ipe, and sighed.

"No woman ever took compassion on me," he remarked, "and you see the
result,--ashes!"

"Ashes,--with their wonted fires living in them," said Trednoke.

"We were talking about this Indian of yours," said Meschines.

"Ay, to be sure. Well, he was attached to Inez's family when I first
knew them. It was a peculiar relation; not like that of a servant. One
finds such things in Mexico. The conquered race were of as good strain
as their conquerors; the blood of Montezuma was as blue as the best
of the Castilian. There were many intermarriages; and there are many
instances of the survival of traditions and records; though the records
are often symbolic, and would have no meaning to persons not initiated.
But they have been sufficient to perpetuate ties of a personal nature
through generation after generation; and the alliance between Kamaiakan
and Inez was of this kind. His forefathers, I imagine, were priests, and
priests were a mighty power in Tenochtitlan. For aught I know, indeed
Kamaiakan may be an original priest of Montezuma's; no one knows his
age, but he does not look an hour older, to-day, than when I first saw
him, over twenty years ago."

"He must be!" said Miriam, with some positiveness. "He has told me of
seeing and doing things hundreds of years ago. And he says----" She
paused.

"What does he say, Nina adorada?" asked her father.

"It was about the treasure, you know."

"Let us hear. The professor is one of us."

"It's one of our traditions that my mother's ancestors, at the time of
Cortez, were very rich people," continued Miriam, glancing at Meschines,
and then letting her eyes wander across the garden, blooming with
roses and fragrant with orange-trees, and so across the trellised vines
towards the soft outline of the mountains eastward. "A great part of
their wealth was in the form of jewels and precious stones. When Cortez
took the city, one of the priests, who was a relative of our family, put
the jewels in a box, and hid them in a certain place in the desert."

"And does Kamaiakan know where the place is?" asked the general.

"He can know, when the time comes."

"Which will be, perhaps, when you are ready for your dowry," observed
the professor, genially.

"A spell was put upon the spot," Miriam went on, with a certain
imaginative seriousness; for she loved romance and mystery so well, and
was of a temperament so poetical, that the wildest fairy-tales had a
sort of real