ith an aura of a great gilded tomb. His
sensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from a
trance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin.
The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all the
blood of sacrificial offerings which the ravening soil had drunk.

But he knew that now was no time for sick fancies and he shook them off
and bent his mind to the present crisis. Zoraida was retracing the
steps which had led them here; she had spoken of Betty. It was likely
then that they were returning through the long passageways to the
house. Dark hallways to thread, the dark mind of his guide to seek to
read. Now, while darkness outdoors was well enough, the black gloom of
a maze at any corner of which Zoraida might have placed one or a dozen
of her hirelings, had little lure for him. She did not mean to let him
go free; she had kept him all day immured in his own room; she would no
doubt seek to lock him up again.

"It's tonight or never to make a break for it," he decided as he
followed her.

They were passing the block of jasper, the ancient stone of sacrifice.
Zoraida went by first; Kendric was passing when an impulse prompted him
to put out a sudden hand for the keen edged knife of obsidian. He
slipped it into his belt and hid the haft with his coat. If it came to
an ambush, to an attack in the dark, a revolver bullet might fly wild
while the wide sweep of a knife blade would somehow find a sheath in
something more palpable than thin air.

They went on, returning along the way they had come. When the gardens
of the golden Tezcucan were behind them and a door barred Kendric
experienced a sense of relief, even though the tunnels were ahead of
him. He kept close to Zoraida, prepared for any sort of trickery and
with no desire to have her whisk suddenly through a door somewhere and
slam it in his face. His one urgent prayer was for a breath of the
open; just then the consummation of human happiness seemed to him to be
freedom on horseback somewhere out in the mountains with the whole of
the wide starry sky generously roofing the world. He thought of
Betty--and he thought, too, of the six little boys doomed to count
themselves happy back yonder where at most the sun shone down upon them
a few minutes of the day.

Never once did Zoraida turn, not once did she speak as they hastened
on. What little he saw of her face where there was lamplight showed