid the other on Golden Star's brow, and said,—

'Laurens, can you really bring her back to life?'

'Yes,' he answered, and I could see that he did not dare to raise his eyes to hers, 'but—'

'But you will only do it for a price, you think. For shame! Is that the way you would use this terrible power that you possess? Is my brother so mean a creature as that? You love her, you say, even as she lies there, neither dead nor alive? Well, when she lives, she will be worthy of any man's love, but only of a man's, Laurens, and you would not be a man, with all your learning and power, if you insisted on so mean an advantage as your skill gives you. Do you mean to tell me that you can look on such a beauty as that, knowing that you can restore it to life, and yet ask a price before you will do it? Come, Laurens, that is not like your old self. Use your power with the same generosity that it has been given to you, and then win Golden Star like a man if you can.'

Where my strength had been vanquished, her sweet wisdom conquered. The man who had laughed at my threats, and told me without a quiver in his voice how he could, and would, slay himself rather than I should do what he knew I could do, stood humbled and abashed before the righteous and yet gently-spoken reproach of her who was pleading for the life of a sister woman.

I saw Djama's hands meet behind his back, and his fingers begin to twine about each other. I saw him look from Ruth to Golden Star, from the living woman who was his sister to her lifeless counterpart. Then came over him one of those swift changes of mood which we had so often seen before. All the cold cruelty of his long-chained-up passion vanished. His face, from being stone, became flesh again. The fierce glitter, as of a sword's point, died out of his eyes, and they grew warm and soft again, and his voice was almost as sweet and gentle as Ruth's, and strangely like it, too, as he answered her and said,—

'You are right, Ruth. I was not myself. I was a brute, unworthy either of love or power. Let her die! Good God, I would die myself a thousand times rather than do that! I must have been out of my senses even to think of such a crime for a moment, but if you were a man and had lived through what I have lived through for the last two days and nights, you would understand me, and perhaps forgive me. Yes, she shall live. How could I ever have thought of letting her die!'

Then he rose from his half-stooping posture over the bed, and came to where I stood at the foot, and, with his hand outstretched and a smile on his lips, said,—

'You have heard what I have just said, Vilcaroya. You have withdrawn your conditions; now I will take back mine. It is no use for you and me to be enemies. We have had our fight, and I confess myself beaten. Now let us try to be friends for Ruth's sake and Golden Star's, and I promise you that to-morrow morning you shall be telling her the story of your resurrection and her own.'

For a moment I stared at him in, speechless wonder, striving to understand how it could be that those eyes, which had, but a short time before, been glaring hate at me, could now be looking so kindly and frankly into mine; and how those lips, which had just been sneering so coldly and cruelly alike at my love and my hate, could shape such friendly and honest-sounding words. Then I looked at Ruth, asking her with my eyes what she would have me do, and in instant obedience to what I saw took Djama's hand in mine and said,—

'So be it! The evil in our hearts has spoken, now let the good that is there speak, and let us be friends; and, when Golden Star awakes, with my lips she shall bless you and her who has made peace between us where there was strife.'

'Miss Ruth, you really must allow me to congratulate you on your success as a peacemaker,' said the professor, speaking now for the first time since he had come into the room, and coming forward to where Joyful Star still stood by the bedside. 'It would have been ten thousand pities if this—ah—this little affair had ended any other way, for all of the exquisitely perfect subjects—'

'Subjects, professor?' said Ruth, interrupting him with a laugh. 'Do you venture to call Golden Star a subject, just as you do those awful things in your dissecting-rooms? Look at her—a subject indeed! Don't call her that again in my hearing, please!'

'Oh, ah, of course, I beg your pardon a thousand times, and Her Highness's too. Really, I spoke quite thoughtlessly and most improperly.' he answered, laughing at her mock displeasure, 'And now, Djama, since we have had two declarations of love and a peacemaking, don't you think it would be cruel to keep Her Highness waiting any longer on the threshold of her new life? Come, Hartness, you and I have no more business here at present. Don't you think we had better go and wait somewhere else for the working of the miracle?'

'Just what I was going to say,' replied Hartness, who had gone away a little distance from the bed while we were talking, and had been standing by the table, seeming to examine the strange instruments that were scattered about it. 'Of course the doctor will wish to finish his work alone.'

'May not Vilcaroya and I stay, Laurens?' asked Joyful Star, looking at him with appealing eyes. 'You know it will be much better for her to see another woman by her when she awakes, and then she will recognise Vilcaroya, and that will tell her that she is among friends.'

But Djama shook his head and said,—

'No, Ruth, not yet. There is something else to be done before that—something, well, something that only a medical man ought to see or do, and you really must leave me to do it alone. You forget, it is not merely a matter of waking. She is not alive yet; but if you will leave me alone for about half-an-hour, I promise you that I will call you and Vilcaroya back before she actually wakes.'

'Very well,' she said, moving away from the bedside. 'I don't want to pry into your mysteries.' Then she turned to me, and said, with a faint smile on her lips, 'Vilcaroya, come into the dining-room, I have something to say to you.'

She went down the room after the professor and Francis Hartness, and I followed her with beating heart and anxious thoughts, wondering what new lesson it was she was about to teach me.

Djama closed and locked the door after us. She led the way to the dining-room, where there was a light burning. It was empty, for the others, hearing what she had said to me, had gone out into the courtyard. Then she turned and faced me with her back to the light; but in spite of that I could see that her eyes were bright, and her fair face flushed as she said to me in a low voice that trembled a little,—

'Vilcaroya, I am going to forget everything that was said in the room yonder, and—and you must forget it too. It was no time or place for such things to be said, and you and Laurens were not yourselves when you said them. If you do not forget them, we cannot be friends any more. You understand me, don't you?'

