Dick was pale, but the Marquis was livid. So they appeared to Natividad; as to Uncle Francis, he had not his glasses on, and noticed nothing disquieting in their appearance.

“Those scoundrels have both my children now,” groaned Don Christobal in answer to Natividad’s eager questions, and told what had happened.

Badly mounted for mountain roads, the Marquis had found great difficulty in following. Several times he had been on the point of abandoning his horse, but, thinking it might be valuable later on, had kept to it. Once or twice he had been obliged to dismount and drag the unwilling beast behind him. At dawn, he reached the Indians’ camp, which he searched in vain for some personal sign of his daughter. She was evidently too well guarded. Finally he found the llama’s body, but being convinced that Dick was with little Christobal, had not worried overmuch. Then, a little further on, he found Dick, but alone.

Dick, powerless to interfere, had seen little Christobal carried off by the same Indians who already held Maria-Teresa. When they started on their wild ride, and as soon as the road became steeper, the llama had rapidly outpaced Dick’s horse. Little Christobal, riding it hard, would not stop, and soon vanished ahead. Two hours later, Dick had lost his horse in a ravine, throwing himself from the saddle only just in time, and narrowly saving his own life by clinging to a projecting rock. He continued his pursuit on foot, and finally came in sight of the boy, just as the llama, exhausted, burst a blood-vessel and fell. He had called to little Christobal, but the boy, unheeding, had run on, crying, “Maria-Teresa! Maria-Teresa!”

They were right on the Indians then, and Dick could see them far above him on the zig-zagging mountain-path. They had checked their horses, waiting for the boy to catch up to them. Then one of the Red Ponchos bent down, lifted him up to his saddle-bow, and hurried on with his new captive. Dick was too far away to open fire, and the Indians had at once spurred on, soon leaving him far behind. The Marquis had come up a short time after.

“You must not despair, Don Christobal,” urged Natividad. “Your news is not all bad. They are only just ahead, and cannot escape us. They must pass through Huancavelica, and there we have troops to help us.”

Natividad ordered one of the soldiers to dismount and give his mule to Dick. The man was indignant, and continued protesting in a weird jargon as he trotted afoot behind the cavalcade. In this manner they reached a point where the road forked, one branch going on up into the hills, the other stretching down toward the coast. They had all turned up the former when the dismounted soldier turned—he would go no further, but would descend to the coast; and once there he would report to the powers the manner in which he had been treated by a mere civilian. Natividad wished him an ironical good-by, and he started, but only to reappear a moment later, waving a soft felt hat in his hand.

“That belongs to Christobal!” exclaimed the Marquis.

They turned their mounts, grateful for the chance-found sign which had saved them from a grievous mistake. Natividad alone hesitated, wondering whether this was not an Indian ruse. They advanced slowly therefore, until the mud and sand on the banks of a torrent just below showed beyond doubt that a large number of mounted men had passed that way and restored Natividad’s serene belief in the ultimate success of their search.

“So they’re doubling back to the costa. They must have been warned that the passes were guarded... all they have gained by the detour is avoiding Chorillos.... Perhaps they are making for Canete.... Well, they must stop somewhere, and then we have them!”

After an hour’s rest, they hurried on again at top speed, one of the soldiers giving his dismounted comrade a lift behind.

“Did you, then, ever think that we might not catch them?” asked Uncle Francis of Natividad, with an enigmatical smile.

“Why not, se?or?... Between you and me, it is about time we did catch them.... I for one shall not feel happy if se?orita de la Torre and the boy are still in their hands on the last day of the Interaymi.”

“Do you mean that the boy is in danger?”

“Speak lower, se?or, speak lower.... Nothing is too young, too beautiful or too innocent for the Sun. Do you understand?”

“More or less. More or less.”

“You people do not know what horrors they are capable of.... They still have their priests.... You might blink at facts if it were only the ordinary Red Ponchos, but there are also those three monsters.... You always find them together in the old burial-grounds.... When one dies, the other two are put to death.... Or when a king died, they sacrificed themselves on his tomb.... They still exist, those monsters, those high-priests of the sacred slaughters.... They exist, se?or.”

“Do they?”

“You, se?or, are a savant, and know about the Temple of Death. But do you know how many dead were found buried with the mummy of Huayna Capac? Four thousand, se?or! Four thousand human lives sacrificed to honor the dead—some by suicide, others strangled, knifed or suffocated.... And the House of the Serpent.... But I prefer not to tell you what happened there.”

“Tell me some other day.... You make an admirable guide. When we return, I will tell the supremo gobierno how grateful I am to them for having made the most erudite of police officers my cicerone.”

“I beg your pardon, se?or?”

Natividad, completely taken aback, could only stare at his interlocutor.

“Nothing, nothing! I am only joking!” Scandalized at such levity, Natividad turned away with an indignant snort, while Uncle Francis chuckled. That worthy gentleman had now quite made up his mind that there was a plot afoot against him, and sternly refused to be “taken in.” The joke was rather tiring physically, but he would not cry for mercy. As to all these hair-raising stories, he would take them for what they were worth. Let them play their pranks till they tired of them.

The more he thought of it, the more he became convinced of the truth of his deductions. His antiquarian’s eye rested lovingly on the traces of that long-dead Inca civilization which they met. Here, aqueducts that would have made the Romans wonder; there, remains of the great road which ran from end to end of South America. They were all dead, those Incas. Yet these people wished to make him believe that those vanished warriors and priests had carried off a boy and girl of to-day to offer them as a sacrifice to equally-forgotten gods!

They had now left the arid ranges and dusty wind behind them, and reached a little village nestling in green fields at the foot of the mountain. A babbling stream, tumbling down from the Cordilleras, had transformed this corner into an oasis of verdure, in............