e the whole community--but the Bishop promptly
crushed that idea. They listened in respectful silence, and went their own
way. Pablo came to a resolve. He proposed that they should start before
daylight and search for the accursed place. The Cura was startled, but he
assented with passionate zeal; of his stuff, unenterprising,
unimaginative, with room for one idea only, martyrs are made. Martyrdom he
half expected, and he was ready. Whilst Pablo snored in his hammock, the
good man prayed all through the night.

It was still dark when they set forth, and before even Indians were
stirring they had passed beyond the village confines; but the sun was high
when they reached the hills. These are, in fact, a range of low volcanoes,
all extinct now; the most ancient overgrown with trees and brushwood, the
most recent still bare. Towards this part the Cura led the way. They
passed through blinding gorges where no green thing found sustenance.
Cacti and yuccas and agaves, white with dust, clung to the naked tufa. So
they went on, mounting always, encouraged from time to time by some faint
trace of human passage, which their keen Indian eyes discerned. But from
the crest nothing could be seen save gorges such as they had traversed,
and long slopes of dazzling rock.

The quest began to look hopeless, but they persevered. And presently Pablo
noted something on the ground, at a distance, beside a clump of Opuntia.
It was a bunch of withered flowers. Approaching they saw a cleft in the
ridge of tufa masked by that straggling cactus. They passed through--and
the idols stood before them! The Cura fell on his knees.

It was a small plateau, as white and as naked as the rest. In the midst
stood three cairns, each bearing large stone figures, painted red and blue
and yellow. Before each cairn was an altar, built of unhewn stones topped
by a slab.

The scene was impressive. Pablo recalled his prayers in looking on it. The
white and glittering dust lay even as a floor around those heaps of stone.
All was still, but the painted statues seemed to tremble and flicker in
that awful heat. Tiny whirls of sand arose, and danced, and scattered,
though never a breath of wind moved the burning air. The shadow of a
vulture sailing passed slowly from side to side.

The Cura ended his prayer, leapt up and rushed--his old black gown
streaming like wings. He grasped the foremost idol and pushed and pulled
with all his might--he might as well have tried