ward to the front of the
dais, from which standpoint he was ordered to relate the circumstances
under which he first came into contact with the young Englishman; how
his suspicions as to the identity of his employer with the expected Inca
were first aroused; what steps he took to verify those suspicions, and
how he proceeded after those suspicions were confirmed; all of which he
told in the Quichua language, not only with a total absence of
embarrassment, but with a certain undertone of pride and exultation
running through his narrative; for he felt that, as the first discoverer
of the returned Manco, he was a person of very great consequence. Then
Harry was requested to state where and in what manner he came into
possession of the long-lost emerald collar of Manco Capac, which he did
in Spanish, Tiahuana afterwards interpreting his brief statement into
Quichua. Then came Tiahuana's own turn. He began by reminding his
hearers of the terrible happenings of that dreadful day when Atahuallpa,
deceived by the treacherous Spaniards, unsuspectingly entered the city
of Caxamalca, only to see his followers ruthlessly slaughtered, and to
find himself a captive in the hands of the _Conquistadors_. Then he
drew a graphic word picture of that still more awful night when
Atahuallpa, chained hand and foot, was led out into the great square of
the city and ignominiously strangled by his unscrupulous and
bloodthirsty betrayers. Warming to his subject, he next very briefly
sketched the untoward fate of the Inca Manco, son of Huayna Capac, whom
the Spaniards had installed, as their tool and puppet, on the throne
vacated by the murder of Atahuallpa; and he concluded this portion of
his address by briefly reminding his hearers of the sudden and dramatic
appearance of the prophet-priest Titucocha on the night of Atahuallpa's
murder, and of the prophecy then uttered by him, which Tiahuana repeated
word for word. Then, gathering fresh energy and fire as he proceeded,
the High Priest told how, after waiting impatiently all his life long
for the reappearance of the great Manco, foretold by Titucocha, until he
had begun to despair of living to see that happy day, he had been
suddenly startled into new life and hope by the arrival of Arima in the
city with the glad news that the divine Manco had actually returned to
earth and was even then among the mountains of his beloved Peru. He
reminded them of how he, Tiahuana, had conducted Arima into