gaze was arrested by the glint of
the sunlight upon what had the appearance of a number of rapidly moving
objects indistinctly seen about a mile distant among the low spreading
branches of the trees which lined the great road leading from the City
of the Sun.

"Hillo, Arima," he said to the Indian who was his sole attendant, "who
comes here? Are they soldiers? Do you see that flash and glitter
yonder among the trees? To me it has the appearance of sun-glint upon
spear points and military accoutrements."

Arima looked for a moment, and then replied:

"Without question it is so, Lord. Doubtless it is Tiahuana returning
with the bodyguard which is to escort my Lord the Inca on the occasion
of his triumphal entry into the City of the Sun."

"But those fellows are surely mounted, Arima!" said Escombe. "The
movement is that of cavalry; and--listen!--unless I am greatly mistaken,
I can hear the clatter of hoofs on the stone pavement of the road."

"It is even so, Lord," answered the Indian. "The bodyguard of my Lord
the Inca consists of a thousand picked men, mounted on the finest horses
that it is possible to breed in the valley."

"But I have always understood," said Harry, "that you Peruvians did not
believe in mounted men, and that it was, in fact, as much due to your
terror of the mounted Spaniards as anything else that you were
vanquished in the old days. But I am forgetting; you knew nothing of
horses then, did you?"

"My Lord says truth," answered Arima. "We had no horses in Peru until
the Spaniards brought them. But since then we have learned the value of
horses, and I understand that the inhabitants of the valley have devoted
especial attention to the breeding of them, even from the date of the
foundation of the city."

"And with a marvellous success, I should say, if one may judge from the
appearance of the animals yonder," remarked Harry enthusiastically, as
he watched the approaching horsemen.

The cavalcade had by this time reached the junction of the footpath with
the road, and, debouching on to the former, or rather on to the hillside
which it traversed, breasted the slope at a gallop, presenting as it did
so a superb and inspiriting picture of eager, prancing, satin-skinned,
gaily caparisoned, foam-flecked horses, bestridden by lithe, sinewy
forms gorgeous in their blue and gold uniforms, and a-glitter with their
burnished copper shields, swords, maces, and lance-heads. At their head
rode