angled by torchlight in the
great _plaza_ of Caxamalca, many of the nobles who had been with him
fled with their families into the heart of the mountains, and,
establishing themselves in a certain secret place, set to work, at the
bidding of one Titucocha, a priest of the Sun, to build a new City of
the Sun--beside the glories of which those of Cuzco were to be as
nothing--against the time when our Lord the Sun should again send Manco
Capac, the founder of the Inca dynasty, back to earth to restore the
dynasty in all its ancient splendour."

"And do you really believe that such a restoration is possible?" asked
Escombe with a smile at the old woman's credulity.

"Ay," answered Cachama with conviction, "I more than believe, I know!
For I have the gift of foreknowledge, to a certain extent, and from my
earliest childhood I have felt convinced that the prophecy is true--I
cannot explain how, or why; I only know that it is so. And with the
passage of the years I have ever felt that the time for its fulfilment
was drawing nearer, until now I know that it is so close at hand that
even I, old though I am, may live to see it. I would that I could feel
as sure of the continuance of the dynasty as I am of its restoration;
but I cannot; I can only see--dimly--up to a certain point, beyond which
everything is misty and uncertain, with a vague suggestion of disaster
which fills, me with foreboding."

CHAPTER FIVE.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF BUTLER?

On the second day after the dispatch of Yupanqui to the surveyors' camp,
he had duly returned with a curt officially worded note from Butler
acknowledging the receipt of Escombe's "report" of his accident and its
result, and requesting the latter to rejoin the survey party with the
least possible delay, "as his absence was the cause of much
inconvenience and delay in the progress of the survey". Not a word of
regret at the occurrence of the accident, much less anything that could
be construed into an admission that the writer's own unreasonable
demands and orders were the cause of the mishap; and not even a word of
congratulation at Escombe's narrow escape from a terrible death; simply
a formal request that he would rejoin, "with the least possible delay",
for a certain good and sufficient reason. Poor Harry shrugged his
shoulders with something very like contempt for the hidebound creature
who was, to a great extent, the master of his fate, and who seemed to be
absolutely destitu