Gentle and sweetly spoken as the words were, they fell upon my heart like snow upon a fainting flame; yet I felt that, like all her words, they were true and just. I crossed my hands on my breast with one of my old-world gestures, and, standing so before her with bowed head, I said,—

'The will of Joyful Star is my law. Let what I spoke in my madness be forgotten as you have said. Who am I that I should say such things?—a poor savage that has wandered from his own world into hers, where he is a stranger!'

'No, not a savage, Vilcaroya. You must never say that word again. How could Golden Star's brother be a savage? How could I—but there, we have said enough for the present. We have other things to think of now.'

With that she turned away and sat down in a long, low chair, resting her cheek upon her hand, and looking out of one of the windows at the stars, while I went and stood before another to look at the same stars that she was looking at, and so we waited in silence until the door opened, and we heard Djama's voice telling us that the long-expected moment of Golden Star's awakening had come at last.

As Joyful Star went to the door I stood aside and waited for her to pass me and go out first. As she went by our eyes met for a moment, and I saw that hers were bright with tears. My heart leapt at the sight, and then fell still again and well nigh fainting. What had she said to me but a few minutes before? How dare I dream that those sweet tears could be for me?

I followed her and Djama into the room, but half-way between the door and the bed I stopped, not daring to go on, held back by some impulse I could not name. I saw her lean over the pillow for a moment in silence that for me was breathless. Then came a soft, sweet sound, and then a little cry. Was it her's or Golden Star's?

Djama beckoned to me. I went with swift, silent steps to the foot of the little bed, and saw Golden Star's eyes wide open and looking wonderingly up into Ruth's face, and her red lips smiling at her. The miracle had been completed. She had awakened her with a kiss.

'Come and give her your welcome back to life, Vilcaroya,' she whispered, rising and turning her fair face with its wet cheeks and smiling lips towards me. I went and stood over the pillow, and laid my trembling lips on Golden Star's brow, and then I said, in the words that had been the first of my own new life,—

'Cori-Coyllur Nustallipa, Nusta mi!'

She looked at me, but there was no more recognition in her gaze than in that of a newborn child, nor was there any answering smile upon her lips. Unheeding this for the moment, I went on and said, still speaking very gently and softly in our own tongue,—

'Thou art thrice welcome back from the shades of night into the bright presence of our Father the Sun, oh, Golden Star! Dost thou not remember me, Vilcaroya, thy brother, who went into the darkness with thee long ago, and has been permitted to return before thee that he might greet thee and bid thee welcome?'

Her eyes wandered from my face to Joyful Star's, and then she smiled again, but no answering words came from her parted lips. Now, as we looked from one another to her, a great fear came into all our hearts, and Ruth gave it voice.

'Laurens,' she whispered, laying her hands upon his arm, 'what is the matter? Vilcaroya spoke at once, didn't he? Why doesn't she speak? Oh, surely it can't be that she is—that she has come back to life without memory or—or her reason? What is it?'

I waited for Djama's answer as a man might wait for words that were to tell him whether he was to live or die. He put us both gently away from the bed, and then, laying his hand on Golden Star's brow, he looked long and steadfastly into her eyes. It seemed to me as though Ruth and I could hear each other's hearts beating and counting off the seconds until he raised his head again and said in the slow, even tones of the man of science who, for the time, had overcome and banished the lover,—

'Memory, perhaps, even probably; but reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank—a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have to be written.'

'Thank God for that!' she murmured, and I, too, echoed her words in my heart, though I did not know then how much she meant by them.

Then once more she turned and went to Golden Star's pillow, laying her hand upon her brow again, and looking fondly for a moment on the silent and yet eloquent face that was looking up at her. Then she said to her brother,—

'But is she well now? I mean, is her physical life certain? Will she live and grow well and strong again?'

'Yes,' he answered. 'I have done everything that it is in my power to do. I have fulfilled my promise to His Highness. The rest is, as it was with him, merely a matter of care and nourishment and nursing.'

'Then,' she said, with a swift, subtle change coming over her manner, 'the care and the nursing must be mine, and you two must say good-bye to her for the present, until I have nursed her back to health. Of course you may see her when necessary, as her doctor, but only as her doctor, mind. And you, Vilcaroya, must possess yourself with what patience you can until my part of the work is done as well. Now, go away, both of you. I am mistress here for the present. Laurens, you go and get ready the nourishment that you think she should take, and come back in half-an-hour, and tell me how it is to be taken.'

It was easy for us to see the deep yet kindly meaning of her lightly-spoken words, for in them she had told us that Golden Star was now once more a living woman. No longer a mummy, or a corpse, or a 'subject,' as the professor had called her—no longer an inanimate thing that had neither sex nor claim to human rights—but a sister woman of her own kind whose wants could only be supplied by her. So we obeyed her, and went away, leaving her there to perform the most sacred task save one that a loving woman could perform.

Djama went to prepare the food that Golden Star would soon need, and I went in search of the professor and Francis Hartness, and told them all that had happened, and then, when the professor had gone to bed to finish his broken night's rest, I and he who was my rival in love, and who was to be my brother-in-arms, went out from the courtyard into the patio which lay in front of the house, sloping down towards the entrance of the little valley in which the hacienda lay, and there, walking to and fro side by side, we talked long and earnestly of many things upon the doing of which my heart was set, and which might now be freely entered upon, seeing that the first object of our journey was already achieved.