the country over which they campaigned.

[Illustration: "Even as he shifted, he hurled the knife."]

The other meditated for a space.

"Suppose with their aid we destroy Xotalanc," he said. "What then,
Xatmec?"

"Why," returned Xatmec, "we will drive red nails for them all. The
captives we will burn and flay and quarter."

"But afterward?" pursued the other. "After we have slain them all? Will
it not seem strange, to have no foes to fight? All my life I have
fought and hated the Xotalancas. With the feud ended, what is left?"

Xatmec shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had never gone beyond the
destruction of their foes. They could not go beyond that.

Suddenly both men stiffened at a noise outside the door.

"To the door, Xatmec!" hissed the last speaker. "I shall look through
the Eye----"

Xatmec, sword in hand, leaned against the bronze door, straining his ear
to hear through the metal. His mate looked into the mirror. He started
convulsively. Men were clustered thickly outside the door; grim,
dark-faced men with swords gripped in their teeth--_and their fingers
thrust into their ears_. One who wore a feathered head-dress had a set
of pipes which he set to his lips, and even as the Tecuhltli started to
shout a warning, the pipes began to skirl.

The cry died in the guard's throat as the thin, weird piping penetrated
the metal door and smote on his ears. Xatmec leaned frozen against the
door, as if paralyzed in that position. His face was that of a wooden
image, his expression one of horrified listening. The other guard,
farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror of
what was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniac
fifing. He felt the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at the
tissues of his brain, filling him with alien emotions and impulses of
madness. But with a soul-tearing effort he broke the spell, and shrieked
a warning in a voice he did not recognize as his own.

But even as he cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrilling
that was like a knife in the ear-drums. Xatmec screamed in sudden agony,
and all the sanity went out of his face like a flame blown out in a
wind. Like a madman he ripped loose the chain, tore open the door and
rushed out into the hall, sword lifted before his mate could stop him. A
dozen blades struck him down, and over his mangled body the Xotalancas
surged into the guardroom, with a long-drawn, blood-mad yell that sen