Garcia opened the door, and looked down the staircase, where he both heard and saw his guards sleeping. Pale with anger, the Dictator woke them, and ordered the officer to muster his men on the landing.

“My soldiers never sleep!” he declared to the consul. “Look at them. Do they look as if they wanted sleep?... Come, my lads, a little exercise to keep you fit. Out of that window with you all!”

His outstretched arm pointed to the Redroom window, nearly five yards above the ground. The poor hussars looked at him, hesitated, and jumped. Remained only the officer.

“Well, and what are you waiting for, major? You should be with your men.”

Then, as the officer did not move, he seized him round the waist, and threw him out of the window. The watching ministers and the consul, anxious not to take the same route, laughed heartily at the jest, and went to look into the courtyard. Those of the soldiers who had landed more or less safely were picking up three comrades with broken legs. The officer was being carried off, his skull fractured.

Just as this interlude ended, the Minister for War returned, still followed by the Marquis and Natividad.

“Well?” asked Garcia, closing the window.

“The Red Ponchos,” replied the Minister, looking meaningly at his illustrious chief. “Oviedo Runtu quartered them there, and added a few soldiers to the guard. They leave to-morrow night for the Cuzco.”

“What else?” Garcia was nervously twisting his mustache.

“They know nothing of the young lady and the little boy.”

“Excellency,” burst in the Marquis, who could contain himself no longer, “you must have that house searched. I know they are in it. You cannot allow those scoundrels to go free! Your name would be tarnished for ever if you did such a thing! It would make you the accomplice of murderers!....On you depend the life of my son, the only heir of a great name which in the past has always fought for civilization, side by side with yours, and of my daughter, whom you once loved.”

The latter consideration might have had little effect on the Dictator, who did not believe in confusing love and politics, but the sentence before, appealing to his sentiments as the representative of “a great name” moved him powerfully. He turned bruskly to his Minister for War.

“But you must have seen something. I presume you searched the house?”

“If I forced that house, Excellency, every one of our Quichua soldiers would rise. Runtu has only to make a sign, and they cut all our throats. That house is sacred, for the Red Ponchos and the mammaconas are escorting the ‘sacred imprints from Cajamarca to the Cuzco for the Interaymi fêtes. It is impossible, Excellency.” One look from the Dictator drove all his ministers from the room. When the door had closed on the last one, he turned to the Marquis.

“If your children are in that house, se?or, it is terrible... but I can do nothing for you.” Don Christobal staggered under the blow, and leaned against the wall.

“Listen, Garcia,” he said in a strangled voice, “if this horrible crime is allowed, I shall make you personally responsible for it before the civilized world.”

He reeled, almost on the point of fainting. Garcia ran to his side, and held him up, but Don Christobal seemed to regain his forces at once.

“Hands off, you general of murderers!” he shouted.

Garcia went white, while the Marquis walked toward the door, turning his back on the Dictator though he expected to be stabRed at any moment. But Garcia controlled himself, and his lisping voice checked Don Christobal in surprise.

“Do not go yet, se?or. I can do nothing for you, but I can at all events give you some advice.”

Don Christobal turned, but ignored the hand which waved to a chair, and waited. He had already wasted too much time here.

“Speak, sir,” he said; “time passes.”

“Have you any money?” asked Garcia bruskly.

“Money? What for? To...” He was on the point of saying “to bribe you,” but stopped at a suppliant look from Natividad, who was signing desperately to him from behind the Dictator’s back.

Garcia, remembering there was somebody else in the room, took Natividad by the arm, and put him out of the room without a word. Then he sat down at a little table loaded with papers, rested his head in his hands, and began to speak in an undertone, without looking at the Marquis, still standing and suspicious.

“I can do nothing for you against the Red Ponchos and the mammaconas. Their house, or their temporary quarters, must be sacred, for they have the relics of Atahualpa with them. You say your children are in that house as well. That may be, but I am helpless to prove or disprove it. It is horrible, I agree, but I am powerless. You say that my soldiers are guarding the house? That is not true. I am nobody in all this. Who put them there? Oviedo Runtu. They are Oviedo Runtu’s soldiers.”

He paused for a moment.

“Who is Oviedo Runtu? A bank-clerk whom you may have had dealings with at Lima? Yes, and no. He is a bank clerk, but he is also the master of every Quichua in the country. Yes, he dresses like a European, and earns a humble living among us, but meanwhile he is studying all our institutions, our financial methods, all our secrets. He earns two hundred soles a month behind a counter, and he is perhaps a king. I don’t know. === “King or not, all the Quichua and Aimara chief............